Memo: A language that remembers only the last 12 lines of code
danieltemkin.com57 points by notem 3 days ago
57 points by notem 3 days ago
How exciting, I get to be the pedant: it’s “stream-of-consciousness,” not “stream-of-conscious.” Conscious is an adjective; there can’t be a stream of it.
I see your pedantry, and raise it one more!
Through substantivization one can definitely have stream-of-<adjective>. Think "a stream of blue" or "a stream of the poor".
People often shave off the tail of well-known expressions:
“same difference” → “same diff”
“no big deal” → “no big”
“It’s no big.”
“fair enough” → “fair”
“Fair.”
“good enough” → “good enough” → “good”
“Yeah, that’s good.” (implies good enough)
“I don’t know” → “dunno”
> People often shave off the tail of well-known expressions
Though typically not in writing, that’s more of a speech thing.
On the other hand English is highly imbued with lake of morphological inflection and other explicit lexicalization by grammatical type. So this is really just following the main stream tendency.
I think the same when I see "your subconscious". No, it should be "your subconsciousness"
But being 'conscious' of something is being aware of it; your 'subconscious' is the part of your brain 'below' your awareness (although it is true that it's also below your consciousness! So perhaps both would work)
Indeed, in Freud the word is _Unbewusstsein_, which is literally more like "being-unconscious," but a more natural English translation would be unconsciousness.
This is how British people feel every time we read "full-featured".
And every other adverb! I often find myself shouting (not necessarily audibly) 'ly!' at American TV/movies/podcasts etc.
It's 'real annoying'.
It's a noun too
I was about to object that the latter is not in fact a noun but was surprised to see that wiktionary lists it as such. However it provides no usage examples and I strongly suspect it is in error.
I think it is occasionally used with "the," i.e. "the conscious" (referring to the conscious part of your body, for example). Adjectives sometimes become nouns this way, like "the poor"
I searched the Corpus of Contemporary American English ( https://www.english-corpora.org/coca/ ) for 'conscious_n', which means the token "conscious" with a 'noun' part-of-speech tag.
There are five results. All five of them are tagging errors:
If we scan to get enough info, then model the cells well enough, and have enough computers to run the simulation of the models, then the input-output of the emulation of the brain will be the same as the input-output of the original brain. It will act like it is conscious. [adjective, modifying it]
Well, first we work on working the body together, so that we can go places with both of us conscious. [adjective, modifying both of us]
Lady Bertram looks barely conscious. [adjective, modifying Lady Bertram]
In a few years, he believed, this institution would be needed in Ukraine, as new conscripts became more religiously conscious. [adjective, modifying new conscripts]
It is in this sense that Rahner means that grace is conscious. [adjective, modifying grace]
Examples 3 and 4 are so far from being nouns that they're being modified by adverbs.
It seems safe to conclude that in fact there is no nounal use of the word "conscious".
> Adjectives sometimes become nouns this way, like "the poor"
That isn't actually what's happening in "the poor". The position occupied by the token poor in that phrase can be filled by all kinds of things:
God loves everyone equally. The rich and the poor, the just and the unjust, the sane and the schizophrenic, the possessed-of-billions-of-dollars and the penniless...
Do you want to argue that "possessed of billions of dollars" is a noun?
We can apply our in-passing observation from earlier and contrast the fully-awake with the barely-conscious. Here, as above, it's impossible for conscious to be a noun, because it is being modified by an adverb. And it's... dubious... for barely conscious to be a noun phrase, because it is headed by conscious, which we know isn't a noun.
Nice dataset, I didn't know about that one.
Is my impression correct, that in general "the {thing}" is a noun phrase without implying anything about {thing} itself?
> Is my impression correct, that in general "the {thing}" is a noun phrase without implying anything about {thing} itself?
Yes, with some minor caveats:
1. Some people prefer to see "the {thing}" as a 'determiner phrase', where 'determiner' is the name for the part of speech to which the belongs. You can call it a 'noun phrase' without losing anything meaningful. 'Noun phrase' is definitely a better term if you're not deep in the technical weeds of grammatical analysis.
2. There are conclusions you could draw about {thing}, but they're more complex than "it's a noun". It's fair to just not talk about them.
3. In language, there are always problems somewhere for any analysis. (Which is why an unbroken chain of transmission can have Latin on one side and French on the other.) I wouldn't even say that a noun phrase with that structure exists at all in an example like "The more you say it, the more I think it". But that particular construction is weird enough that I'm perfectly comfortable saying it's just outside the scope of your qualifier "in general".
No it isn't. Can you give an example?
I am a conscious because I am conscious. Similar to how I am an autistic because I am autistic.
I would argue, though, that doesn't make conscious a noun, but simply uses an adjective as a noun.
Isn’t it an adjective on both? Being conscious because you have consciousness. Otherwise you’re repeating the same thing. I’m happy because I’m happy. I’m pink because I’m pink? Disclaimer: ESL
I think those examples would be "I'm a happy because I'm happy", or "I'm a pink because I'm pink". In both cases you're sort of using an adjective as a noun, at least if you're not overloading it with an actual noun. (e.g., if you invented yourself a term, like calling certain types of people "Happies", etc.)
I’ve never heard that usage, it doesn’t sound right to me. (Relatedly, “an autistic” is generally considered dated / mildly offensive / just incorrect. Better is “an autistic person”, which makes it an adjective again. There does exist the noun “autist” which I do hear occasionally, but not from autistic people as far as I’m aware, so would probably avoid as well.)
> Relatedly, “an autistic” is generally considered dated / mildly offensive / just incorrect.
Is it? I've heard those sentiments about "a person with autism" (and more generally, "autism" as something you have rather than "autistic" as something you are), but not about the term "autistic" as a noun in general. I use "autistic" as a noun a lot, because I don't like to assume that everyone identifies as a person. (Even though doing so is normalized enough that not doing it looks more out of place.)
> There does exist the noun “autist” which I do hear occasionally, but not from autistic people as far as I’m aware, so would probably avoid as well.
In my experience "autist" doesn't necessarily have to do with autism itself, but more specifically the element of "weirdness"/"cringe" that others can have at it; i.e. it's usually used in a self-deprecating way to refer to some sort of weird or deranged behavior (and isn't at all a neutral way to refer to others). Though, most of my exposure to the term is from 4chan/2b2t; in those spaces autism in general is often used as a synonym for mental illness.
I've not heard of anyone not identifying as a person, and I thought I was aware of a good range of identities and subcultures. At least in the UK, using "an autistic" as a noun would have you be heard as someone older and out of touch - perhaps well-meaning, perhaps not, but at least a bit insensitive.
Your report of the meaning of "autist" in some places I think rather strengthens my suggestion to avoid it.
> I've not heard of anyone not identifying as a person, and I thought I was aware of a good range of identities and subcultures.
Well then, behold: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otherkin
I am otherkin and quite a few of my friends are also otherkin (or alterhuman, very nearly the same thing). There is also therianthropy under the otherkin umbrella, although I've seen that ordering get mixed up a lot. Most of the discourse about it I've seen is from the young/inexperienced.
> Your report of the meaning of "autist" in some places I think rather strengthens my suggestion to avoid it.
Indeed it does.
Maybe my definition of “person” isn’t quite standard, but I did have otherkin in mind; to me, a person doesn’t have to be human to be a person. My cat is a feline person, or near enough, Commander Data is a (fictional!) person, etc. Practically zero people want to give up their personhood, at least in everyday life, as it’s extremely disadvantageous and unpleasant. It’s in this sense that saying “an autistic person” rather than “an autistic” is much better: however you identify, you’re a person, an individual with rights and worthy of respect, and not a thing that one would only bother identifying with an adjective. A vital part of being a person is having more than one aspect. A lot of racial epithets are offensive for the same reason.