At 12:51 28/12/98 -0500, Paul Bartlett...you wrote:
>    I will not try to respond to all of Robin's post, but only to a
>few pieces.
>On Mon, 28 Dec 1998, Robin Gaskell wrote:
>
>    I don't recall that I have ever said that it is somehow -wrong- to
>use function words, only that they are sometimes unnecessary and may be
>somewhat confusing to someone whose native language does not use them
>excessively.
>   [  .........  ]
>:     My position has been that markers should be used only when
>: necessary for disambiguation.  However, I am open to it being
>: demonstrated that markers may be necessary more frequently than
>: I have hitherto thought.
>>I will allow myself to be convinced.  I just am not there yet.
>
*   Following from this, I must try to set up some instances of Glosa text
to show where function words are .. necessary; optional; and redundant.
 
>>    What is "body grammar",
>    An excellent question.  I have no idea what "body grammar" is.
>
>>[ . ] pleasing to the eye, and the meaning flows readily into your mind
>    What in heaven's name does it mean for a -hand- to know grammar?
*   Some people write entirely from their intellectual knowlege of usage,
and write each word consciously.  Other people open their mouths, and it is
as if a tap has been turned on: you might swear that hardly a word, that
came out, touched their consciousness.
    Have you ever seen a person writing quickly, in such a way that they
have not had time to think through every sentence to check that everything
agreed in number and person, but still .. miraculously, it fit together;
and, where the grammar was not of university standard, the whole passage
was better for it, poetically?   Maybe not.
    When a writer, or speaker, is ^hot^ the words seem to flow
automatically, and the expression might be described as more natural, as
well as more poetic.  Usually the force of emotion in such
"unintellectualised" communication is greateter than would be the case were
the utterer to agonise over the choice of every word and the balance of
every sentence.
    Saying that the hand and mouth knew grammar, I was trying to express
that much of our grammatical use of language comes from other parts of the
body, than the conscious brain.  And while this non-academic statement
might not be supported by reseach papers, it was bourne out during a
one-day writing school I attended two years ago.  We were instructed to
keep writing even though we didn't have time to stop and think: the
conscious mind, we were told, got in the way of direct expression.
Following these directions, participants come out with some very
emotionally charged writing - that their conscious mind would otherwise
have blocked or sanitised.
    How does our brain pick the word or phrase that sounds best?  Does it
analyse all of the possible combinations of similar-meaning words and
phrases, or does some ^magic^ occur, and the right-looking, right-sounding
words just appear?
    I guess I was expressing the 'wholist' view of grammar: while an
academic subset of writing style involves getting everything to fit a
text-book definition of grammar, a larger style-set involves the whole
person in the grammar equation, with sensations of eye, ear and emotion
also playing a part in an understanding of the 'rightness' of the utterance.
    In practical terms: my first attempts at writing The Three Bears in
Glosa were grammatically correct.  But they looked ugly, and sounded awful
when read out.  And, worse than that, my original meaning did not
immediately return to mind, as I read the grammatically correct sentences I
had created.  It was then that I realised I would have to ^play with^ the
Glosa words until they jostled themselves into the right positions, so that
eye and ear were also pleased with the result: I let my "body grammar" take
over!
 
>>       When you speak  [  ...  ] the words feel good in
>> their delivery,  [  ...  ] your mouth knows grammar.
>
>    And how does a mouth know grammar?  I really don't understand what
>you are trying to say with all of this.  It all seems rather woolly to
>me.
>
*   I am trying to say that there is a very important part of grammar that
is related to the body response to words, and that this has not been
considered by the academic grammarians.  While the delighting of ear and
eye might seem "woolly" by comparison with the mechanics of text-book
grammar, I hold that there is also a very logical set of rules that governs
our choice of words and phrases for the maximisation of their communicative
effect, and that these rules depend heavily on the overall shape and sound
of the sentence.
 
Saluta,
 Robin Gaskell
P.S.  When we create our conlangs, we might take such 'Rules of Pleasance'
into our calculations.
ROBIN GASKELL:  [log in to unmask]   Webpage: www.zeta.org.au/~rgaskell
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