luka

Well-known member
"But the human agent once on the scene, immediately introduces his own impalpable forces. I BREAK THE TREE depends for its kinematics on our beleif in the 'I' as a source of the necessary energies, in the pitch and contour of his actions. The agent must be grounded in some credible forcefulness, so fixed down and planted that his exertions can have direction outward and away from himself.,,, What makes the difference then, so articulates the sentence that it may move with purpose and effect along its own line, outward from the agent, the object, the lungs? it's continued momentum, it seems to me, past and round and athwart changes in course and direction, and the credible certainty of its starting point. The two depend inseperably on upon the other. The movement founds the origin and the origin impels the movement: equal and opposite reaction perhaps..

And if it needs no question how the rocks on the shore may allow us to push on them to start out to sea, how is the human agent so endowed, with the right to function as the noun (pro-noun) subject of the sentece (his own life)? "
 

luka

Well-known member
Leaving for a moment the form of the sentence, let us look more closely at thisquality of vividness in the structure of detached Chinese words. The earlier forms of these characters were pictorial, and their hold upon the imagination is little shaken, even in later conventional modifications. It is not so well known, perhaps, that the great number of these ideographic roots carry in them a verbal idea of action. It might be thought that a picture is naturally the picture of a thing, and that therefore the root ideas of Chinese are what grammar calls nouns.

But examination shows that a large number of the primitive Chinese characters,even the so-called radicals, are shorthand pictures of actions or processes.

For example, the ideograph meaning "to speak" is a mouth with two words and aflame coming out of it. The sign meaning "to grow up with difficulty" is grass with a twisted root. But this concrete verb quality, both in nature and in the Chinese signs, becomes far more striking and poetic when we pass from such simple, original pictures to compounds. In this process of compounding, two things added together do not produce a third thing but suggest some fundamental relation between them. For example, the ideograph for a "mess-mate" is a man and a fire.

A true noun, an isolated thing, does not exist in nature. Things are only the terminal points, or rather the meeting points of actions, cross-sections cut through actions, snap-shots. Neither can a pure verb, an abstract motion, be possible in nature. The eye sees noun and verb as one: things in motion, motionin things, and so the Chinese conception tends to represent them.

The sun underlying the bursting forth of plants = spring.

The sun sign tangled in the branches of the tree sign = east.

"Rice-field" plus "struggle" = male.

"Boat" plus "water," boat-water, a ripple
 

luka

Well-known member
of course. it's a good conversation. we are teaching the youth how to read. it's arduous work.
 

luka

Well-known member
The sentence form was forced upon primitive men by nature itself. It was not we who made it; it was a reflection of the temporal order in causation.

All truth has to be expressed in sentences because all truth is the transference of power. The type of sentence in nature is a flash of lightning. It passes between two terms, acloud and the earth. No unit of natural process can be less than this. All natural processes are, in their units, as much as this. Light, heat, gravity, chemical affinity, human will have this in common, that they redistribute force.

Their unit of process can be represented as:
term——transference——term
from——of——to
which——force——which
If we regard this transference as the conscious or unconscious act of an agent we can translate the diagram into:
agent——act——object

In this the act is the very substance of the fact denoted. The agent and the object are only limiting terms. It seems to me that the normal and typical sentence in English as well as in Chinese expresses just this unit of natural process. It consists of three necessary words; the first denoting the agent or subject from which the act starts; the second embodying the very stroke of the act; the third pointing to the object, the receiver of the impact. Thus: Farmer pounds rice.The form of the Chinese transitive sentence, and of the English (omitting particles) exactly corresponds to this universal form of action in nature. This brings language close to things, and in its strong reliance upon verbs it erects all speech into a kind of dramatic poetry.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
What is the purpose of the exercise? Everyone on Dissensus is already reading Prynne because of you, from what I can tell.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
This mass indoctrination of an entire message board to Prynne is probably one of the most impressive things you've achieved on here!
 

luka

Well-known member
it will pale into insignificance if i can get you, o.craner, to read a night square, the easiest prynne poem, typed out on page 44.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
It's a testament to your dominant personality, that you've convinced all of these people to part with their cash for the massive Bloodaxe Prynne. This big yellow tome landing with a thud on their doorsteps, to then sit on their bookshelves, persecuting them for the rest of their lives.
 
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