Vivan Waghela Week 13 - Language, Memory, and Mental Time Travel: An Evolutionary Perspective (article)
Language, Memory, and Mental Time Travel: An Evolutionary Perspective (article)
Like every quarter, this quarter's topic has startled me: language and memory. So I decide (like every week 1) to search up an article and write about it. Unfortunately the only one I could find was super long.
Going into the article, The structure is a lot like our POAS essays: introduction, other topics, and conclusion are labeled as headings; and there are 5 heading in there.
Section 1: Introduction. "Memory, in all its forms, is critical to language." Very deep quote. Seems like this means that there is no language without memory. A later paragraph talks about "mental time travel." It talks about how we can create fictional events whenever we wanted to. I know for a fact that this happens a lot, and I also know many of you guys will agree with this.
Section 2: "Mental Time Travel and Universal Grammar." What could universal grammar mean? According to the article, it means that every language has very similar grammar to each other, if not the same. It kind of makes sense though, think about it. In any language, saying "Hello, how are you?" has the comma after "Hello." So our grammar is "universal" aka the same as everyone else.
Section 3: "Uniquely Human?" Strange heading name. Maybe it is emphasizing how grammar is unique to humans and not really to other plants and animals. This section contains two very long subsections, just like the Critique section in our POAS. Since it is very long, we will skip this section (maybe it's because I don't have time lol).
Section 4: "Communication." I can tell what's in this section. It probably talks about how communicating requires memory on the language. A great connection from memory to language.
Section 5: "Conclusions." Multiple conclusions? Interesting. I guess I will have my conclusion here instead.
As I am running out of time to post this blog, I would like to ask you all: I have been referencing POAS a few times in this blog, and I think to myself "why do I still remember this." Will you guys remember POAS for the rest of your life? Cause I will. Definitely.
Article: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnhum.2019.00217/full
Hey Vivan!
ReplyDeleteI think it is really cool how you begin all your blogging quarters with a research post on an article. I think it shows how you prefer a structured logical way of thinking which I think is very cool to see even when we have so much freedom. I skimmed through a bit of the article and it is indeed very long. But like you, I enjoyed the straightforward way it was structured because it makes it super easy to draw from specific topics. As for your question, I do think I will remember POAS for years to come, but not for bad reasons. I genuinely really enjoyed reading about my POAS and writing it. It felt like a puzzle where I was piecing together my POAS's life in a way that connected different aspects of their life. It brought a whole new understanding to a person I already admired which was so cool to experience. It is also the longest paper I have ever written which was a good introduction to the type of work we will see in college. Thanks for sharing:)
Hi Vivan,
ReplyDeleteI think it will be a good decade before I forget the stress that POAS put me through. Granted, I might be eating my words once the workload in college catches up to me, but I can’t lie and say that writing my POAS paper didn’t give me some sort of bittersweet pride in my work. That was, as they said back in the day, a doozy.
As for your blog inspiration, that’s a great idea! I can only imagine the hours I would have saved thinking about a blog idea if I had just looked online for inspiration; I guess that never really occurred to me. I look forward to your next blog posts, maybe an original idea will come to you then!
Sincerely,
Sean Wang
I think I have already repressed POAS. I can't seem to reproduce the magnitude of pain I felt in my eyes and the endless clicking of the keys on my laptop. I was in my bed, typing on my phone, and in my sleep, I thought of POAS. In the shower, the thoughts of my essay silenced the rushing shower water to the point that my skin shriveled and dried like a prune for the time I spent lost in anxiety. These things, I can't feel anymore to the extent that I may sign up for another experience of POAS without any return for my work. I can't learn the consequences of procrastination, the gray matter in my brain cannot contain the nuance of such a concept. Everytime I sneeze, I sense something else coming out with it: my brain cells and the lessons learned and forgotten as a consequences.
ReplyDeleteHi Vivan,
ReplyDeleteYes, I will remember POAS for the rest of my life. It was the first all-nighter I ever pulled for a school assignment, and I pray that it will be the last. On the night before the deadline, I decided to redo my entire paper, and I have regretted that decision ever since. Though Sigmund Freud claims that traumatic memories are repressed away from the conscious mind, my personal experience with POAS proves that he is a fraudulent psychologist.
Sincerely,
Krish
Hi Vivan,
ReplyDeleteI like the question you asked because honestly, I've thought about this a lot. As I can tell from the other comments, many of us will surely remember POAS forever. I agree. I did most of my paper on the last week it was due, and I ended up turning it in a few minutes before 10. However, I am extremely proud with how it turned out, and I think it changed my perspective on writing for the better. Surprisingly, this week's Toni Morrison essay did not stress me out as much as all the other major writing assignments do. Why? Because every time I thought about the essay and started getting worried, I told myself, "you wrote a 13 page paper just a few weeks ago. 2-3 pages is nothing."
Hey Vivan, to answer your question, I'm not sure that I will specifically remember the POAS assignment, but I will definitely remember the person I chose. As a whole, I will probably remember APEng as a class I had a love/hate relationship with, and that it was the class that took up 90% of my time (I've been working on these comments on and off for about 3 hours and I have yet to start homework for my 5 other classes). Thanks for sharing, the article seems really interesting.
ReplyDeleteHi Vivan,
ReplyDeleteI think that it is very interesting how you analyzed the article. It seems that you have taken some of the lessons from our unit on rhetorical analysis and annotation to heart and can do the same for articles outside of English. I think that defines the English 11AP class has been a success at teaching a meaningful skill that will stick with you for the rest of your life. It seems like you analyze the section titles a lot, however, and I wish that you analyzed the contents of each section a little more. Your analysis still gave me a bit of information, so I am not too disappointed. Thanks for sharing!
Sincerely,
Raymond Yu
Hi Vivan,
ReplyDeleteI hate to admit it but, writing POAS may have actually given me a brand new writing strategy that synthesizes with me much better. I remember I always used to struggle using the chunk format for writing in 9th grade, namely having issues with analysis that didn't just feel redundant and repetitive. After POAS, I've started implementing embedded quotes with masterful technique and it feels really refreshing to be writing with a new technique as opposed to the same that has been taught to us for years and years.
Yi-Kuan C.
Hi Vivan,
ReplyDeleteI will be remembering POAS for the rest of my life, especially since the due date happened to come by with a life changing event that happened in my life. I don't think I will be thinking of POAS in a positive light for a very long time, or at least until this school year ends. I think POAS was when I was the most stressed in my life thus far, but it wasn't solely because of POAS, it was all of the other school and personal things that were happening in my life. POAS just added to the stress and defeat I felt. Happy to say I am a lot less stressed now, but stressed nonetheless but that's just how school is.