Adrian Buck > Recent Status Updates

"When we interpret the meaning and reference of a word or sentence, we produce something more, we produce something more than what a parrot produces...this is symbolic competence." - this relates so strongly to my own experience of learning and teaching language.

"Kids, trying to impress their friends...may repeat a technical phrase they have heard in conversation...Learning more and more...contexts [in which the phrase works] does not in itself constitute understanding the meaning. Yet when we know know what the phrase means, the problem of remembering all the applicable contexts becomes irrelevant, and innumerable novel contexts can be immediately recognised as appropriate.

"C.S.Pierce...an interpretant is what ever enables one to infer the reference from some sign or signs and their context...a mental image is only one sort...a word might bring to mind...a dictionary deginition, another word...or some behaviour...(65) Though we hestitate to call these interpretants "meanings" in the same sense as for common nouns and verbs, they are functionally equivalent."

"Some critical features that distinguish automatic (unintended) forms of communication from intentional communications are characteristic of laughter" - contagious, involuntary vs intentionality

"The human brain should reflect language in its architecture the way birds reflect aerodynamics of flight in the shape and movements of their wings." - (1) Feral children (2) we developed aerodynamics through building planes, and planes and birds don't fly the same way.

"When we strip away the complexity, only one significant difference between language and nonlanguage communication remains: the common, evetyday miracle of word meaning and reference".

"I don't think that children's grammatical abilities are the crucial mystery of language." - in the eye, Chomsky. Is Chomsky's mistake a Lockean mistake, an American mistake?

"Like entropy, [evolution] is a process of spreading out to whatever possibilities are unfilled and within reach of a little more variation" - I've always seen entropy and evolution as oposites.

"Biologically, we are just another ape. Mentally, we are a new phyllum of organisms" - Psychogenesis, cf Teilhard de Chardin

"My extravagant claim to know what other species know rests on evidence that symbolic thought does not come innately built in, but develops by internalizing the symbolic process that underlies language." - cf Chomsky

"Why are there no simple languages, with simple forms of nouns, verbs, and sentences?" - compared to Hungarian in this light, English is a simple language.

"Through American-centric applied sciences, I seek to present the secret of Victor Orbán's success" - he means through pop science and self-help books.

"...Fidesz, which reached 80% support among the youth in the 1990s and took this generation with them, broadening it with their parents and children." - first capture a generation, and then capture the state?

"In a world of mass communication, a politician must be able to sell himself. For this he needs skills that most liberal arts faculties do not teach" - its the sophists versus Socrates...again.

"This book is honest. I'm aware that my pointvof view is distorted. Every point of view is." - so impartiality is not a thing, then.

"[Opposition media and intellectuals] confuse prejudice with unbiased impartiality" - Does Hídvégi believe impartiality is a thing?

"...in reality Népszabadság wasn't closed by Viktor Orbán..." - another example of willing blindness, submission to his own biases, perhaps.

"Liberal intellectuals could not resolve the contradictions stemming from their biases, namely that Orbán does not use violence. Therefore, the focused on traits that outside the scope of abuse but are nevertheless indicative of dictatorship or of a mafia." - a very good call by Orbán, seeing as Hungarians have such a phobia against violence...They don't mind being stolen from, but they won't tolerate being beaten up

The founders of Fidesz were probably not atheists in the first place, they only wanted to live up to the expectations of the liberal intellectuals...." - I suppose that was a good a reason for lying about their faith as the next.

"By winning a landslide election, [Fidesz] will prevent the opposition from even being able to imagine a comeback" - i.e. there ever being a peaceful change of government

"Today's Hungarian state is based on Christian Democracy and not on liberal democracy. Yes to freedom, and no to liberalism." - and there was me thinking it was the liberalism that unwrote Freedom, democracy was just a way of peacefully changing the Government .

"Philosophers and intellectuals flooded the state television's morning show, where they argued that lie was the actual truth, just in the olden communist days" - I never saw state television at the time, and although Gyűrcsany admitted to lying (something a politician should never do) in the Őszöd speech, my colleagues seemed more upset by his obscene language - somewhat hypocritically, Hungarians love to swear.

"If the narrator assumes you are telling the truth, he will present your narrative differently than if he supposes you are a liar. Thus, news about you can be of two kinds: objective or biased journalism" - i.e. journalists who assume Orbán is telling the truth are objective; journalists who assume Orbán are biased. This book desperately needs an editor.

"I do not think for a minute such misreporting is intentional. It's just that we're strangerd."

"...there seemed to be every kind of community in the United States - Irish, Hispanic, German, Polish, Czech, Lithuanian and so on - but no British community. Where were the British-Americans?"

albescent = growing or shadig into white

"Children of Hyacinth's temperature don't know better as they grow older; they merely know more."

"To some people a restricted income doesn't matter a bit, in fact it often seems to help as a means for getting a lot of reality out of live" - yep, I'm thoroughly enjoying the 'cost of living crisis' as a teacher in Hungary. But suspect reality might begin to pall around February.

"Whosoever therefore out of a state of Nature unite into a Community, must be understood to give up all the Power, necessary to the ends for which they unite into Society, to the majority of the community, unless they expressly agreed in any number greater than the majority" - in Hungary 2/3rds.

"The only way whereby any one devests himself of his natural Liberty, and puts on the Bonds of civil Society is by agreeing with other Men to joyn and unite into a Community, for their comfortable, safe, and peaceable Living one amongst another, in a secure Enjoyment of their Properties, and a greater Security against any, that are not of it." - Locke tries to remind himself why men don't stalk the earth alone.