Grammar is supposedly a holistic account of how meaning is expressed by using words in categories and in sequences. It is supposed to be a meld of syntax and semantics. Unfortunately, most writers on grammar focus on the syntax to the exclusion of the semantics. For me, that is like focusing on a carrier wave to the exclusion of the superimposed signal.

Spoken language is meaning conveyed by the modulation of a sound signal. It is not the modulation, but the meaning that is master.


'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.'


'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you CAN make words mean so many different things.'

Natural wood, with its unique grain patterns, is what gives traditional acoustic instruments warm and distinctive sounds, while the power of modern electronic processing provides an unlimited degree of control to manipulate the characteristics of an instrument's sound. Now, a guitar built by a student at MIT's Media Lab promises to provide the best of both worlds.

A new Hubble image shows three galaxies locked in a gravitational tug-of-war that may result in the eventual demise of one of them.

About 100 million light-years away, in the constellation of Piscis Austrinus (the Southern Fish), three galaxies are playing a game of gravitational give-and-take that might ultimately lead to their merger into one enormous entity. A new image from the Advanced Camera for Surveys on the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope allows astronomers to view the movement of gases from galaxy to galaxy, revealing the intricate interplay among them. 

Gifted youths already know what they want to be when they grow up - in a lot of cases it's applied sciences, but when they are asked why they made their choices, they are not able to explain.

A study surveyed 800 gifted and non-gifted high-school students and examined the differences in self-concept and other psychological variables between the two groups. The study also observed the ways in which maturing gifted students form their identity. The results showed that while gifted youths have higher self-esteem in their educational achievements, they have lower self-esteem in social and physical aspects.

In a study in the latest issue of European Journal of Neuroscience, an interdisciplinary Northwestern research team says they have found biological evidence that musical training enhances an individual's ability to recognize emotion in sound. 

The study found that the more years of musical experience musicians possessed and the earlier the age they began their music studies also increased their nervous systems' abilities to process emotion in sound.

Despite the increased popularity of geek culture – movies based on comic books, videogames, virtual worlds – and the ubiquity of computers, the geek's close cousin, the nerd, still suffers from a negative stereotype in popular culture. This may help explain why women and minorities are increasingly shying away from careers in information technology, says Lori Kendall, a professor in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The popular stereotype of the nerd as the sartorially challenged, anti-social white male hasn't faded from our collective cultural consciousness, and is more prevalent than ever as a stock character in television shows, movies and advertisements.

The helpless behavior that is commonly linked to depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is preceded by stress-related losses of synapses—microscopic connections between brain cells—in the brain’s hippocampal region, researchers at Yale School of Medicine report in Biological Psychiatry. 
 
The team used a six-day treatment with the antidepressant desipramine to reverse helpless behavior and restore hippocampal synapses in rats. 
 

Economics is always called the dismal science, because it has science pretensions yet never makes accurate predictions.   The outlook, according to economists, is always rather bleak.

But given the current state of the economy, economists are downright ecstatic, because they can be relevant again.  And, in this case, it turns out they are a lot more optimistic than unemployed people are about the future.

You know when economists are cheery things must be pretty bad.   

The hot buzz word in the health care reform sector is "comparative effectivness research," and the lay press is picking up on the partisan rumblings in Washington over this provision in the recent stimulus legislation. But what is CE research, and why should we care about the minutiae involved in the bickering of a bunch of Washington politicians?

In fact, we should care very much, as it could change the way physicians practice medicine and consumers use health care.

It’s been a while since Popeye taught us to eat our spinach; vegetables are due for a makeover.  “Whatever sparks their imagination seems to spark their appetite,” says Cornell researcher Colin Payne of a new study led by Brian Wansink of Cornell’s Food and Branding lab.  This research shows that children eat significantly more vegetables when their food has been excitingly renamed.