Word: syntax
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GRAMMAR. "I am a linguistic pessimist. Unguided, our language will degenerate into more and more debilitating imprecision. I hold that for every instance of evolution toward precision there are three cases of devolution into sloppiness . . . Grammar and syntax can teach one how to make words behave, not just correctly, but interestingly, tellingly, gracefully, efficiently, variously." SEX. "The community has a stake in one's interpersonal relations, because it is a fabric woven of such relations. The adolescent must not be allowed to argue that he can do what he wants to with his own body. His body...
...unspeak the actual past" while conjugating its verbs only in the "depersonalized present" and "Utopian future." In private life, Steiner claims, people have come to speak more and say less. He cites studies of urban phone calls that indicate "a drastic diminution and standardization of vocabulary and syntax." He observes that "quiet is becoming the prerogative of a sheltered elite or the cage of the desolate...
...Regular Columnists James Reston, C.L. Sulzberger, Russell Baker and Tom Wicker share the space with outside contributors, who differ widely in political philosophy (from New Leftist Herbert Marcuse to Right Wing Libertarian Murray Rothbard) and in personality (from Burma's ascetic rebel U Nu to baseball's syntax-smashing Casey Stengel...
Alan Alda appears as a failed concert pianist turned journalist. He is assigned to interview a master pianist (Curt Jurgens), who treats him with impenetrable superiority until he notices Alda's hands. "Hands like yours are one in a hundred thousand," the maestro exclaims, with blurred syntax, seizing Alda's forearms and showing them off to his daughter (Barbara Parkins), who responds with pronounced interest. Naturally, Alda's frau (Jacqueline Bisset) doesn't at all care for the lavish attentions of Jurgens and his kinky retinue of friends, but Alda is too flattered to listen. When...
...Class Images: Solanas' principal means of demystification is the division of images along class lines. Structurally this entails assailing immediacy by placing all elements within a context of material contradictions, a dialectical syntax already discussed. On the level of individual images-the sign-system-class division means that appearances possess abstract class associations and at the same time serve as concrete receptacles for the ideology presented by the sound-track. These images are not called upon to reproduce reality, but to act as models used in discussing, describing, criticizing reality. Rather than collecting a predominance of "convincing" visual examples...