Language Overflow

Crazy Ninja

3:00 AM

Greetings!

Jim Reynolds

4:48 AM

@snailboat The reports of whom's death now? Did I appropriately ateriskize?

Jim Reynolds

6:25 AM

Do you know where Carlos is?

Does that sentence have a subordinate clause? If so, what is it?

Man_From_India

Hi Jim, hope u have been a peaceful vegetarian :P

Anonymous

@JimReynolds Yes

Anonymous

> Do you know [ where Carlos is ＿＿＿ ] ?

Anonymous

Carlos is over there.

Anonymous

The subordinate clause looks similar, except the complement of is is missing and instead we have where, which seems to have been moved to the front of the clause.

Anonymous

6:36 AM

Doesn't it seem like that?

Anonymous

> Carlos is over there.

Anonymous

> Carlos is where?

Anonymous

> [ where Carlos is ＿＿ ]

Anonymous

Know seems to be taking an interrogative content clause as a complement.

Anonymous

What are your thoughts, @JimReynolds?

Jim Reynolds

6:41 AM

The bracketed constituent is subordinate?

Anonymous

Yes.

Anonymous

where Carlos is isn't a complete sentence, so I didn't capitalize it or give it final punctuation.

Jim Reynolds

@snailboat How about: Where is Carlos, you know?

Anonymous

Where is Carlos? Do you know ~~where Carlos is~~?

Anonymous

Where is Carlos? doesn't have the form of a subordinate clause. It has subject-auxiliary inversion, which happens in main clause interrogatives, not subordinate.

Anonymous

6:44 AM

Whatever the thingy you know is at the end, Where is Carlos? doesn't appear to be embedded under it.

Jim Reynolds

I thought the same initially, with respect to my initial question and your response. But I then thought that where Carlos is contains the essential meaning of the sentence, and my brain started a-quiverin.

But I see now. It was malodorous cogitating on my part.

Do you know (st) is the essential meaning.

And I conflated a perspective on what seemed important with the basic structural way to analyze the sentence.

@snailboat It's interesting that you have mentioned a few times that it troubles you that so many people are not self-motivated learners.

Anonymous

Verbs like know, ask, wonder, determine and so on often take subordinate interrogative clauses as complements. where Carlos is is the subordinate counterpart of Where is Carlos?

Anonymous

@JimReynolds Well, I think self-motivation is the difference between learning and not learning.

Sᴋᴜʟʟ ᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ

I agree.

Jim Reynolds

I understand, I think, and I believe I empathize to an extent, or strongly at times, but then another idea occurs to me: Why should we expect people to enjoy what we enjoy?

Sᴋᴜʟʟ ᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ

6:57 AM

That's a different question

Jim Reynolds

Hmm... Does motivation really just arise in the self? I'd think it's multifactorially determined in a complex social-ecological system.

Well, I just thought, sometimes we experience negative feelings because people or things violate expectations that we create or adopt, perhaps not always rationally.

Should global warming upset me when it might be an expression of human nature?

Meditates for a moment, ensuring his perfect ease with the Oneness is maintained.

O.O

Elaborate on self-motivation being necessary to learning.

I think I'm not badly learned in some aspects, largely though because my childhood was relatively bleak and barren (hold your tears if you can) and I had nothing else to do but read 20% of our small town's library!

Anonymous

@JimReynolds You are in a restaurant.

Anonymous

You need 2000 calories today.

Anonymous

You have a choice.

Anonymous

Do you order:

Anonymous

7:08 AM

① Two thousand calories of your favorite food?

Anonymous

② Or two thousand calories of your least favorite food?

Jim Reynolds

1

Anonymous

It seems like it'd be easier to make yourself eat that, doesn't it? You enjoy eating it.

Anonymous

If you order the other stuff, you won't want to finish it. You'll want to stop eating partway through.

Anonymous

It'll be hard. You know you need those 2000 calories to stay healthy, but it's really hard to make yourself do it.

Anonymous

7:10 AM

One behavior is pleasant, one behavior is unpleasant.

Anonymous

You're motivated to do one, you're motivated not to do the other.

Anonymous

Now imagine studying something you love, versus studying something you couldn't care less about.

Anonymous

You just eat up the former, page after page.

Anonymous

The latter? You keep going, but you keep wanting to take breaks because you don't care.

Anonymous

Who needs this stuff anyway? No one will ever use ${SCHOOL_SUBJECT} once they're out of high school.

Anonymous

7:12 AM

It has no bearing on your life. You just can't see the point.

Anonymous

They're just trying to make you do it.

Anonymous

It's torture!

Anonymous

But what if you could change the way you thought about it?

Anonymous

Try to find something interesting about the topic, 'cause you know you need to study it anyway.

Anonymous

You manage to convince yourself that such-and-such aspect is interesting.

Anonymous

7:14 AM

So you pick up the book, and you start reading something that the teacher didn't force you to read. All on your own.

Anonymous

And it turns out that is interesting, so you start reading some more. And more.

Anonymous

And suddenly you're learning about ${SCHOOL_SUBJECT}, but it seems fun instead of like torture.

Anonymous

And the more you learn, the more it starts to form a coherent picture.

Jim Reynolds

What facilitates that?

Let's say, in you?

Anonymous

Soon, you go back to that stuff your teacher told you to read, and it seems easier and makes more sense, and you start doing better in class.

Anonymous

7:15 AM

@JimReynolds I don't know. I learned early on to figure out a way to take an interest in anything I had to study.

Anonymous

It's just a skill.

Jim Reynolds

Role model?

What does the "just" mean, I'm wondering. That how or whether the skill develops in a person is unknowable, or maybe just not the focus at the moment. It's worth acknowledging its importance, whatever we may know, speculate, or learn about it?

Anonymous

Well, that's an awful lot of meaning for one little word :-)

Jim Reynolds

Ha.

Anonymous

I have limited insight into how the mind works.

Anonymous

7:21 AM

All I can do is share my experience and hope it strikes a chord.

Jim Reynolds

I love this .... Let me find it.

Anonymous

I think making yourself interested in something is the best way to learn anything. The interest feeds into motivation, and the motivation makes it easy to learn. But I don't think other people can do that for you.

Jim Reynolds

nap.edu/catalog/9853/…

That can be read online for free, or downloaded. There is a more recent compendium of related material called How Students Learn.

When you wrote that it makes you sad (that people languish in classrooms), uninterested, unengaged, I just wondered more about it, such reactions, in you, in me.

It's all relative, no? There is always someone more highly engaged in something positive, productive, worthy, joyful. Compared to me or you, in some areas. I don't know how I feel about them feeling sad about my relative position.

It could be motivating for me to know someone wants more for me. Or it could be deflating.

Anonymous

@JimReynolds There's a lot of tricky psychology that goes into actually motivating kids.

Anonymous

Like, you don't want to tell kids that they're smart.

Anonymous

7:34 AM

That's really counterproductive. People do it all the time, though.

Jim Reynolds

Yes. It reinforces an idea that achievement arises from intrinsic, immutable factors.

Anonymous

When success comes mainly from hard work.

Jim Reynolds

I hate that.

IͶΔ

I love that.

Jim Reynolds

Get back to work!

Anonymous

7:38 AM

I definitely don't go around telling people I feel sad they don't do such-and-such.

Jim Reynolds

Oh, I didn't impute anything negative about it onto you.

It just stimulated some introspection.

IͶΔ

@Jim I feel sad that you don't tell me to go write more answers to get more rep.

Jim Reynolds

I don't want you to use that rep for evil.

Anonymous

@JimReynolds Stop making Mister Triangle sad!

Jim Reynolds

Is he a snail?

Oh.

Anonymous

7:41 AM

Someone called him Mister Triangle the day other day.

IͶΔ

Chemicals are very frail

It was @John

Jim Reynolds

This Mister Triangle! Good name for a snail, though.

IͶΔ

He still is nicer and funnier than you.

Anonymous

I'll remember that :-)

Anonymous

I just named a snail Ella.

Anonymous

7:42 AM

You get N guesses as to why.

IͶΔ

British for ELLer

Anonymous

Hey, I like that one!

Anonymous

I think I'll stick to that story.

Anonymous

Ella is eating lettuce as we speak.

Jim Reynolds

I TOLD JOHN THAT I SAY THE FUNNY ONES IN HERE, DAMMIT!

IͶΔ

7:43 AM

BBL got some studying to do

Jim Reynolds

Because she'a (H)Ella cute?

Anonymous

She's a surprisingly large snail.

Jim Reynolds

She doesn't sing jazz, does she?

Is she Ella big, and stuff?

She's eating our vegetation. We need that lettuce to scrub CO2.

Anonymous

But we need snails to eat our vegetation!

Anonymous

It's the circle of life.

Jim Reynolds

7:46 AM

Why?

Oh. I guess sooner or later we end up eating their poop.

And them ours.

Anonymous

@JimReynolds It means no worries for the rest of your days!

Jim Reynolds

Circle of poop.

Hmm... I don't know how to see what you replied to there. But the answer sounds good!

Anonymous

If you're on a computer, you can move your mouse over the message.

Anonymous

There's also a little arrow at the left you can click.

Jim Reynolds

Taiwan's green tomatoes maybe? Speaking of, I'm off to the gym!

Anonymous

7:50 AM

Yay!

Anonymous

Enjoy!

Jim Reynolds

Yes. I'm motivated by how cute I think I must look on the weight machines.

Best to let me just keep my mental picture.

Sᴋᴜʟʟ ᴘᴇᴛʀᴏʟ

Cya later

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