Ritual, Ideas, Relativity: How grammar got there before Einstein.

 
        
       There is an idea that human culture first started with ritual. That repeated actions, given a sacred importance, allowed groups of our ancestors to bind themselves together in ways beyond the fundamental instinctive ties of family and friends.
       The language of a particular culture acts in the same way, allowing us a common bond that helps organise a society. The grammar of any particular language is recognised and mutally accepted by speakers and used in a ritualistic way. You only have to observe the common reactions of speakers to anyone uttering the wrong incantation, anyone getting the steps wrong, anyone  not exhibiting the necessary reverance, in order to get a sense of its  importance in group cohesion.
       

       But hold on...
       Grammar: Exactly what kind of beast is it? 

                          

        There are a number of definitions of grammar, including:

       the whole system and structure of a language or of languages in general

     the system of rules that governs how a natural language is structured and used,

     the study of the classes of words, their inflections, and their functions and relations in the sentence 

       
        So, grammar, like any information, has more than one idea. Let's try to get a clearer idea of the creature we are trying to observe...

        Etymologically, grammar has its roots in magic, indicating the grimoire of the wizard and the glamour of the witch*. Along with other words like spell, chant, and curse, we can get an idea of how the concepts of language and magic have always been simmering together in the same cauldron. 
         And this is not just in English. In traditional Indian cosmology, Sanskrit is the language of the gods, representing a great and powerful magic that those who work with it can tap into*, and In Japanese, there are obvious connections between （ma-hou) 魔法 (magic), (bun-pou) 文法、(grammar）、 and (jyu-mon) 呪文, (curse) illustrating how an adept can use these powerful tools if they understand the way they work...,

       
         So how can we understand how grammar works? Here is one classic example, that, much like its origin, is not as popular as it was a half a century ago...

        Captain Kirk's famous utterance "to boldly go" has often been cited as a "split infinitive" (like: "to slowly eat") which was considered by many experts to be bad grammar, something wrong. The sensible reaction of: I understand it perfectly, what's the problem?  (allied with the demonstrable fact that the idea is perfectly clear) illustrates the two basic ideas of grammar: prescriptive grammar, where there are rules to be followed, and descriptive grammar, where grammar is instinctive and serves the purposes of the Fundamental Organic Process of communication.

        In any human endeavour, there are two basic formats that our brains take care about. The first, most basic and most important, is the instinctive way that something works. Almost anyone can kick a football, slide downhill on skis, or breathe by themselves, however with some elementary knowledge of how these things work, and practice of the necessary basic skills, we can improve.
        The second format involves style. As there is no avoiding our fundamental animal communication that responds so strongly to appearance, so much so that a fancy hat  can often work better than a helmet in deflecting an awful lot of questions.



    Anyone wearing a hat like that has to know what they are talking about...
.........you there! Don't even think about splitting an infinitive! Why? Because I said so!

      (The idea of the split infinitive being wrong stems from grammarians hundreds of years ago trying to force rules of Latin onto English. It was taught as standard for over a hundred years. Obviously, by the time the 23rd century rolls around, we will have a more sensible view of grammar...)

        Ignoring all the dusty tomes written by self-important meisters, and instead looking at  grammar in terms of its most basic conjurations, offers us the chance to catch glimpses of basic building blocks that are often obscured by capacious fancy hats. If grammar is basically the way a language works then it must follow the Fundamental Organic Process of communication: Information -----> idea, which, as it is also the FOP of the brain, also suggests that grammar actually is as has long been suggested, universal .

       So what evidence would there be for this, erm, universal grammar?

       One example we might consider is languages' response to the universal question of        where?
       Looking at the information of prepositions (in/on/at etc), what idea(s) do they give?
         Prepositions basically work like this:
         
          in (something)/on (something)/at (something). 

         So: 

           in a park/ on a table / at school

          But, hang on, also:

           in a minute / on Wednesday / at 6 pm....

           What might be the connection?
Well, the general theory of relativity as developed by Einstein (and then further developed by a bloke called Hermann Minkowski who doesn't get the credit he deserves) suggests that space and time are essentially bound together, and for the purposes of relativity best described as one entity: spacetime.

         So, we can observe In terms of fundamental grammar:
     

        (somewhere) -----------------------------------> in a park 

         (sometime) -------------------------------------> in a day

          We describe both space  (somewhere) and time (sometime) in the same basic way!

     But hold on, let's check...is this just English?　How about in French?

          (quelque part)  -----------------------------------> dans un parc

          (quelque temps)  ------------------------------------> dans une journée 

     How about  in Japanese？

           (どこか) -----------------------------------> 公園に

            (いつか) ------------------------------->  一朝一夕に

　Ok, now let’s check a language I have no knowledge of, say, Swahili:

          (mahali fulani)  -------------------------------->   Katika siku moja

           (wakati fulani)  -------------------------------->   Katika bustani 


          It does seem as though there is, pre-set, an acknowledgement in the human brain that space and time have a special relationship. It seems as though modern physics has caught up with something we always knew instinctively...

         The whole system and structure of a language or of languages in general

          as noted previously, the Fundamental Organic Process of communication ensures that any information can have more than one idea, the grammar of language helps make the connected idea(s) clearer.

        In English, if we have only the information of "dog" it is unclear whether we are talking about an animal or bothering someone. Given some grammar, which necessarily includes the matrix of connections between information and idea that is context, the connected idea(s) can be brought more sharply into focus:

         a dog ---------------------------------------------> an animal

　　although, without any more context, it could possibly be a hot dog+, or a bad car#

         dogged by autograph hunters -------------> a star**'s experience

          Grammar also offers a hand in distinguishing the general from the specific, a sorting             process vital for understanding the world around us.:

           a dog or dogs   vs.  the dog, the dogs, my dog(s), this dog, these dogs etc.,

           Grammar conjures ideas of when?:

          (do something)       ---------------------------------------->   (usually)
           (did something)     ---------------------------------------->   (in the past)
          (doing something) ----------------------------------------> (now/in the future)
           (done something) ---------------------------------------->  (in the past and the result of the                                                                                                                          action is now)
           Gives weight to the laws of whose?:
            my/hers/The King's

           helps explain: why?
             because/as/for

             and: how?
              by (vehicle)/with (a tool)/slowly/

           as well as acting as the social glue by allowing the awarding of points for style:

           Can I go to the toilet?   ----------------------------------------> I don't know, can you?

            To whom am I speaking? ---------------------------------------->  Oooooh, posh!

            10 items or less            ---------------------------------------->      fewer!

             
             Grammar then, is used to clarify ideas or add dressing to social ritual. It offers power when we wish to describe and explain the universe and all the things in it, whilst offering a reflection of the way that universe most basically works. 
             It also offers  ways to bring back the dead and conjure waking dreams.

            Ritual, ideas, relativity.
            Foresight, minds  wide, magic imagery.

   

Erm, so...how does language fundamentally work? - -----------------------------> Fuck all that we've gotta get on with these!

 

                                             Judge Dredd might not know a lot about art, 
                                             but he knows what he doesn't like.

           I recently disturbed a sett of linguists by suggesting that work done in linguistics tends to ignore the fundamental way that language works. Rather than respond to the idea by explaining where I was going wrong, the response I received contained the classic retort: Who do you think you are?


　　 Because our fundamental response to everything is emotional, novel ideas can, simply by their suggestion, elicit the normal actions of bewilderment, anger, and rage, triggered by the emotional reaction of fear.
           
            Fear of what, though? Fear of music? A black planet? or fear itself?  Interestingly enough, the response above was actually more positive than the Reddit Linguistics site, which got its knickers in a twist about the following question I asked:
 As we can describe the fundamental organic process of communication as: information -----> idea (where information is anything that exists or can be imagined, and idea is any information that is connected to, or can be connected to, the first information), would it not be useful to see this process as the fundamental process of language?... and actually banned me (from asking questions!)


            In the history of our (or indeed any) species, it has obviously been useful for us to develop a sense of caution, to be wary of the sudden unexpected noise, the stranger, the novel idea.
            There is nothing wrong with this fundamental instinctual action of the human nervous system, as it is a necessary process of protection. What is a problem, is that because the fundamental skill necessary to understand anything better  (asking and checking) is not formally encouraged by the general culture or education specifically, we tend not to see its vital importance in getting beyond our most basic process, our inner chimp, to the possibilities offered by that instinctual skill, the skill that has enabled us to achieve everything we have. In fact, because the fundamental nature of the process, and the  importance of asking and checking in cognition/intelligence/communication/language is so unacknowledged, the mere suggestion that these things might actually be useful and important can elicit strong emotional reponses, anger that comes from fear. 

                                                          "Who do you think you are? "

            

        I am not demanding that everybody has to agree with all, or indeed any, of my ideas. The point is that, before there is any actual engagement with these ideas, people's nervous system is trying to protect them from the possible danger of tall, dark, unusual strangers knocking at the door, holding a mysterious tray with a cloche! 

        And, as we are all encouraged to invest in a culture that ascribes zero formal value to the instinctual skill that is the foundational tool for understanding things better, it is predictable that any mention of this skill will often make people uncomfortable, fuelling a strong desire to dismiss the very notion without further discussion. On more than one occasion, my attempts to suggest that the Fundamental Organic Process of communication is, in many ways, a better model of communication than others has been met by the same remark, used as a refusal to consider the matter:

   
        "I think if we understood how communication worked we would lose the magic"

         Let us consider this statement. 

          Anybody who is at all serious about studying any subject should want to know how it works. For example: Medicine, or engineering, ; would we want our doctors to offer to psychically remove tumors? Our engineers to insist that every new bridge's most important feature is that a small child is entombed, alive, in the foundations? So why should communication be the one area that we cannot shine a light on to get a better look at it?

          Of course, it is worth mentioning that, whether you are Alisteir Crowley, John Constantine, or Paul Daniels,  and actually dealing professionally with magic, you naturally want to know how the fucking thing works.

         Also, sensibly, you wouldn't just stick with the first ideas you find, but rather you would be open to new ones. There is an obvious reason why professional magicians join the Magic Circle, why Harry Potter went to Hogworts.
   
         If you understand better how magic works, you can have better and more magic.

         Who wouldn't want that?

         

         It is not difficult to understand how anyone who has been successful in a culture which is largely built on the inihibition of communication will feel personally attacked by the suggestion that something so simple as how communication most basically works, together with its fundamental skills, is invisible to them. The elephant not in the room. 

       But all of this has serious consequences. As we have insisted on corraling our most natural attributes, pumping them full of antibiotics and not allowing them to roam freely,  some of the most mishapen and mutated progeny of this artificail environment have been growing ever stronger, and stranger; converging as we enter the 2nd quarter of the 21st century.
The freest society on Earth, the United States of America, has seen fit to elect Donald Trump (for the 2nd time!) as the best person to lead the country. That is not the result of a culture that is asking and checking.
       On X, his own medium, Charles Foster Kane  Elon Musk, the world's richest man, is busy telling us how we will have no need of money in the glorious utopian future that will be built by the products of his company. How this will work is not explained, and few questions are asked.
        And, the so-called AI programs, the LLMs, designed largely on concepts of communication/language developed from work done in IT, lack the basic architecture for asking and checking, the foundational skill of intelligence.

        The way that communication fundamentally works is the way that intelligence fundamentally works.

        "I think if we understood how communication works we would lose the magic"

      
           As the man himself once said:
     "I'll tell you the ultimate secret of magic. Any cunt could do it."

       Notice that "could". We could but we don't. And the general culture encourages us to keep it that way. 

         Erm, so...how does language/magic fundamentally work? - ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------> Fuck all that we've gotta get on with these!

They go to sea in a Sieve.

The Humbees (with apologies to Edward Lear)

       

I

 

They go to sea in a Sieve, they do,

   In a Sieve they go to sea:

In spite of all their world could say,

On a winter’s morn, on a stormy day,

   In a Sieve they go to sea!

And when the Sieve turns round and round,

And few people cried, ‘You’ll all be drowned!’

They call aloud, ‘Our Sieve ain’t big,

But we don’t care a button! we don’t care a fig!

   In a Sieve we’ll go to sea!’

      Here and on, Here and on,
       Are the lands where the Humbees live 

        Their eyes are down and their heads are gone

       And they go to sea in a Sieve.

 

II

 

They sail away in a Sieve, they do,

   In a Sieve they sail so fast,

With only a beautiful national veil

Tied with a mirror by way of a sail,

   To a small endorphing mast;

And very few said, who saw them go,

‘O won’t they be soon upset, you know!

For the sky is dark, and the voyage is long,

And happen what may, it’s extremely wrong

   In a Sieve to sail so fast!’

       Here and on, Here and on,

       Are the lands where the Humbees live

   Their eyes are down and their heads are gone,

         And they go to sea in a Sieve.

 

 

III

 

The water it soon comes in, it does,

   The water it soon comes in;

So to keep them dry, they wrap their feet

In a holy paper all folded neat,

   And they fasten it down with a spin.

And they passed the night in a fuckery-jar,

And each of them says, ‘How wise we are!

Though the sky be dark, and the voyage be long,

Yet we never can think we were rash or wrong,

   While around in our Sieve we grin!’

       Here and on, Here and on,

       Are the lands where the Humbees live

   Their eyes are down and their heads are gone,

         And they go to sea in a Sieve.

 

 

IV

 

And all night long they sail away;

   And when the sun goes down,

They whistle and warble a boring song

To a humming mound of alg'rithmic pong,

   In the shade of the mountains brawn.

‘O ! How happy we are,

When we live in a sieve and a fuckery-jar,

And all night long we gyre and gimble,

We sail away with a collective symbol,

   In the shade of the mountains brawn!’

       Here and on, Here and on,

       Are the lands where the Humbees live

   Their eyes are down and their heads are gone,

         And they go to sea in a Sieve.

 

 

V

 

They sailed to the Western Sea, they did,

   To a land all covered with trees,

And they bought an 'Orse, and a useful Book,

And a pound of Flesh, and a Butcher's Hook,

   And a hive of puritan Bees.

And they bought a Dog, and an empty cup,

And a scary Monkey that'll cut you up,

And forty bottles of Scottish Mist,

   And no end of Hollywood Cheese.

       Here and on, Here and on,

       Are the lands where the Humbees live

   Their eyes are down and their heads are gone,

         And they go to sea in a Sieve.

 

 

VI

 

And twelve thousand years they all look back,

   In twelve thousand years or more,

And very few say, ‘How small we’ve grown!’

For we’ve been to the Fakes, and the Torrible Zone,

   And the hills of the Chunt'ring Bore;

And we drink our health, and prepare a feast

Of dumplings made of infected yeast;

And everyone says, ‘If we only live,

We too will go to sea in a Sieve,—

   To the hills of the Chunt'ring Bore!’

       Here and on, Here and on,

       Are the lands where the Humbees live

   Their eyes are down and their heads are gone,

         And they go to sea in a Sieve.