Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 13, 2014 23:31:12 GMT -5
"This quaint little Dutch city has a shopping centre that is walker and biker friendly," we read: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SneekIs it not difficult to imagine friendship ever springing up between walkers and bikers? Perhaps what this phrase really means is that the shopping centre is friendly to the walkers, and the shopping centre is friendly to the bikers. The walkers are not necessarily friendly to the shopping centre in return - that would be a piece of wishful thinking on the part of the shopping centre. Nor are the bikers necessarily friendly to the shopping centre in return. The walkers are definitely not friendly to the bikers. And the bikers are definitely not friendly to the walkers. Once during the sixties of the last century I was parking my Mini in Amsterdam. I was backing in in the clean-limbed British way. To my utter astonishment a Dutchman nosed in from his front behind me. We were both stuck halfway in. I got out and berated him. He gazed at me blankly, uttered not a word, and showed no sign of driving backwards. But his plan to drive me away had succeeded. They are all like that I soon learned. Of course one must make allowances. Hilter you know. But since then my advice to every one has been to have nothing to do with them.
|
|
|
Post by ahinton on Oct 14, 2014 4:22:31 GMT -5
Once during the sixties of the last century I was parking my Mini in Amsterdam. I was backing in in the clean-limbed British way. What on earth is that and how is it done; specifically how can such parking technique be distinguished from any others wherein the limbs of the driver as not so clean?(and why and how could the state of cleanliness of the driver's limbs impact upon the manner of parking the car?) To my utter astonishment a Dutchman nosed in from his front behind me. We were both stuck halfway in. I got out and berated him. He gazed at me blankly, uttered not a word, and showed no sign of driving backwards. But his plan to drive me away had succeeded. They are all like that I soon learned. All ill-mannered and inconsiderate drivers, perhaps, but I suspect that you meant all Dutch drivers and, unless you had tried this exercise with each and every one of them, you have no business to make such an overarching statement. Of course one must make allowances. Which ones, for what and why? Er - no; I know quite a few Dutch people but none of them is named Hilter. But since then my advice to every one has been to have nothing to do with them. With whom? All those who are rude and inconsiderate when you're trying to park? All Dutch drivers? Clarification and reasons, please!
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 15, 2014 2:29:07 GMT -5
Clarification and reasons, please! Does this help Mr. H?: Semantics is the study of meaning, as inherent at the levels of words, phrases, sentences, and larger units of discourse, texts or narratives. The study of semantics is also closely linked to the subjects of representation, reference and denotation. The basic study of semantics is oriented to the examination of the meaning of signs, and the study of relations between different linguistic units and compounds: homonymy, synonymy, antonymy, hypernymy, hyponymy, meronymy, metonymy, holonymy and paronyms. A concrete example of the latter phenomenon is semantic underspecification – meanings are not complete without some elements of context. To take an example of one word, red, its meaning in a phrase such as red book is similar to many other usages, and can be viewed as compositional. However, the colours implied in phrases such as red wine (very dark), and red hair (coppery), or red soil, or red skin are very different. Indeed, these colours by themselves would not be called red by native speakers. These instances are contrastive, so red wine is so called only in comparison with the other kind of wine (which also is not white for the same reasons). In psychology, semantic memory is memory for meaning – in other words, the aspect of memory that preserves only the gist, the general significance, of remembered experience – while episodic memory is memory for the ephemeral details – the individual features, or the unique particulars of experience. The term 'episodic memory' was introduced in the context of 'declarative memory' which involved simple association of factual or objective information concerning its object. Word meaning is measured by the company they keep, i.e. the relationships among words themselves in a semantic network. The memories may be transferred intergenerationally or isolated in one generation due to a cultural disruption. Different generations may have different experiences at similar points in their own time-lines. This may then create a vertically heterogeneous semantic net for certain words in an otherwise homogeneous culture. In a network created by people analysing their understanding of the word the links and decomposition structures of the network are few in number and kind, and include part of, kind of, and similar links. In automated ontologies the links are computed vectors without explicit meaning. Various automated technologies are being developed to compute the meaning of words: latent semantic indexing and support vector machines as well as natural language processing, neural networks and predicate calculus techniques. Sometimes I suspect you do it on purpose . . .
|
|
|
Post by ahinton on Oct 15, 2014 2:51:50 GMT -5
Clarification and reasons, please! Does this help Mr. H?: Semantics is the study of meaning, as inherent at the levels of words, phrases, sentences, and larger units of discourse, texts or narratives. The study of semantics is also closely linked to the subjects of representation, reference and denotation. The basic study of semantics is oriented to the examination of the meaning of signs, and the study of relations between different linguistic units and compounds: homonymy, synonymy, antonymy, hypernymy, hyponymy, meronymy, metonymy, holonymy and paronyms. A concrete example of the latter phenomenon is semantic underspecification – meanings are not complete without some elements of context. To take an example of one word, red, its meaning in a phrase such as red book is similar to many other usages, and can be viewed as compositional. However, the colours implied in phrases such as red wine (very dark), and red hair (coppery), or red soil, or red skin are very different. Indeed, these colours by themselves would not be called red by native speakers. These instances are contrastive, so red wine is so called only in comparison with the other kind of wine (which also is not white for the same reasons). In psychology, semantic memory is memory for meaning – in other words, the aspect of memory that preserves only the gist, the general significance, of remembered experience – while episodic memory is memory for the ephemeral details – the individual features, or the unique particulars of experience. The term 'episodic memory' was introduced in the context of 'declarative memory' which involved simple association of factual or objective information concerning its object. Word meaning is measured by the company they keep, i.e. the relationships among words themselves in a semantic network. The memories may be transferred intergenerationally or isolated in one generation due to a cultural disruption. Different generations may have different experiences at similar points in their own time-lines. This may then create a vertically heterogeneous semantic net for certain words in an otherwise homogeneous culture. In a network created by people analysing their understanding of the word the links and decomposition structures of the network are few in number and kind, and include part of, kind of, and similar links. In automated ontologies the links are computed vectors without explicit meaning. Various automated technologies are being developed to compute the meaning of words: latent semantic indexing and support vector machines as well as natural language processing, neural networks and predicate calculus techniques. In answering the question that I put to you? Rather obviously, no. Sometimes I suspect you do it on purpose . . . I do many things on purpose; as the particular one upon which you speculate here by means of the word "it" remains unidentified for the time being, however, I am unable to comment on it further.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 16, 2014 8:28:40 GMT -5
Semantics is "it", ahinton.
I laughed when I read of your parking experience in Amsterdam, Sydney. I would add that Dutch drivers have not changed much over the past fifty years. I got into similar situations in Sneek and Sloten, and did not even dare to go into Amsterdam. Of course, not all the Dutch are as bad as you make out, although I would agree that they can be aggressive drivers, even in marinas.
My own suspicion is that Old English and Old Frisian are very closely connected, so many of the Anglo-Saxons probably did originate here. Many of the Dutch, and Frisians, I have met have been extremely charming. More later ...
By the way, Richard Flanagan just won the Man Booker Prize, so he has been much in the news of late. Have you read any of his novels, Sydney?
|
|
|
Post by ahinton on Oct 16, 2014 10:14:28 GMT -5
Semantics is "it", ahinton. Or, for those who seem to delight in using the first person plural without identifying to whom it is supposed to apply, "semantics R Us", perhaps... That said, semantics provided no answers to any of the questions that I'd put. I laughed when I read of your parking experience in Amsterdam, Sydney. I would add that Dutch drivers have not changed much over the past fifty years. I got into similar situations in Sneek and Sloten, and did not even dare to go into Amsterdam. Of course, not all the Dutch are as bad as you make out, although I would agree that they can be aggressive drivers, even in marinas. My own suspicion is that Old English and Old Frisian are very closely connected, so many of the Anglo-Saxons probably did originate here. Many of the Dutch, and Frisians, I have met have been extremely charming. More later ... I cannot imagine that such an experience would be any less likely to occur in France, Italy or heaven knows how many other countries...
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 16, 2014 10:53:24 GMT -5
I can.
|
|
|
Post by ahinton on Oct 16, 2014 14:55:20 GMT -5
Fine but, having experienced similar behaviour in those and other countries, I can't! - the Dutch most certainly have no monopoly on this kind of thing, believe me!
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 16, 2014 19:46:11 GMT -5
. . . Have you read any of his novels, Sydney? No. What little Antipodean culture there had been was killed permanently off in 1942 with the birth of the vassal state now usually known as sub-Amercia. May I instead therefore recommend "Tasma's" 1895 novel in three parts Not Counting the Costone of the last three-deckers no doubt, written in Brussels and put out by Bentley, publishers in ordinary to Her Majesty? In particular we would urge upon members and indeed all Englishmen the cultivation of that ". . . certain untamed suppleness and elasticity, more Oriental than English . . ." so well described on page five.
|
|
|
Post by ahinton on Oct 16, 2014 23:56:30 GMT -5
In particular we would urge upon members and indeed all Englishmen the cultivation of that ". . . certain untamed suppleness and elasticity, more Oriental than English . . ." so well described on page five. Once again, evidence of the identities of those who make up this nebulous "we" is notable for its absence but, whoever they may be, at least their urging would leave me well and truly out if only "Englishmen" are to be its target...
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 17, 2014 10:48:19 GMT -5
I don't think that you can write off Australia, Sydney, because it is sub-American. Obviously, the twentieth century became, in many ways, the American century, and American culture dominates, particularly in popular culture. Of course, the Booker Prize was opened to American novelists for the first time in 2014, and an Australian won, so perhaps the world is not as American as we think, and Australia is not as sub-American as you think! The Man Booker Prize 2014 - The Narrow Road to the Deep NorthThis particular book is strongly influenced by the Japanese, who challenged British and subsequently American supremacy in the first half of the twentieth century. Perhaps Australia will become sub-Asian in the twenty-first century, Sydney?
|
|
|
Post by ahinton on Oct 17, 2014 11:51:25 GMT -5
I don't think that you can write off Australia, Sydney, because it is sub-American. At the risk of sounding pedantic, this would have more accurately read "I don't think that you can write off Australia, Sydney, on the grounds that anyone might perceive it to be sub-American". Obviously, the twentieth century became, in many ways, the American century, and American culture dominates, particularly in popular culture. ...but by no means to the exclusion of others, especially now...
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 18, 2014 1:22:01 GMT -5
. . . at least their urging would leave me well and truly out if only "Englishmen" are to be its target... Well what Mr. H asserts is not necessarily so. It is possible to be an Englishman by mere virtue of long residence in the land of England. Lineage is not everything, nor is bureaucracy everything. Suppose the Nipponese navy came steaming uninvited up the Bristol channel one fine morning. Would Mr. H's particular place of birth, or his ancestors' places of birth, then matter much to a) the Nipponese or to b) his neighbours or to c) the local authorities?
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Oct 18, 2014 1:25:45 GMT -5
If the member really crossed the Channel in October he must have quite a yacht must he not! Still I suppose everything is open to the moneyed classes.
|
|
|
Post by ahinton on Oct 18, 2014 10:47:04 GMT -5
. . . at least their urging would leave me well and truly out if only "Englishmen" are to be its target... Well what Mr. H asserts is not necessarily so. So, to you, this "ain't necessarily so", as that great American George Gershwin might have put it?... It is possible to be an Englishman by mere virtue of long residence in the land of England. Is it really? On what specific grounds and on what basis can you be as sure as you seem to be about this? Lineage is not everything So do you see yourself on that basis as an Australian? nor is bureaucracy everything Bureaucracy is NOTHING! (or nothing of any real value, for sure). Suppose the Nipponese navy came steaming uninvited up the Bristol channel one fine morning. Would Mr. H's particular place of birth, or his ancestors' places of birth, then matter much to a) the Nipponese or to b) his neighbours or to c) the local authorities? By "Nipponese" I assume you mean "Japanese". If the Japanese navy did inded come steaming up the Bristol Channel, invited or otherwise, why would any of its members even think about my particular birthplace or that of my ancestors, let alone be aware of it but unconcerned about it?! They'd not even find me in that vicinity! As to my neighbours and local authorities (by the latter of which I assume you to mean local government authorities), of course by background in tems of place of origin would not "matter" or indeed be expected to do so to either, but neither fact would of itself make me an "Englishman"! And don't forget that, not so long ago, you wrote as though Scottish independence from UK were a foregone conclusion; the fact that this didn't actually happen is not the point here, however - that point being that, had Scotland indeed become independent of UK, I would automatically have had Scottish citizenship conferred upon me by virtue of my having been born in Scotland.
|
|