Citrinin

Hi, everyone. :) I have 23 visitor messages, and it seems their all asking the similar question: "Where are you?"

Apparently, I was in a car crash. I say "apparently" because I only vaguely remembver getting into the car. A week ago, I woke up from a coma (but I only remember six days).

I have a broken left arm, and several other minor injuries. But a coma is not like they show you on TV. x_x; Not only did I not have an extendedf dream throughout it,...

(Wow it's been a while since I've made a blog entry. @[email protected]; I have to get back into it. :})

If we imagine this as a very simplified process of coming up with things to say:

[think it]->[decide whether to say it]->[say it]

The mechanisms each by themselves are fascinating. Thinking of something to say is an interesting area, encompassing cognitive linguistics, neuroscience, psychology, and all the other fun brain-related topics. The final part involves all...

For those not familiar with the term, phonotactics is the linguistic phenomenon which controls which structures of words are acceptable.

Let's make up two words. Clestrath and Pkan. Try to pronounce them. Assuming you're an English monoglot, you probably found the first far easier to say than the second.

This is because the first complies with English phonotactics - even though it's longer, the two consonant clusters "cl" and "tr" are acceptable....

Think of a random word.

I thought of "mosquito".

I wonder, what are the thought processes involved in coming up with a random number or word. It can't be truly random - I'd watched an old episode of Family Guy that used the word "mosquito" a few times in one of the scenes, which was the thing that prompted me to think of mosquito.

So how does the brain drag a memory up for this "random" word? What processes does it go through to...

Describe red to a blind person that doesn't understand physics.

You can't. You could give the definition that it is electromagnetic radiation from some wavelength to some other wavelength, but that's hardly a satisfying definition to people who don't know much about physics. It also doesn't allow them to visualise red.

You could describe the emotions it evokes, but the emotional/cultural aspect of red is only one component. There is still a visual component.

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