Word: grasping
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...discussion, Styron asked why the students--and the students weren't black militants, they were white, or moderate, or both--had insisted in asking questions which verged, well, on insult. The reason is that Styron didn't look like an author, a man deeply troubled by hard-to-grasp, will-o'-the-wisp problems; he looked like an administrator...
...matter which direction he took. Rather than expend energies and political capital on brawls with Congress, Nixon is hoarding his resources. It does not make for a dynamic posture. It leaves him open to charges such as Hubert Humphrey's last week, that the President has failed "to grasp the urgency of present circumstances." But it does permit the Administration to focus on the problems it considers cardinal, and to plan programs for a post-Viet Nam world...
...genuinely intimate love scenes, in the comic portrait of Brenda's super-athletic, subhuman brother (Michael Meyers), in the feline mother-daughter skirmishes, Director Larry Peerce (One Potato, Two Potato) has produced some rare moments of high social criticism. But he has an uncertain grasp of his vehicle, and periodically it lurches out of control. At times, Benjamin seems to be playing Dustin Hoffman's gawky second cousin rather than the acrimonious Neil of Roth's story. The film's observations of the nouveau riche Patimkins are subtle enough-until a parody of a Jewish wedding...
...with one hand, encounter the transparent obstacle and bang on it or give up, either in slumber, indifference or tears. Older babies may manage to slide the panel up with one hand, then grope awkwardly into the interior and, despite the panel's resistance, occasionally grasp the reward. The most sophisticated infants use both hands, one to hold the panel open, the other to reach inside...
This is almost exactly the way man masters language: first by articulating the meaningful bits of sound that linguists call phonemes, next by linking these bits into words, and finally by making whole sentences. If this were the result of a learning process, argues Bruner, man's grasp would be forever limited by what he has learned to reach. Yet the fact is that the gift of language carries with it the capacity to braid words into sentences that have never been spoken before. Any normal child...