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Post by basser on Feb 4, 2020 4:01:09 GMT
True facts tho I went back to school to study quantum and atomic physics out of a desire to understand how reality works and I graduated having learned that literally no one has any clue what's going on and our current model's track record of incredible predictive ability is frankly more concerning than anything.
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QuotePilgrim
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Post by QuotePilgrim on Feb 4, 2020 4:18:05 GMT
Zimmy's always been my favorite character. Amazingly, this page makes me like her even more.
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Post by saardvark on Feb 4, 2020 4:35:49 GMT
True facts tho I went back to school to study quantum and atomic physics out of a desire to understand how reality works and I graduated having learned that literally no one has any clue what's going on and our current model's track record of incredible predictive ability is frankly more concerning than anything. you mean, like how there are very good mathematical models for phenomena, but when you ask, what some things in the model really mean *physically* (eg, a wave function), things get rather vague? Yeah, quantum physics is like that; messes with your mind. |
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Post by Zox Tomana on Feb 4, 2020 5:08:53 GMT
You did indeed! Was it worth it? ;P |
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Post by Gemini Jim on Feb 4, 2020 7:37:27 GMT
The funny thing about the whole "double negative" thing is that it does make sense in Spanish.
"Yo no se nada" translates as "I don't know nothing," which is a double negative. Yet it is considered proper, standard grammar in Spanish. I don't know if double negatives are a thing in Polish.
For what it is worth, I do think that there is value in standardized English grammar. While Zimmy's grammar is not "wrong" - it is intelligible - it is certainly incorrect.
It is like grabbing a soccer ball with your hands and throwing it into the net. Or building a structure out of loose bricks without any mortar.
Authors have long used slang, pidgin and dialects to help differentiate characters by region or class. So it doesn't bug me.
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Post by Gemini Jim on Feb 4, 2020 7:58:33 GMT
BTW, I assume that there's more to Zimmy's story than just magic semantics.
Science has a bad habit of exposing myths and ancient beliefs.
The Gunnerkrigg universe has an actual, factual god (dead or alive) in the woods.
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Post by migrantworker on Feb 4, 2020 8:53:12 GMT
I don't know if double negatives are a thing in Polish. Yup - we use them without a second thought. The equivalent sentence in Polish would be 'Nic nie wiem', where 'nic' means 'nothing' and 'nie' means 'no'. If you skip the 'nie' bit, you end up with a passive-aggressive way of saying that you do in fact know something. |
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Post by fia on Feb 4, 2020 14:08:54 GMT
other theory: maybe Zimmy subscribes to the "it's all a great unknown, but it doesn't mean it's all magic because it's unknown" angle. We are but mere mortals, how could we know the workings of the universe or expect that it would be put in a way people can understand? Doesn't mean it's magic.
Anyway. I've been thinking about this one Zimmy line for too long. It's still too vague to be interpretable. I hope she says something helpful tomorrow.
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Post by Gemini Jim on Feb 4, 2020 18:08:33 GMT
If you eliminate the idea of studying, testing or organizing magic in a scientific way, and you reject the idea of magic for magic's sake, what's left?
I suppose Zimmy could be devout Catholic or some other mystery-heavy religion. It's not magic, it's a miracle. (I hope not, but it would be funny.)
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Post by imaginaryfriend on Feb 4, 2020 18:52:02 GMT
Well, Zimmy seems to be dividing things into "things [Zimmy] can see" and "things [Zimmy] can't see" and takes the irrational/absurd as par for the course, and is tormented by her own existence so... existentialism?True facts tho I went back to school to study quantum and atomic physics out of a desire to understand how reality works and I graduated having learned that literally no one has any clue what's going on and our current model's track record of incredible predictive ability is frankly more concerning than anything. I think it's easier if you give up the idea of some things as things and consider them potential things or emergent things. |
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Post by mturtle7 on Feb 4, 2020 21:07:08 GMT
What makes you think Zimmy does not know Kat's name? She simply seems reluctant to use it, opting for 'your friend' instead. (She may be referring to someone else, but I'm not sure who. Jack?) She just knows Annie a lot better than she knows Kat, so she thinks of Kat as "that friend of Carver's who's into science and all that stuff". If you're talking about a friend of a friend, it seems pretty natural to refer to them indirectly. |
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QuotePilgrim
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Post by QuotePilgrim on Feb 5, 2020 3:18:30 GMT
The funny thing about the whole "double negative" thing is that it does make sense in Spanish. "Yo no se nada" translates as "I don't know nothing," which is a double negative. Yet it is considered proper, standard grammar in Spanish. I don't know if double negatives are a thing in Polish. For what it is worth, I do think that there is value in standardized English grammar. While Zimmy's grammar is not "wrong" - it is intelligible - it is certainly incorrect. It is like grabbing a soccer ball with your hands and throwing it into the net. Or building a structure out of loose bricks without any mortar. Authors have long used slang, pidgin and dialects to help differentiate characters by region or class. So it doesn't bug me. That sentence in Spanish is absolutely not a double negative, though. Yes, it seems like it is if you don't know the language's grammar in depth, and especially if you try to translate the sentence "literally" to English (the correct, literal translation is "I don't know anything", even if "nada" supposedly means "nothing"). My native language is Portuguese, which is very closely-related to Spanish, and I can 100% guarantee you "eu não sei de nada" is not a double negative in Portuguese, and as someone who also speaks Spanish -- albeit poorly -- I am sure this is also the case for that language.
The thing is that "nada" is not a negative adverb. There is no negative in the sentence "yo sé nada" (or "eu sei de nada" in Portuguese), even if the word "nada" implies one semantically, so you need to add a negative adverb to make it a proper negative sentence, otherwise it is an affirmative. When you say "yo sé nada" you are not negating anything, but rather affirming that you know something, and that something is "nada"; this results in an ungrammatical sentence.
It is easy to assume that "nada" in Spanish or Portuguese is equivalent to "nothing" in English, but that is not at all the case. It behaves differently in different contexts and, to reiterate, in a sentence like "no sé nada"/"não sei de nada", it means "anything", not "nothing". The sentence "I don't know nothing" is an incorrect translation which does not reflect what the language's grammar is doing.
If you still doubt me, here's a list of all the negative adverbs in Spanish: "no", "tampoco", "jamás", "nunca". Any sentence that does not use one of these is an affirmative sentence.
And there's a nice way to illustrate this in English, too. Take the word "impossible", which means, of course, "not possible". Does "this is not impossible" contain a double negative?
EDIT: Even better, in the phrase "you don't know jack", "jack" is synonymous with "nothing". You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone trying to argue that this is a double negative.
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Post by Runningflame on Feb 5, 2020 4:21:30 GMT
The discussion reminded me of a scene in a children's fantasy I was writing some years ago (I laid it aside because I couldn't find a publisher for it, and have turned to other projects at present) where one of the characters says she's never liked the word "magic" because it means too many things - everything from stage tricks to "strange abilities in fairy-tales" - and is thus too vague for her tastes. Reminds me of Tolkien! This is what your folk would call magic, I believe; though I do not understand clearly what they mean; and they seem also to use the same word of the deceits of the Enemy. But this, if you will, is the magic of Galadriel. Did you not say that you wished to see Elf-magic? With his period of alchemical drinking of mercury and lead, Newton was certainly open to experimentation outside of convention. Coincidentally, I believe they even found Antimony in his remains. Huhh??! What was she doing there? |
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Post by Runningflame on Feb 5, 2020 5:12:33 GMT
The funny thing about the whole "double negative" thing is that it does make sense in Spanish. "Yo no se nada" translates as "I don't know nothing," which is a double negative. Yet it is considered proper, standard grammar in Spanish. I don't know if double negatives are a thing in Polish. For what it is worth, I do think that there is value in standardized English grammar. While Zimmy's grammar is not "wrong" - it is intelligible - it is certainly incorrect. It is like grabbing a soccer ball with your hands and throwing it into the net. Or building a structure out of loose bricks without any mortar. Authors have long used slang, pidgin and dialects to help differentiate characters by region or class. So it doesn't bug me. That sentence in Spanish is absolutely not a double negative, though. Yes, it seems like it is if you don't know the language's grammar in depth, and especially if you try to translate the sentence "literally" to English (the correct, literal translation is "I don't know anything", even if "nada" supposedly means "nothing"). My native languange is Portuguese, which is very closely-related to Spanish, and I can 100% guarantee you "eu não sei de nada" is not a double negative in Portuguese, and as someone who also speaks Spanish -- albeit poorly -- I am sure this is also the case for that language.
The thing is that "nada" is not a negative adverb. There is no negative in the sentence "yo sé nada" (or "eu sei de nada" in Portuguese), even if the word "nada" implies one semantically, so you need to add a negative adverb to make it a proper negative sentence, otherwise it is an affirmative. When you say "yo sé nada" you are not negating anything, but rather affirming that you know something, and that something is "nada"; this results in an ungrammatical sentence.
It is easy to assume that "nada" in Spanish or Portuguese is equivalent to "nothing" in English, but that is not at all the case. It behaves differently in different contexts and, to reiterate, in a sentence like "no sé nada"/"não sei de nada", it means "anything", not "nothing". The sentence "I don't know nothing" is an incorrect translation which does not reflect what the language's grammar is doing.
If you still doubt me, here's a list of all the negative adverbs in Spanish: "no", "tampoco", "jamás", "nunca". Any sentence that does not use one of these is an affirmative sentence.
And there's a nice way to illustrate this in English, too. Take the word "impossible", which means, of course, "not possible". Does "this is not impossible" contain a double negative?
EDIT: Even better, in the phrase "you don't know jack", "jack" is synonymous with "nothing". You'd be hard-pressed to find anyone trying to argue that this is a double negative.
Disclaimer: I'm fascinated by linguistics, but I don't know a lot about Spanish or Portuguese grammar specifically. Based on your description, "nada" sounds like a negative polarity indefinite pronoun: it can only be used in a sentence that's already negated. (Maybe it has other uses I'm not aware of, though.) The English word "anything" in a sentence like "I don't know anything" is also a negative polarity indefinite pronoun. Interestingly, the etymology of "nada" doesn't have anything to do with negation: Etymonline says it's from a Latin phrase "res nata," meaning "a small or insignificant thing," literally "a thing born" (!). This doesn't necessarily mean it wouldn't be considered a negative word, though. (How's that for a two-negative sentence?) French "pas" originally meant "a step," and yet it's now one of the language's main ways to negate a sentence. Finally, as to the question of whether Spanish and Portuguese have double negatives, it may depend on how you define terms, but Wikipedia says that both are languages with "negative concord," which it defines as "multiple negatives affirm[ing] each other" rather than canceling each other out. It gives the Portuguese example "Não vejo nada" as a sentence with "doubled negative correlatives," which I think means that the pair of words "não... nada" are considered to negate the verb, rather than either of them alone. So it seems that Wikipedia considers "nada" ( in this context, anyway) to be a negative word and therefore "não... nada" to be a double negative. Of course, any hint of the pejorative sense that the term has in English grammar is inappropriate with respect to other languages. (Then too, I think that double negatives shouldn't be stigmatized in English either. If Chaucer and Shakespeare used 'em--and boy, did they ever--then nobody can't say they're wrong for the rest of us. As with most English hypercorrections, the "rule" probably developed because "Latin doesn't do it that way." The grammarians conveniently ignored the fact that Ancient Greek could use double negatives for emphasis without batting an eye. One of my favorite biblical examples is 1 John 1:5, "God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all." In Greek, ὁ θεὸς φῶς ἐστιν καὶ σκοτία ἐν αὐτῷ οὐκ ἔστιν οὐδεμία, where οὐκ means "not" and οὐδεμία means "nothing." Maybe it could be rendered, "and there ain't no darkness in him!") |
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Post by Deleted on Feb 5, 2020 8:37:33 GMT
Theory: maybe Zimmy knows that all this psychological stuff is a force in the universe, but it can't be 'directly observed', because it is the act of observation itself that distorts? That starts to sound like Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, which arises from the fact that on the quantum level, observing something cant help but change it. The uncertainty principle is not the observer effect, and applies whether or not the observables have been measured. In fact, it arises from the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality. It prescribes that for any observables A and B, the product of their variances is greater than or equal to (1/(2i) * <[^A; ^B]>)^2 (where <z> denotes the expectation value of z, e: "messageboards need inline LaTeX", or rather it's a bit disappointing (to vanity) that they mostly don't). Since [^x; ^p] = iħ, the product of the standard deviation of location and momentum is at least ħ/2, and this special case is known as Heisenberg's uncertainty. e: Good philosophy may well have arisen from quantum mechanics (I hear that Bohr gave it much effort). I'm not familiar. I have no idea whether the uncertainty principle touches on "human-scope" epistemology at all. A lot of nonsense can be spun, though, in any field, by taking theorems expressed in technical English terms, code-switching to their laic meaning, and (usually) making wild inferences from there. Lacan's hilariously misguided claim that "the imaginary unit is an irrational number" falls under this, for instance, and I believe that such malpractice (does anyone in the field even take Lacan seriously?) largely fuels the distrust physicists may harbour for philosophy (or other liberal arts) that fia has mentioned. But my respect to anyone who can, even if just to themselves, provide a convincing answer to a question such as "how shall I live?" -- To end this on a second conciliatory note, I'm not too fond of Chomsky as a philosopher, but the Chomsky hierarchy is quite useful in formal language and automata theory -- "cross-pollination" can happen, but does not seem to be methodological when it does occur -- it's all math always, it seems to me. |
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Post by todd on Feb 5, 2020 12:37:28 GMT
The discussion reminded me of a scene in a children's fantasy I was writing some years ago (I laid it aside because I couldn't find a publisher for it, and have turned to other projects at present) where one of the characters says she's never liked the word "magic" because it means too many things - everything from stage tricks to "strange abilities in fairy-tales" - and is thus too vague for her tastes. Reminds me of Tolkien! This is what your folk would call magic, I believe; though I do not understand clearly what they mean; and they seem also to use the same word of the deceits of the Enemy. But this, if you will, is the magic of Galadriel. Did you not say that you wished to see Elf-magic? Yes, I think that passage in "The Lord of the Rings" might have influenced that scene. |
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Post by saardvark on Feb 5, 2020 13:00:36 GMT
That starts to sound like Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, which arises from the fact that on the quantum level, observing something cant help but change it. The uncertainty principle is not the observer effect, and applies whether or not the observables have been measured. In fact, it arises from the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality. It prescribes that for any observables A and B, the product of their variances is greater than or equal to (1/(2i) * <[^A; ^B]>)^2 (where <z> denotes the expectation value of z, e: "messageboards need inline LaTeX", or rather it's a bit disappointing (to vanity) that they mostly don't). Since [^x; ^p] = iħ, the product of the standard deviation of location and momentum is at least ħ/2, and this special case is known as Heisenberg's uncertainty. You're correct, of course, but they are related as you have pointed out yourself (observer effect arises from Heisenberg's uncertainty). I was being a bit sloppy for what I thought was a less technical audience, but clearly I was mistaken! I sit corrected. |
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QuotePilgrim
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Post by QuotePilgrim on Feb 5, 2020 17:10:52 GMT
Based on your description, "nada" sounds like a negative polarity indefinite pronoun: it can only be used in a sentence that's already negated. That is what it is, yes. The closest thing to a phrase that uses that word without a negative adverb would be "só sei que nada sei" (I know that I know nothing) in Portuguese. The same thing in Spanish does have a negative: "solo sé que no sé nada". I would argue that the one in Portuguese is technically ungrammatical, but Portuguese speakers are fine with it. Finally, as to the question of whether Spanish and Portuguese have double negatives, it may depend on how you define terms, but Wikipedia says that both are languages with "negative concord," which it defines as "multiple negatives affirm[ing] each other" rather than canceling each other out. It gives the Portuguese example "Não vejo nada" as a sentence with "doubled negative correlatives," which I think means that the pair of words "não... nada" are considered to negate the verb, rather than either of them alone. So it seems that Wikipedia considers "nada" ( in this context, anyway) to be a negative word and therefore "não... nada" to be a double negative. Of course, any hint of the pejorative sense that the term has in English grammar is inappropriate with respect to other languages. I'd argue that "não vejo nada" is not a double negative because "nada" does not negate the verb at all. As I said, it is not a negative adverb. "Eu vejo nada" has no negative at all, therefore "não vejo nada" has exactly one.
I don't have any sources in English on this, what I do have is six years of studying linguistics with a heavy focus on Portuguese and Spanish grammar, and I am pretty confident in what I am saying. Anyway, on principle, I can't trust any sources written originally in English on what it has to say about Portuguese grammar. I did, however, find some sources in Portuguese that claim "não sei de nada" is a double negative. Obviously I am going to argue they are incorrect.
Here's my argument: no dictionary (that I can find) classifies "nada" as a negative adverb, and no list of adverbs in Portuguese lists it as one, either. A sentence that does not include a negative adverb is not, grammatically, a negative sentence.
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Post by pyradonis on Feb 5, 2020 19:52:54 GMT
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Post by Runningflame on Feb 8, 2020 5:52:24 GMT
Based on your description, "nada" sounds like a negative polarity indefinite pronoun: it can only be used in a sentence that's already negated. That is what it is, yes. The closest thing to a phrase that uses that word without a negative adverb would be "só sei que nada sei" (I know that I know nothing) in Portuguese. The same thing in Spanish does have a negative: "solo sé que no sé nada". I would argue that the one in Portuguese is technically ungrammatical, but Portuguese speakers are fine with it. Finally, as to the question of whether Spanish and Portuguese have double negatives, it may depend on how you define terms, but Wikipedia says that both are languages with "negative concord," which it defines as "multiple negatives affirm[ing] each other" rather than canceling each other out. It gives the Portuguese example "Não vejo nada" as a sentence with "doubled negative correlatives," which I think means that the pair of words "não... nada" are considered to negate the verb, rather than either of them alone. So it seems that Wikipedia considers "nada" ( in this context, anyway) to be a negative word and therefore "não... nada" to be a double negative. Of course, any hint of the pejorative sense that the term has in English grammar is inappropriate with respect to other languages. I'd argue that "não vejo nada" is not a double negative because "nada" does not negate the verb at all. As I said, it is not a negative adverb. "Eu vejo nada" has no negative at all, therefore "não vejo nada" has exactly one. I don't have any sources in English on this, what I do have is six years of studying linguistics with a heavy focus on Portuguese and Spanish grammar, and I am pretty confident in what I am saying. Anyway, on principle, I can't trust any sources written originally in English on what it has to say about Portuguese grammar. I did, however, find some sources in Portuguese that claim "não sei de nada" is a double negative. Obviously I am going to argue they are incorrect. Spoken like a true scholar.  I wonder what your thoughts are about Spanish Wikipedia's article on double negation, particularly the section Uso en el español? It looks like it has a fair amount of analysis and historical background. The same article also points out something about English that I had forgotten: the two-negative-words idiom that we're discussing is also the source of the modern English word "not" (originally "naught" = "nothing"). So your ungrammatical Portuguese phrase may be the first signs of the same old linguistic process happening there. Portuguese speakers 1000 years from now may have forgotten about "não" entirely and may use "nada" to negate their sentences! Also, another question: is "(Eu) não vejo" a grammatical sentence, or does it need "nada" to complete it? (Or would it mean "I don't see" in general, i.e. "I am blind"?) |
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QuotePilgrim
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Post by QuotePilgrim on Feb 10, 2020 3:44:26 GMT
Also, another question: is "(Eu) não vejo" a grammatical sentence, or does it need "nada" to complete it? (Or would it mean "I don't see" in general, i.e. "I am blind"?) That would pretty much necessarily mean "I am blind". There may be some contexts in which it could mean "I can't see", but I can't think of one right now -- I believe a Portuguese speaker would just add "nada" to the sentence if that were the case. Anyway, I spent way more time looking into this subject than I should have. And my conclusion is that there aren't enough sources talking about this to reach a conclusion. Most authors just seem to claim "não" + verb + "nada" is adouble negative and make no attempt to justify the claim, as if it needs no justification. That is when they even talk about this. Almost none of the books I had access to even mention negatives at all.
The issue I have with this is that the idea that that construction is a double negative contradicts other well-established ideas. As I've mentioned before, the notion that a sentence needs a negative adverb to be considered a negative -- which is the crux of my argument -- is something that you'll find in a lot of Portuguese grammar textbooks. Another thing is something that I learned in college in my syntax classes; if you have a grammatical sentence in a language, you can replace any of the words in it with another word that belongs to the same part-of-speech and -- even though this may result in an invalid sentence -- all of the syntactic relationships between the words in it remain unchanged. That is to say, given that "eu vejo algo" (I see something) is affirmative, "eu vejo nada" must also be affirmative, because both "algo" and "nada" are indefinite pronouns. Unless I am missing something, of course. And besides, I think the same reasoning can be used to argue that "I see nothing" is affirmative in English (which would make "I don't see nothing" not a double negative), so maybe I am missing something. I feel like if I sat down with a Portuguese grammarian/inguist and discussed this with them, it's not unreasonable of me to think that I might be able to convince them of my point; or I might not, who knows. I will do this whenever there's an opportunity. Until then, I will concede that there are valid arguments to be made on both sides -- even if most of the arguments on my side are the ones being made by me.
Apologies to everyone for basically derailing this thread into a discussion about linguistics.
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I wonder what your thoughts are about Spanish Wikipedia's article on double negation, particularly the section