Date:         Fri, 6 Jun 1997 15:07:10 EDT
From: The Bonfire of Ideas <mbarker@MIT.EDU>
Subject:      FILLER: Parsing...also dicing and slicing!

In consideration of woofie's question about diagramming, I found the
following explication of "grammar" in Britannica Online...and expanded
on it just a bit for the fun of it.

[warning, here there be low punnery and other attempts at humor on a
Friday...so don't you be gibing at the jibberish--or is that jibing
at the gibberish?:-]

:) Contemporary linguists define grammar as the underlying structure of a
:) language that any native speaker of that language knows
:) intuitively. The systematic description of the features of a language
:) is also a grammar.  These features are the phonology (sound),

phrownology?  ain't that the scheme of the bumps on your noggin, or
maybe how you hit your head against the wall?  ah, that's it, the fine
clump-clog-ppp'hop of cranium against cheap walling, that's the sound
of grammar!

:) morphology (system of word formation), syntax (patterns of word

morephology?  did I get some phology to start with?  phology, phology,
eh what grand phology that has such nonsense in it?

syntax?  I didn't even pay for it, and now you want to tax it, too?
Does this mean English teachers are related to the infernal revenue
snakes?

:) arrangement), and semantics (meaning) that all native speakers of a
:) language control by about the age of six.  Depending on the

yes!  Having lost control, with the horrid semantics crawling
everywhere and nipping little bloody bites and knicks in the skin that
itch something fierce, I induce that either I am not all native
speakers of a language (of course not, you twit, you're only a speck
on the windshield of the internetmobile as it passes) OR perhaps I am
not yet six!

(and what strange magic does six hold?  is that the age of grammar,
when the neural damage is done that freezes the lingua franca into a
mere lingua locale?  or is it something deeper, darker, odder that
binds the six years of age to the sides of a die, shaking the
linguistic mastery in a cup of random change?]

Farcical!  no, never near cycle, but truly far out acyclical
randomness...

as pharisee could sea, the waves crested.

:) grammarian's approach, a grammar can be prescriptive (i.e., provide
:) rules for correct usage), descriptive (i.e., describe how a language
:) is actually used), or generative (i.e., provide instructions for the
:) production of an infinite number of sentences in a language).

He took his prescription, just as you descript him, and generative
sprung up the wild sentences of yore!

I think grande grammar would be proud of moi!
tink