Tag Archives: linguistics

They don’t count and they have no number words

By reckon | Published: January 5, 2009

A small group of hunter/gatherers living in the Amazon rain forest is overturning some fundamental assumptions about the mind. Although linguists have long believed that counting and having words for numbers are basic, if not innate, to human cognition, the Pirahã people in Brazil have no words to express numerical concepts such as “one,” “two,” [...]

Posted in Anthropology, Asides, Language, Science | Also tagged cognition, Word |

Synchronistic Linguistics in the Matrix

By reckon | Published: December 30, 2008

As I write this on the night of April 25th, 1999, a film called The Matrix is number one at the box office. Though by no means a perfect science fiction movie, it still manages to pack one hell of a wallop. I'd hardly put it on the same scale as 2001: A Space Odyssey or Brazil, or even Blade Runner, but at the same time I don't believe the flaws in the film represent a weakness on the part of the Wachowski Brothers' writing talents. I believe the film is designed to disseminate a subversive message through the filter of popular culture. As Marshall McLuhan said, "Anything that's popular is a rear-view image." The Matrix is not about the future, it's about the past.

Posted in Anthropology, Art, Featured, Film, Language, Philosophy, Poetry, Science, Technology | Also tagged Bob Dobbs, Burroughs, communications, Culture, Marshall McLuhan, matrix, media, movies, Word | 7 Comments

Linguistic Archaeology

By reckon | Published: October 21, 2008

Edo Nyland: In the following articles I will show many major languages which were invented by formulaic distortion and manipulation of the ancient language which Genesis 11:1 described as: "Now the whole world had one language". This was followed by Genesis 11:7, which instructed the religious leaders of the day: "Let us confuse their language so they can no longer speak to each other". And that is exactly what happened, all over the world.

Posted in History, Language, Science, Technology | Also tagged Comparative method, Language, Natural language, Social Sciences, Word |

Frame analysis on the word stage

By reckon | Published: September 18, 2008

Frame analysis reveals the complexity of mundane social activities and it brings out the arbitrary nature of any fixed, social-domain or activity-based dichotomy between what is “staged” and what is “real”. It brings out the reality-constructing capacities of what is staged, but also the staged nature of the everyday tangibly real. Note in this respect [...]