Parable (parabolic)

Dear Linguistics Students & Colleagues
Across the Curriculum (Toward
Boundaries Yet Unknown Series)


WORD
 
           A verbal sign.
 A piece of significance, yes?
A bit,  a bite, a unit of “meaning.”
    It’s got to be  discreet :
   a chunk and not a blob.
 Can’t ooooooze or bleed.
 
Every word  in this here sentence
has a beginning, middle, end-of-it’s
own.    Discreet.  Linear.
 
Is /un/ a word?  /dis/ /’s/  /ing/
      /re/ /ed/ /er/  /est/? 
 
No, but each item signals significance,
yes? Like verbal traffic signals—they
FUNCTION.
 
They are called morphemes: a smallest
     unit of linguistic significance:
an un-split-able atom of “meaning.”
 
              Un-split-able:
 
3 morphemes comprising one  word. 
 
“Split” is a “free” morpheme. /un/ and  /able/
are  “bound” morphemes or affixes.
 
free/bound distinction:-- pretty basic and
fundamental, the distinction between
     FREE and NOT-FREE (bound)
 
“free” can stand  by itself: any morph (word)
that is independent is free. Most words are. 


       “bound” has to  be hooked up
   before,  in the middle, or at the end
of a free   morph—unthinkable, ex -change…]
 
Here is a “mental” (as opposed to a political)
hierarchy:                                              
                                     Sentences 
                              Phrases
                     Words
            Morphemes
Sound Units    
 
ImaginethatIamtalkingtoyourightnow :
youarehearingalinearandsequential
treamfsoundwhichyouunconsciously
breakintodiscrete units and combine
almost simultaneously: cutting and
splicing as  expertly as skiing powder:
an airstream sonic flow that a foreigner
would hear as an ongoing more & less
continuum.
 
POINT: if you have ears, you are receiving
 
1) a binary linear digital sequence of signal
     coming to you on the one hand  In
               TIME-SPACE
      a “bottom” line of off/on’s
               (noise/no-noise)
      
2) atthesametime you are processing the
sequence with an  “e-ternary” hierarchical
mental organizing system  going-on
simultaneously  to receive & construct
and construe in non-linear, non-sequential
ways so as to Make Meaning.
 
Awesome
     
Consider this structure:
 
                  e-ternary                                                   
         simultaneous allatonce                  
 
                       y ternary
     
              x           binary             z                                               
 
e-ternary: the mental realm of rule existing
all-at-once “inside” your  deep grammatical
“head.”
 
termary : triadic structures (y) of  
        relationships & ratios  between
 
binary:  the (x & z)  various   this’s and that’s’,    
figures & backgrounds,  0’s/ 1’s that  constitute
perception.
 
Ok: pretty abstract. A way of talking is all.
 
Linguistics is always merely a mapping of a
territory that is way beyond its efforts to represent.
Take IT as something like Santa Clause—to a
young child: a way of talking about “Christmas.”
 
All disciplines—the same:  Santa Clausing the
 “world” of human experience.    If you don’t
like that IDEA—ignore it.