Hi Cris,
When I speak of logical grammar, what I mean is that the logical grammar of
language displays the order of affairs. This order of affairs is the
logical sequence and structure of thought (as well as action). If you were
to ask me to describe to you what I just did I would say something like
this "I just got up from my chair, walked out the door, poured myself a cup
of water and then returned to my desk." Indeed there are many ways for me
to tell you this sequence of affairs. Though what I can not do, without
being illogical is mix up the order. I can not tell you that "I returned to
my desk and then poured myself a cup of water, walked out the door and just
got up from my chair". This does not make sense. you may even be able to
understand what I was TRYING to say (you re-cognized my meaning) however
you would immediately notice that this is not how things happen. Therefore,
the logical grammar of language assures that you know this. If there were
no fundamental understanding of the order of affairs, built into our use
and appreciation of language then there could be no "immobile" ground upon
which to use language variably and according to our own ways and means. No
language is apart from this foundation and this foundation can not change
with the evolution that we witness on the surface of language. Indeed it is
because this foundation is so intuitive and immobile that wild and off-beat
poetry can even be appreciated.
all the dearest best,
daniel
On Mon, 12 Feb 2001 14:11:39 +0000, cris cheek <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
>Hi Daniel,
>
>your analogy between language and a baseball suggests that 'language' is an
>absolute from which use is applied. Also perhaps a set of rules from which
>'hits' are garnered. Perhaps I'm completely misreading your sense of this
>though. I'm personally defamiliarised from logical grammar in the sense
>that it suggests 'language' as an immutable monolithic block (it also
>suggests Chomsky?). That's not my understanding, defective though it surely
>is, of the stories of languages, how languages change and how the uses to
>which languages are put differs. I do believe that there are only languages
>not 'language'. Poetry would seem to prove a differing series of cases than
>prose. My own experience would tend to support strong mutabilities and
>hybridities, many of which do not behave according to any sense of logical
>grammar. I would have to ask 'whose logical grammar?'. Your own attention
>to the gendering details inside of what you post would support the
>pertinence of this question. It suggests that politics is present in your
>assertion of an immutable as much as in the applications of that immutable.
>
>I just tried to parse the final line in Frank O'Hara's 'Collected Poems' in
>the type-logical grammar theorem prover:
>
>PARSE RESULTS FOR: in the night and developing our own in salt-like praise
>
>Input not recognized: praise
>Input not recognized: salt-like
>Input not recognized: own
>Input not recognized: our
>Input not recognized: developing
>Input not recognized: night
>
>No Parses Found
>
>Maybe I ought to just ask, because I simply don't understand, what logical
>grammar?
>
>love and love
>cris
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