One of my chores takes me outside early in the morning and, if I time it right, I get to hear a charming chorus of birdsong from the trees in the gardens down our road, a relaxing layered soundscape of tuneful calls, chatter, and chirrupping. Interestingly, although I can tell from the number and variety of trills that there must be a large number of birds around, they are tricky to spot. I have found that by staring loosely at something, such as the silhouette of a tree's crown against the slowly brightening sky, I see more birds out of the corner of my eye than if I scan to look for them. The reason seems to be that my peripheral vision picks up movement against the wider background that direct inspection can miss. An optometrist I am not, but I do find myself staring at data a great deal, seeking relationships, patterns, or gaps. I idly wondered whether, if I filled my visual field with data, I might be able to exploit my peripheral vision in that quest. I have a wide monito
Yes. It's bound up in something called a practice language. See Collins: Rethinking Expertise, also Tacit and Explicit Knowledge
ReplyDeleteNote that prescriptive grammar is not the only kind of grammar.
ReplyDeleteDescriptive grammar is something every speaker has to have wired in their brains in order to use it. And if it exists it's never futile to try to figure it out (even if it turns out as ugly as the standard model).
Also focusing on writing instead of speaking when discussing natural languages outside NLP domain is a bit short-sighted (see Pinker's talk for some nice definitions).
Anyway, if testing is a language, does it have a universal grammar?