Archive for the ‘Linguistic’ Category
A Pointer to a Hard-To-Find Book
Regarding the book, Advanced Language Patterns Mastery, by Larry McLauchlin: I tried to buy a copy of this book a few months ago and learned that the author had died and that his family had sold the rights to someone. They had no stock, and used copies are very difficult to find (and very expensive when one is for sale).
I have what may be good news. I just bought a copy from NLP Comprehensive’s online store. In an online chat with a CSR, I learned that they have more copies. $35 plus shipping.
The reason I say it may be good news is that I made the mistake of telling them how difficult it is to get copies of this book. The CSR, “Sharon”, said she’d have to check to make sure their stock was not “on hold for anybody”. So get Advanced Language Patterns Mastery while you can!
Ouch… Wait… What?
Read this headline from the Fox News Web site:
Skydiver Dies in Second Fatal Jump at Virginia Airport in 2 Months
Are you, like I was, wondering what happened to him in his first fatal jump? Or how he managed to make a second fatal jump?
I had to read the article to make sense of it.
I think they do that on purpose.
R. I. P., Linguist Edward Klima
If you or someone you care about is deaf, or if you love language, take note. This week’s edition of Randy Cassingham’s excellent newsletter, This Is True, reports the death of renowned linguist Edward Klima:
A linguist at the University of California, San Diego, Klima got interested in a languages that other linguists had dismissed because they were not spoken: sign languages used by the deaf. Signing was thought to be simple gesturing of spoken language concepts, but…
Read the rest at Edward Klima — an Honorary Unsubscribe, and read Edward Klima’s obituary in the New York Times.
Sentences saturated with similar sounds seem to stimulate synapses
Alliteration is the way English poetry used to be done. If you read Old English or Middle English poetry (even if you don’t understand it) you won’t find rhyming; you’ll find alliteration. If I recall correctly, rhyme didn’t come into English poetry until after the Norman Conquest.
I find alliteration to be rather hypnotic, and I’ve noticed Richard Bandler uses it sometimes in his presentations. (I’ve heard him use rhyme as well.) A recent bit of research, outlined at Cognitive Daily, indicates that it may stimulate memory as well:
Some scholars have suggested that alliteration makes a poem easier to remember: an important skill back in the days when books were so expensive that it might be cheaper to pay a bard to recite a poem than buy a written copy. But there has been little research about whether alliteration actually acts as a way to spur memory. More to the point, alliteration is rarely used throughout a poem: some of the words have to start with different letters. So alliteration might help you remember some of the poem, but it can’t help you remember the parts that aren’t alliterative. Or can it?
Go read more at Cognitive Daily: Alliteration improves memory performance
Previous posts of this particular persuasion:
Like him, love him, laugh at him, loathe him…
No matter what your response to Barack Obama, you’ve got to admire his amazing skill with language. His ability to stay both engaging and content-free is astounding.
Here’s a transcript of his convention address. I was just working through it. It’s got everything a hypnotist could want in a trance induction. I wish now that I’d watched it so I could experience his paraverbal and nonverbal stuff too.
(Edited to add: Bert Decker over at Create Your Communication has posted his critique of Obama’s presentation, and it’s worth a look.)
A wonderful toy for the verbivore: Visuwords™
This post from Dumb Little Man pointed me to this beautiful toy: Visuwords™ online graphical dictionary and thesaurus
Look up words to find their meanings and associations with other words and concepts. Produce diagrams reminiscent of a neural net. Learn how words associate.
Enter words into the search box to look them up or double-click a node to expand the tree. Click and drag the background to pan around and use the mouse wheel to zoom. Hover over nodes to see the definition and click and drag individual nodes to move them around to help clarify connections.
Go play!
Learn Ericksonian Language from a master
I got some great news from Doug O’Brien: he’s started a blog, and will be making regular posts on the subject of Ericksonian language patterns. Doug is an amazing trainer, and he’s sharing his expertise with the world for free!
Zebu Cards are Back!
We all got good news(letter) from Barb Stepp today: her company, Excellence Quest, has acquired the right to produce and distribute the famous Zebu Cards!
Brevity is the soul
As I read Randy Cassingham’s fantastic e-mail newsletter, This Is True, I was pleased to find that his “Bonzer Site of the Week” for this week is One Sentence: True stories, told in one sentence.
To be concise
The Copyblogger blog recently held a contest:
Just to review, the idea behind the Twitter Writing Contest was simple… compose a story in exactly 140 characters and post it on Twitter. I want to thank everyone who participated, because there are a ton of talented writers out there even at 140 characters.
Ernest Hemingway, in response to a similar challenge, once wrote a story in six words: “For sale: baby shoes. Never worn.” I think that is the ultimate short story, but the winners of the Twitter Writing Contest did really well too. 