Me3. I have a vague recollection of my 7th grade English teacher being horrified that none of us backwards children had been taught that particular "skill."

I don't like crossword puzzles, jigsaw puzzles or solitaire.

I love crossword puzzles, sudoku and solitaire but can't stand jigsaw puzzles. I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that I actually liked diagramming sentences in school, though I'd need a tutorial to do it now.

June bug, whose brain cells are dying...

I just watched Von's new video. I have no idea how many IQ points I lost, but it was a lot.

The "DUH" part was good, however.

I know that in many schools, this stuff is still being done that way, but the method has been proclaimed obsolete by linguists, psychologists and ... mathematicians for 53 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformational_grammar

Pure immediate constituent analysis without any reference to function and word class, that is.

The main problems with ICAN (my heart-felt apologies to anyone involved with computer network servers):

- it creates relationships and associations where none exist and the function in the sentence is clearly different: in "I go to New York" versus "I told a fairy tale to the children" the to-phrases are supposed to be similar if not identical.

- it hides the fact that phrases may be similar or different in construction, on the basis of the simple fact that they can replace each other as immediate constituent and perform the same function. Not too many examples in English (but think of "she's easy to please" versus "she is eager to please" and "He can help, surely" versus "He's done more than he can help") - but there are more examples in languages with case (Latin "amor dei" - even the standard English translation "love of God" is potentially ambiguous) and strangely, in languages where case is obsolescent, i.e. only exists in pronouns and is combined with fixed word order (a Dutch christmas carrol contains a sentence which may mean "Mary bore a child that night", "Mary liked that night very much" and "Mary pleased everybody that night" - intentional tri-ambiguity, of course).

Transformational grammar tries to solve the apparent one-layer problem by using standard transformations. The problems above can all be solved by transforming or trying to transform the sentence into a passive or a negative:
- she is pleased easily versus she is eager to be sure that people be pleased by her
- we are loved by God versus God is loved by us (amor dei)
- He cannot help surely (possible sentence) versus He's done more than he cannot help (impossible sentence - it would be treated as a double negative)

The first problem is a bit more complex. The passive of the second sentence naturally yields "The children were told a fairy tale (by me)" but the first sentence gets us two possible sentences: "New York is gone to" (dubious sentence, but in any case different from the first one because "to" was not dropped) and ""New York is gone". To know that the latter is not the correct transformation, meaning must be introduced.

But it is not only meaning, it is also rules of good grammar. Most ICAN enthusiasts were convinced that there should be no rules, and grammar should only interpret what was being said or written in the real world. Transformationalists claimed that what was being actually said and written, was usually incorrect AND FELT TO BE SO by the very people saying and writing it if they reflected on it (er, finally something that is not off topic in talking about birfers).

Basically, these diagrams require a lot of specialized effort, without ensuring that students or pupils will uncover the full grammatical "meaning" of the sentence.

I am sure many people here will recognize the name of the linguist who attacked ICAN in 1957. It is Noam Chomsky.

I surmised when I first read this that [in a national exam] Adams came in third [out of those taking the exam from a given jurisdiction]. For example, his GRE test group in Calaveras County included 7 students. He ranked third among these (but 4,826th nationally).

Sumpn like dat.

as for RSOL, Phils says:
So, if Jesus is on Obama

And the two scoring above him were probably Jumping Frogs waiting for the Jumping Frog Jubilee, which was held in the middle of May.

If this is the basis of his claim to have been "third highest," that is only further evidence that is a lying, self-important SOB.

We did no diagramming of sentences in school. In fact, English grammar was never taught. This made things very difficult for my French teachers, starting in junior high. So, they taught us English grammar first, so they had something to "hook" the French grammar onto; they should have received double pay! I owe all I know about English to my various French teachers, even though we tortured those poor souls unmercifully.

Would you guys create a thread to discuss the above please.

I surmised when I first read this that Adams had placed the information himself and it was probably a load of crap.

_________________
Q: How many birfers does it take to interpret the Constitution?
A: All of them. Stupidity isn't unconstitutional in America.

_________________


ASSUME ANYTHING WRITTEN HERE WILL END UP ON TAITZ'S SITE AND FACEBOOK. AND JEROME CORSI WILL POST SCREENSHOTS TO WND. AND WILL BE FILED BY A BIRTHER AS AN EXHIBIT IN FEDERAL COURT. NOW HAVE FUN!

I know I've told this story here before, but not recently!

During my brief service as an Army officer during the Vietnam era, I got into an argument with a fellow officer over the morality of the war. There was no doubt in his mind, he said, because God was on our side. How could he be sure? Because we were a Christian country and they were not.

I thought about that for a moment, and then said, "How about WW2? Both we and the Third Reich could arguably have been said to be Christian countries."

It didn't faze him a bit. "Yes," he said, "and I could have fought for either side."

Inasmuch as God's kingdom exists in a spiritual realm, what earthly nations do or don't do is inconsequential according to the Bible. There is no such thing as a "Christian" nation since Christians are supposedly natural born citizens (born again citizens, actually) of a spiritual nation, not a physical one. The Bible harps against dual citizenship, encouraging Christians to pay taxes and obey laws but otherwise abstain from worldly politics.

It has always puzzled me how the religious right is obsessed with the souls of others, when they should only be worried about their own souls. When I meet my Maker, there will be no one standing there to be judged but me.

I'm an atheist, but Hear, hear!

And should there turn out to be a God, I am confident that I have led a good life and will be judged accordingly.

Emphasis mine. That explains why so many Republicans act so unlike their Christ. They are not Christians except in their own heads. Not to mention the RWNJ's.

What puzzles me is the scriptural ignorance contained in the statement "This is a Christian nation"

According to the Bible:



That's the WHOLE world. Not the Third World, or the Second World, or the Western World, or the Islamic World. It's EVERYBODY, all worldly governments, INCLUDING US.

It's disingenuous to think that Jesus holds America in any high regard. It is a false teaching, wholly unscriptural. The scriptures clearly teach that God's Kingdom is a separate realm for a separate people, all of whom come from every nation on this earth, yes, including North Korea and Iran.

I occasionally lurk at a couple of RW religious forums (because I like keeping up with how those folks think) and they spend a lot of time discussing America's role in the "end times" and trying to figure out why the United States isn't specifically mentioned in the bible. It really bothers them. Some of them believe that America has replaced Israel in God's eyes as his favorite and, as such, they spend time trying to find a big shout out in the good book. They twist scripture to insist that this or that verse is a coded reference to the United States because they can't believe that America isn't No. 1 on God's personal hit parade.

Funny the things people worry about.

He couldn't put in his teeth for a youtube video?!

Here is an example of how the Tea Party bunch twists scripture to justify their agenda.

http://www.resistnet.com/profiles/blogs ... rite-bible
Hitlers Favorite Bible Scripture was Romans 13 Do not be fooled!
Posted by Anne on May 1, 2010 at 2:30pm

WND interviews Tim Adams

Two things caught my eye. One is this comment: "Adams...burst onto the scene last week in a WND story in which he asserted that Obama was definitely not born in Hawaii..." Yep. He burst onto the scene via a WND story, definitely not through a white supremacist radio broadcast.

And this:

"Anyone can get that [Certification of Live Birth]," said Adams. "They are normally given if you give birth at home or while traveling overseas. We have a lot of Asian population [in Hawaii]. It's quite common for people to come back and get that."

If he were better versed in Birther rhetoric, he'd at least know that the COLB is an abstract, and not a unique type of birth certificate unto itself. It doesn't help him claim that he knows what he's talking about when he clearly doesn't know what he's talking about.