Word: syntax
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...world, and probably the most voluminous. Scientists rely on precise Chinese records of supernovae, sunspots, etc., for the nearly two millennia that Europeans did not believe in such phenomena and thus did not see them. That the Chinese have no word for "no" is a statement about syntax, not diction-there are common words for "not," "don't," "never," etc.-and even so, TIME'S statement is true only of classical Chinese, not of the spoken language. The Chinese word for freedom means freedom and nothing else. Its origin is indeed from two characters that by themselves mean...
TELL NO MAN, by 73-year-old Adela Rogers St. Johns (444 pages; Doubleday; $5.95), is a soap opera of flapping metaphors and dangling syntax that asks: Can an "upstanding, up-and-coming, go-getting, moneymaking, sports-minded, about-town-business-and-Yale man" chuck his $50,000-a-year job and find happiness as a minister? The gospel according to St. Johns is a turgid yes, provided that he preaches a theology based on the teachings of Rebecca West, Billy Graham, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, J. D. Salinger, Jakob Bohme and Damon Runyon. Tell...
...choice of words, the dislocated syntax, the archaisms like "trapt" or the frequent use of accents--all show a taste for the bitter, explosive, tactile qualities of words that few poets demonstrate in greater intensity than Dylan Thomas. Occasionally the language slides off into bluster, or mist...
...This syntax study not only leads to better understanding of language, but is a necessary forerunner of computer language translations...
...editors to make their magazine a challenging forum for student opinion. An issue devoted to a more specific problem within the area of African affairs would have, I think, been more effective. And most of the writing could have been better edited with an eye to paragraph structure and syntax. But the Dunster Political Review remains an interesting and informative magazine...