Interesting case of false attraction in this BBC Sport article, where reversing the syntax of "certain doors swing open" puts the verb beside singular "that" and draws the error (which has since been corrected).
I wrote about this problem here: https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2015/05/22/grammatical-disagreement-through-false-attraction/
Thanks to 3 Quarks Daily and The Browser for sharing my latest grammar nerdout with their readers:
https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2025/05/the-trouble-with-dangling-modifiers.html
https://thebrowser.com/free/tattoos-trouble/?ref=the-browser-newsletter
A website dedicated to the turbofish syntax from the Rust Programming Language, and its guardian angel, Anna Harren.
– by @jplatte
::<> https://turbo.fish
We learn our whole life
I'm going to start with my beloved Vim.
Bram Molenaar has setup Vim in such a way, that you may use, only use what you need, learn by accessing and processing the necessary commands in the Local help file & work in that manner for even years.
Every time you need to learn something else in Vim, you just go in that same local help file.
Vim help was set up in such a beautiful way, you can learn as you go...
It's quite clear that there will be a lot of TIL when using Vim
Complex systems like the Fediverse are also designed in that way you learn just what you need and then when you stumble upon something, you go on help
It's a beautiful thing when help and program are tuned towards each other
Do be so kind to explain to me like I'm five, what you've written here in the code block
Do you use a special client to get the markdown language or do you know it by heart?
The trouble with dangling modifiers. New blog post:
https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2025/05/06/the-trouble-with-dangling-modifiers/
Oh wow, #bonobos are using syntax! Scientists are floored to discover that humans aren't the only ones who can string words together 
. Next up: bonobos writing Shakespearean sonnets and solving crosswords? 
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2474993-bonobos-use-a-kind-of-syntax-once-thought-to-be-unique-to-humans/ #syntax #language #science #discovery #animal #intelligence #humor #HackerNews #ngated
Bonobos communicate in ways more similar to ours than previously thought. Mélissa Berthet and her colleagues studied a group of these primates and found first ever proof of non-trivial compositionality in non-human vocalizations.
#bonobo #chimpanzee #chimp #ape #primate #primates #primatology #nature #science #wildlife #communication #syntax #linguistics #evolution
https://blogorgonopsid.blogspot.com/2025/04/lidska-rec-neni-vyjimecna-nasi.html
How about a clear #syntax structure in #OpenStreetMap for any #POI ? Such as #whatever
*:sales https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:*:sales
*:parts https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:*:parts
*:rental https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:*:rental
*:repair https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:*:repair
*:training https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:*:training
*:tours https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:*:tours
*:type https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:*:type
And Michael Tomasello's book "Origins of Human Communication" has a sentence 261 words long that's more intelligible than many sentences one tenth its length.
Clarity hinges on structure and sense, and his line uses 11 semicolons – here, the right choice – to form a precisely executed parallelism.
The "Integration Hypothesis" posits that human language emerged rapidly through the combination of pre-existing cognitive systems, leading to the complex syntax we use today.
#PonderLab #LanguageWeek #Syntax
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00564/full
One of my favorite #books is The Singing Creek Where the Willows Grow by Opal Whitely. This child’s #diary amazed me. We see the world of her neighbors and her animal companions through a child’s lens. I also love her language. From the opening paragraph, when she explains, “I found the near woods first day I did go explores,” you realize Whitley interprets her world through an odd, childish #syntax. I found it refreshing.
#BooksWorthReading
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/324073/the-singing-creek-where-the-willows-grow-by-opal-whiteley/
Resurrecting my universal compiler which uses my own flavour of EBNF. The first version used C style # directives for handling out of spec stuff including case sensitivity. Should I keep that or use something else?
Understanding spoken #language requires info beyond the raw speech signals. @cas_coopmans &co use MEG recording during story listening to show that the human brain projects its knowledge of #syntax onto speech in a predictive & language-dependent way #plosbiology https://plos.io/42uyKAs
Has anyone written something about the #syntax of #swearing? - i.e. how the different constructions that swearwords can occur in matter (most relevant if in a Scandinavian/Germanic context)
#linguistics
blog! “Is this a bug in every Markdown (Extra) parser?”
Markdown is, I think it is fair to say, a frustrating "specification". It's origins are a back-of-a-fag-packet document and a buggy Perl script - and we've been dealing with the consequences ever since. There are now multiple Markdown parsers, each with their own idiosyncrasies. To make matters w…
Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2024/10/is-this-a-bug-in-every-markdown-extra-parser/
⸻
#HTML #markdown #programming #syntax
Ich hab gerade mit den Student*innen diesen wunderschönen Satz aus der taz besprochen: „Bisher keinen Bezug der Gruppe gibt es dagegen zu einem Messerangriff von Linken auf einen Rechtsextremen vor wenigen Tagen in Berlin.“
Eine Studentin fragte, ob es den Satz wirklich gäbe und wie denn der Kontext gewesen sei. Ich bejahte und wollte ihn raussuchen, aber er war in der Online-Form nicht mehr da. Ich schwöre aber, dass er in der Printtaz drin war (siehe screenshot). Ich hoffe, dass der Autor ihn nicht weggemacht hat, weil ich hier darüber geschrieben hatte. Es ist ein wunderschöner Satz und ein Beispiel für NP-Aufspaltung und scheinbar mehrfache Vorfeldbesetzung. Ihr könnt gern mal Eure Schulgrammatik daran ausprobieren. Spoiler: Wird nicht funktionieren. =:-)
