Word: paradoxes
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...great paradox of modern linguistics is that while human judgments about the nature of language must be fundamentally introspective our intuitions are often misleading or simply wrong Percy is right when he says that closeness to language can be a bar to understanding it, that we think and talk about language in the very medium we are trying to study. Linguists cannot isolate their specimens and examine them under the objective lens of a microscope; instead they have tried desperately to replace intuition with a rigorous scientific method. Percy believes his death blow to the Chomskians is his assertion that...
...structures of those sentences are very different, and one way to describe that difference is in terms of a notion of deep structure. It bothers Percy that the transformational grammar is not somehow built into our nerves and synapses, actually generating sentences while we talk, but that is the paradox: The model reflects a knowledge we do have about language, artificial though it may be. It is a grammar stitched together from imaginary rules and devices but, for all that, it is no less palpable and no less real...
...forgetting our oldest American tradition, that the nation exists for the sake of principles that can be shared. This nation first declared its independence in "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind." Our uniqueness as a nation may depend on our ability and our power to preserve this paradox. In every generation we must once again declare our independence, while finding new ways to discover and declare our community with the world...
...considered him a clay idol with human feet. The now beloved Missouri Democrat had the dubious distinction of scoring the lowest Gallup popular-approval rating (23%) ever accorded a President-lower even than Nixon's 24%. In fact, Harry Truman's entire career was riddled with paradox and contradiction. Although he was so scrupulous that even in the White House he used his own stamps on personal letters, Truman was the product of Boss Pendergast's corrupt Kansas City machine. His senatorial career, distinguished by wartime investigations of defense production, was nearly ended by Franklin D. Roosevelt...
...Land. Harold Pinter's new play at Britain's National Theater in London, explores the paradox between chillingly inflexible ideas and a reality so ephemeral that it may be false, and often is. What turns this grandiose philosophical dilemma into exhilarating theater is the fact that the play is very funny. Under Peter Hall's deft direction, the ominous and reflective pauses are delivered with timing and double takes of Jack Benny standard...