Glizdka
Key Member
- Joined
- Apr 13, 2019
- Member Type
- Other
- Native Language
- Polish
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- Poland
- Current Location
- Poland
Hi!
It's been a while. Quite some time ago I wrote this passage that attempts to explain grammar like how a physicist would in the typical popular science program.
What do you think of my my piece of writing? Have I made any mistakes? Could you help me make the narration better?
The Theory of Countability is the cornerstone of modern linguistics. It helps us to understand the laws of grammar and unravel the inner workings of the fabric of speech. When it was first introduced, it fundamentally changed how we viewed language, and it solved many problems that grammarians had been struggling with for decades, ultimately reshaping what we thought we knew.
Before the Theory of Countability was formulated, we already knew that sentences were made of words. Still, it was a widely accepted view that words themselves were indivisible constituent parts of speech. Only a few grammarians theorized that words were made of even smaller parts called particles, even though no devised experiment could prove it. That was until the discovery of the suffix in 1897 by Jay J. Tombstone.
In the original experiment, Tombstone used a word of change, and conjugated it with a strong inflectional current in the presence of things. To his surprise, change increased its length by the exact amount things shrunk, resulting in the predicate thing changes. Tombstone proposed that this was due to the exchange of a particle that contains what he called the s charge. He named this particle the suffix. It was later discovered that the exchange of suffixes was responsible for the force that binds words together.
Tombstone’s discovery of the suffix meant words could be divided into two groups: those that naturally contain a suffix in their ground state, called verbs, and those that do not have it, but are capable of capturing a suffix from nearby verbs when in a high number state called plurality. We call those words nouns.
The linguistic community quickly became obsessed with this interaction between nouns and verbs, and countless experiments with different noun-verb pairs were being conducted, occasionally yielding most peculiar results. Some nouns seemed to refuse to capture the suffix, regardless of what verb was used or how much we tried to pluralize them.
This unexplained behavior of some nouns sparked the Great Noun Survey, which attempted to catalogue every known noun. Unfortunately, no meaningful correlation that would explain why some nouns do not exchange the suffix could be found. What is even worse, some nouns seemed to only occasionally exchange the suffix, depending on the context they were used in. This seeming randomness in the behavior of nouns was one of the greatest conundrums in linguistics at the very end of the 19th century, until an explanation suddenly came from an unsuspected source.
Earnest Rubberfort, who was at the time experimenting with rephrasing long sentences, work that on the surface had nothing to do with the problem grammarians were struggling with, discovered that rephrasing long chains of words could cause them to eject a new, previously unknown kind of particle. This particle possessed no charge and was only loosely connected to the noun in the sentence, which made it very difficult to detect, explaining why it had not been previously observed. He named it the alpha particle, now more commonly known as the article.
Further experiments showed that the article was essential for the exchange of the suffix to occur. As it turns out, the exchange does not happen directly between nouns and verbs, but rather is mediated by the article that provides the necessary energy needed to strip the verb of its suffix when plurality is increased.
After Rubberfort’s revelation, it was not long until Edwin Schöndinger formulated his Theory of Countability, which stated that nouns are always in a superposition of two states he named countable and uncountable. Only when enough context is provided will the noun’s superposition collapse into either of the states, and only countable nouns can interact with the article, and by extension, the suffix.
Schöndinger’s explanation left many grammarians of the time uncomfortable with his idea. They expected the laws of grammar to be rigid and well-defined, not erratic and whimsical. Distinguished grammarian Alfred Zweistein even famously said that “Language does not play dice”. Nonetheless, the Theory of Countability was the best explanation of the odd behavior of nouns, and it has remained so to this day.
Now, countability is a widely recognized concept that few linguists dare question, with many theorems directly depending on what it states, and it is among the first ideas young grammarians are taught in language classes, securing its position as one of the most influential theories in modern linguistics.
It's been a while. Quite some time ago I wrote this passage that attempts to explain grammar like how a physicist would in the typical popular science program.
What do you think of my my piece of writing? Have I made any mistakes? Could you help me make the narration better?
The Theory of Countability is the cornerstone of modern linguistics. It helps us to understand the laws of grammar and unravel the inner workings of the fabric of speech. When it was first introduced, it fundamentally changed how we viewed language, and it solved many problems that grammarians had been struggling with for decades, ultimately reshaping what we thought we knew.
Before the Theory of Countability was formulated, we already knew that sentences were made of words. Still, it was a widely accepted view that words themselves were indivisible constituent parts of speech. Only a few grammarians theorized that words were made of even smaller parts called particles, even though no devised experiment could prove it. That was until the discovery of the suffix in 1897 by Jay J. Tombstone.
In the original experiment, Tombstone used a word of change, and conjugated it with a strong inflectional current in the presence of things. To his surprise, change increased its length by the exact amount things shrunk, resulting in the predicate thing changes. Tombstone proposed that this was due to the exchange of a particle that contains what he called the s charge. He named this particle the suffix. It was later discovered that the exchange of suffixes was responsible for the force that binds words together.
Tombstone’s discovery of the suffix meant words could be divided into two groups: those that naturally contain a suffix in their ground state, called verbs, and those that do not have it, but are capable of capturing a suffix from nearby verbs when in a high number state called plurality. We call those words nouns.
The linguistic community quickly became obsessed with this interaction between nouns and verbs, and countless experiments with different noun-verb pairs were being conducted, occasionally yielding most peculiar results. Some nouns seemed to refuse to capture the suffix, regardless of what verb was used or how much we tried to pluralize them.
This unexplained behavior of some nouns sparked the Great Noun Survey, which attempted to catalogue every known noun. Unfortunately, no meaningful correlation that would explain why some nouns do not exchange the suffix could be found. What is even worse, some nouns seemed to only occasionally exchange the suffix, depending on the context they were used in. This seeming randomness in the behavior of nouns was one of the greatest conundrums in linguistics at the very end of the 19th century, until an explanation suddenly came from an unsuspected source.
Earnest Rubberfort, who was at the time experimenting with rephrasing long sentences, work that on the surface had nothing to do with the problem grammarians were struggling with, discovered that rephrasing long chains of words could cause them to eject a new, previously unknown kind of particle. This particle possessed no charge and was only loosely connected to the noun in the sentence, which made it very difficult to detect, explaining why it had not been previously observed. He named it the alpha particle, now more commonly known as the article.
Further experiments showed that the article was essential for the exchange of the suffix to occur. As it turns out, the exchange does not happen directly between nouns and verbs, but rather is mediated by the article that provides the necessary energy needed to strip the verb of its suffix when plurality is increased.
After Rubberfort’s revelation, it was not long until Edwin Schöndinger formulated his Theory of Countability, which stated that nouns are always in a superposition of two states he named countable and uncountable. Only when enough context is provided will the noun’s superposition collapse into either of the states, and only countable nouns can interact with the article, and by extension, the suffix.
Schöndinger’s explanation left many grammarians of the time uncomfortable with his idea. They expected the laws of grammar to be rigid and well-defined, not erratic and whimsical. Distinguished grammarian Alfred Zweistein even famously said that “Language does not play dice”. Nonetheless, the Theory of Countability was the best explanation of the odd behavior of nouns, and it has remained so to this day.
Now, countability is a widely recognized concept that few linguists dare question, with many theorems directly depending on what it states, and it is among the first ideas young grammarians are taught in language classes, securing its position as one of the most influential theories in modern linguistics.
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