An Experiment With Memory

7/27/2019 An Experiment With Memory

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An Experiment with Memory

Language learningboth in children learning their native tongue and in

adults learning foreign languagesquite clearly happensto a large

extentin the unconscious mind.

But - paradoxically - most strategies for language learning that are

currently extant seek to utilize the resources of the conscious mind as

the theatre of intellectual activity.

I dont want to criticize existing methods as much as explore otheroptions. What can we discern of the workings of the unconscious mind

as we set out to tackle a new foreign language?

Children Learning their Native Language


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Children absorb their own language unconsciously using imitation and

experiment. The process clearly calls on both conscious and

unconscious spheres, as one aspect of it is a triggering of the

construction of word and phrase forms, based on experiments with what

has been heard and retained.

There is an analogy with adult language learning in that slightly flawed

versions of language may occur, as the result of the derivation of rules

which ultimately do not coincide with the paradigm; as is later

discovered.

Adult Learners of a Foreign Language

There must be a spectrum of difference in language learning abilities

related to the biological efficiency of the brain of the learner. It is well-

known that languages are best absorbed young, when the brain is more

flexible; but with ageing is there simply a decrease in agility, or does

a more rich and varied picture emerge, within which the

unconscious workings of the mind are able to play a more

significant part?

Four Levels of Unconscious Memory

As a starting hypothesis, let us sketch some different levels of operationof unconscious memory. Our findings will be radically transformed

later. In seeking differing levels of phenomenological difference it

seems reasonable to posit a sliding-scale upon which to map the varying

degrees of contribution and co-operation of the conscious mind. The

closer to the surface of the mind memory events occur the more

prevalent and predictable seems that portion of the input which comes

from the conscious sphere. Conversely, the deepest memories

seemingly entirely unconscious in originapparently ariseautonomously, with no obvious triggering from above. Between these

two extremes must lay a vast hinterland of intermediate scenarios.

LEVEL ONE: WORDS IN THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE RECENTLY HEARD


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Im making the assumption that a true experiment with memory must

involve an individual on a journey of discovery, and showcase a person

actively engaged in focusing on innovative ways of retaining an alien

tongue.

The first level of mindthat most accessible to scrutiny seems cluttered

with the bric-a-brac of conversations in the foreign tongue which one

has recently had, or odd words in it half-remembered, all mixed up and

floating somewhere on the margins of memory. Its axiomatic that none

of this can be sufficiently clearly recalled to the extent that it comes to

the surface of the mind in an identifiable lexical form: its more like

Sherlock Holmess lumber room. Should such clarity occur, however,

we would be dealing with:

LEVEL TWO: WORDS CLUSTERING IN MEMORY, APPARENTLY ARISING FROM

IDENTIFIABLE STIMULI

The second level down seems to consist of words and phrases of

apparently arbitrary origin, clustering around a singlemaybe

perceivablephonic stimulus. These elements are like guests who check

into a hotel room for a full week. They seem to remain obstinately in the

mind for a few days, until replaced by something else. Moreover, their

number seems limited. In the present state of my memory, I can perceivejust now about four such words.

Unlike the material at the first level, the contents are clear and may be

inspected. Moreover, no effort seems to be required to locate them. They

seem to have attached themselves to my mind as burrs attach themselves

to ones clothes as one walks through a summer field.

For example, at present, at this level, I can perceive one Georgian word,

phartokemeaning area one Japanese wordfutatsmeaning

two; and one Russian word vtaroyasecond (feminine form). I

discern that I acquired these words in 2011, 1980, and 2010,

respectively; the last in the course of study, the other two in real=life

situations. And its obvious that what triggered their remembrance

was a distinct linguistic event which I must have experienced recently,

involving a word in Georgian beginning with f orvor ph . Again.


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its axiomatic that Ive no idea what the trigger was: Im left just with

that which came to the surface of the unconscious mind.

And to extend the hypothesis and strengthen it slightly, I find that in the

course of reflecting upon this, a fourth word emerges at Level Two,although maybe not quite accurately: vetrui . Its a Georgian word

meaning, I will say. v is of course phonetically very close to f. But as

for its correctness both as remembered here and transcribed, I cannot

vouch. I just know that this is roughly what one says if one wishes to say

that one will tell someone something later. I know also that it is so

treacherously close to the Georgian form for I said and that until the

two are distinctly recognized, the use of either cannot be depended upon

absolutely. My electrician said to me vetrui last week, about five days

ago, referring to when he could supply me with a new junction-box. So

this was a word acquired in 2012.

Whats exciting is both the richness of the reaction of the unconscious

mind to a hidden stimulus; and the bizarreness of the response. Its a bit

like visiting the Delphic Oracle, or speaking to the fairground avatar in

the filmBig. My hope is that a daily indwelling in the whole area of

ones unconscious memory may lead to synaptic changes, clarifications,

restructurings, and the beginnings of the development of more helpfulresponses with greater learning potential.

At this second levelin my casealso resides the music I last heard.

My mind blocks out all superficial musics encountered but retains with

great vividness anything classical and of artistic value. For this reason,

in spite of my love of it, I have to make efforts to isolate myself as far as

possible from the hearing of any classical music, as this will interfere

with the pristine workings of the unconscious mind. Such a procedure, in

my view, is asine qua non of being able to compose any new andoriginal music, inasmuch as its sourceif it is to be authenticmust

always be profoundly unconscious.

Just now I hear a small Mendelssohn-like phrasein F Majorplayed

by a string quintet (during the school fte) in a film which I have been

studying with some attention with my class, Mike Figgis The Browning


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Version. An interesting aspect of this second level of unconscious

memory is that gentle, almost unconscious, meditation on what is

currently there seems capable of triggering the crystallization of further,

related, material. For example, by just this small depression of the

clutch I can segue into another great moment from the same film: asetting of the hymn, Praise My Soul, The King of Heaven enriched

with Peter Newson-Smiths splendid and original descant and soaring

harmonizations. But I hear it in Fthe key of the string quintet fragment

whereas I am fairly certain that in the film it was in B flat. That was to

relate it to the G Minor of the opening sequences music, and

presumably to allow the boy trebles sufficient altitude for the descant.

This tells us two interesting things: firstly that the unconscious mind

seeks to smooth out differences, and to establish harmonic links between

the objects it stores; and secondly, that it has modes of operation which

are watertight and not pervious to the influence of conscious knowledge:

that it operates, indeed, entirely independently of it.

While writing this, indeed, memories of Schuberts Octetalso in F

Majorhave also clustered briefly in my mind.

LEVEL THREE: THE PLAYGROUND OF UNCONSCIOUSLY-TRIGGERED

MATERIALS

Level Three ought to be the great Ultima Thule of the mind: the area

where unconscious memory deposits its riches when rightly stimulated.

This is an area with which in the right frame of mind one ought to be

able to work.

LEVEL FOUR: THE TERRITORY OF DEJA-VU

At this very deep level originate perhaps the insights of experiences of

dja-vuand half-remembered figures and images from dreams andvisions. This area may be likened to the radar screen of a remote

provincial airport: it is usually blank. However it was this area that the

Renaissance art of memory sought to stimulate by structured exercises

of focused recollection. It always remains open to us to repeat the

experiment


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Who knows whether, if the rest of the unconscious mind is primed with

sufficient care and attention, numinous and valuable material will not

appear here as well? It is the Double Helix area; George Herberts

Land of spices, something understood.

2: An Alien Tongue

Its perhaps conventional wisdom that in acquiring a new language,

one is to some extent hampered by the modes and conventions of

ones native one. It follows that languages which most closely

resemble ones own ought to be the easiest to learn.

Georgian and English higher-level words

On a structural level, Georgian closely resembles English as it has

evolved with its rich admixture of Greek, Latin and French

elements.

One can predict that a higher-level abstract word such as

performance can be reliably decoded from similar cognate

constituent parts in the word as it appears in Georgian. And so itturns out.

We have, in English, a prepositional head sequenceper, a verbal

fragmentform- and a noun-creating adjectival suffix -ance. The

Georgian word isshesruleba with each component exactly mirroring

that of the English word:sruli is the verbal part (it means

complete);she- corresponds toper; and -eba equates to -ance.

In many a Georgian word,she-means from out to in (shedi , forexample, is said when inviting people to step from the kerb into a

minibus) so for the Georgian mind a performance is something

which is has been made complete by some outward agency towards

some innerpsychological destination.


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And it is clear from this example that when a sufficient sample has

been assembled, a Georgian student should sail through numerous

similar abstract English words of European origin; and that an

English student of Georgian should likewise make easy progress

through many similarly-placed Georgian words. Small allowancesfor different levels of semantic overlap will have to be made:

shemtkhveva, for example, means incidentshe- apparently

covering both Latin per- across and in-, into; with mtkhv-being a

root (so far as I can see) related to cause/make happen ; with -eva-

just being functionally similar toeba : a noun-creating adjectival

suffix, or (less explicitly) abstractive element.

Georgian and English lower-level words

At a lower level a reverse (even a nightmare!) scenario obtains.

Georgian is a concise, inflected language like Latin or Greek. It is of

similar antiquity to them, but unlike them has evolved very little

since its halcyon days. It therefore has few of the small building-

block words of English (a in up the at on beside, for example)or

(where it has them) buries them in suffixes and infixes within larger

blocks of linguistic matter. So while, for a Georgian, the prime

difficulty is this huge arbitrary scattering of such little words

throughout English all looking similar, all infuriatingly concise,

all very precisely nuanced and indispensable for the decoding of

even very simple English for the English learner of Georgian, the

problem is quite the opposite: important semantic data, essential for

the understanding of quite simple phrases, in which concepts of

direction and agency are involved, seem to lie buried in a seamless

web ofindividual spoken words.

damirekavs, for example means, ring me; daurekavs, I will ring

you. The mi and the u are astonishingly hidden (for higher level

markers) in an ostensibly modern language. French, by contrast,

with its appelle-moi and je tappellerai is crystal clear

indicating quite explicitly, via its sonic patterning (the strong m and


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t) to whom the telephoning responsibility devolves. Conversational

Georgian has another problem in that it rushes by so fast that there is

little time even to pick out the existence of the markers in heard

speech, far less to situate them contextually in the words into which

they are interfixed.

A Proposed Solution

Higher-level words will, obviously, come out in the wash. But

because the lower-level (and conceptually simpler) parts of

language which contain important data for elementary

communication are embedded too deeply for on-the-hoof decoding,

a prophylactic strategy must here be adopted (the word is Greek,, and means, to guard or prevent beforehand).

We will have to code all the words we encounter; and place them in

a database from which they can be recalled in harmonious groups.

We will need a sample of something like the first 3000 words in

each language. And we will have to work on both English and

Georgian simultaneously.

3: Learning Strategies

GLOBAL STRATEGIES IN LANGUAGE-LEARNING

If it is admitted that its a good strategy to separate out top-down

and bottom-up strategies in language-learning, what is the batting-

order for their deployment?

My whole meditation on this issue proceeds from a critique of the

premise that (in general) learners are assumed to be able to apply

top-down strategies premier abordand yet get results.


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The lack of results being generally overlooked, its perhaps time to

focus on alternative game plans.

As a counsel of perfection, I would suggest that the ideal might be to

marshal both kinds of approach, initially in succession; butultimately in tandem: from the lower-level view to the higher.

HAECITTAS (thisness)

The whole emphasis in a bottom-up approach is to confront

the learner with what Duns Scotus would have called the

haecittasof the material. Thats to say, to draw attention if

only implicityto what makes the familiar interesting. Thereare for example six possible visual learning categories for the

small letters of West European languages: the humpy letters

m n u h; the circle-based letters a b d e g o q p; the dotted

letters i j; the stiffly-marching or straight-stroked letters x

v w z k (l y)these in turn may be made from one, two or

three strokes and finally the feminine or curly letters c r s ;

and the stubby letters t f.

This is essentially a child-like view. I adopted a similar view

when first confronted with the Georgian script:

(1) aios (2) bgxnmZzT (3) dlRr (4)kpvfc (5) ke (6) uj (7) Wq (8) tJh (9) Sw

These represent (1) a i o s; (2) b g z kh n m dz z t (light); (3) d

l gh r; (4) k (light) p v f ts (light); (5) k (light) e; (6) u j; (7)

ch (strong) k (strong); (8) t (strong) dzj h; (9) ts (strong) ch(lightalso known as ts)

From such a humble, low-level view, based on self-evident

visual cues, one can proceed to other classifications drawing

on higher-level knowledge and deploying preliminary top-

down analyses; and get to know the Georgian letters from a


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variety of other points of view; just as one may classify and

view ones friends from many different points of view and

might draw for them (if one should so wish) a variety of valid

Venn diagrams.

4:

Defining the Sample - English

The word samples needed for my experiment in linguistic

memory will be quite different for the Georgian and English

wings of the diptych. But they share an ideal size: around

3000 words. Drawing on existing corpora, we see that Dolch

has a list of 220 words from childrens story books in Englishin 1930s America (along with 95 nouns, making 315 words)

that MacMillansEnglish Worldtextbooksup to a low

intermediate levelcan usefully provide about 300 words

more; that worldenglish.org has a list of the 100 most

frequent verbs; and that finally, the words of the revised 2284-

word General Service List can be added, giving a total of ca.

3050 unique words. And into my (what turns out to be) 3054-

word list I have also input the 554 words my students have

mastered while engaged on basic-level material Enchanted

Learnings website.

The whole issue facing the learner (and indeed the teacher) is

that it is as hard for the Georgian student to grasp English

words as it is for an English native speaker to get the hang of

many Georgian words. Neither postponing indefinitely the

idea of communicating in full sentences, nor prematurely fast-

tracking itrather, just temporarily circumventing it I aim

here to provide materials (and a means for their analysis) at a

more microcosmic level which in time should yield a rich

harvest of memory-friendly data, acquaintance with which

can be made bottom-up.

There is a dialectical relationship between top-down and

bottom-up views; and one needs a good instinct as to when


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to apply each. Seamus Heaneys lying down in the word

hoard strengthens unconscious memory, making it more

ready to play its part in the fully orchestrated score to which a

language going at full tilt may be likened.

I chose six parameters for the coding of each word, asfollows. The letters quoted refers to the columns on my

spreadsheet beginning at (B) because (A) is the column for

the word itself. In my analysis, the spreadsheet was designed

to morphologically situate a given word; the Snip-Its chart

to account for it semantically.

(B) gives the number of syllables. I differ here from a

traditional count in that in fact there are half-syllables in

many English words, so that it is possible to have a wordlike able for examplewhich are one-and-a half syllables

long: the shorter, second, part being counted as a half-

syllable. On my chart I record such an occurrence as 15

rather than 1.5 as the latter convention is easier to

understand quickly. A preceding star denotes that I am

disregarding a frequently occurring word-ending in my count.

The number of elements in a word follows (C). This is

partly related to the philological components of a word andpartly to its intrinsic structure when one learns it. acorn gets a

rating of 2; able 1; ability 2; absence 3.

Words are coded for the next parameter (D), the number of

letters. Many early learning words: cat, sat, matand so on,

are three-letter words, for example.

Next (E), the vowels in the word are coded according to the

18 basic vowel sounds in English (including diphthongs) as

given in the standard IPA list. Where a figure over nine is

involved, I code the occurrences separatedby a decimalpoint; under ten, I run them together (ability comes out as

377 and able15.5, for example). Again, hidden y sounds, as

in accuse are explicitly notated [ i.e. 3.y.12] ; and hidden

half-sounded or disputed vowels which may be considered


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present in certain English words are given, where they occur,

in brackets [ accord: 3.10.(11)] .

The type of pattern of occurrence of vowels and consonants

in the word comes next (F). We have four cases:

(1) words with no unusual collaborations or non-collaborations between vowels/consonants [e.g. bargain]

(2) words with heard consonantal clusters [e.g. funny] ;

(3)words with phantom, hidden or non-

collaborating consonants functioning, perhaps, as

pseudo half-vowels [e.g. right, construed as rai - - t

or angel, construed a ai - n -jel ];

(4) words constituted in part by what I jokingly call

unhelpful neighbours (tsudi mesobeli) : where there isan alliance between the final and ante-penultimate letters

of a word; with a jump the interveningpenultimate

letter (the unhelpful neighbour) upon which or

whomthe word then ends; having been preceded, of

course, by whatever comes before the ante-penultimate

letter, and which pushes the off the edge of swimming

bath wall and into motion, so to speak.

Class 3 words in this list are particularly interesting: theiranalysis may reveal new ways of understanding how English

spelling works. angelfor example can be defined as a word

whose sleeping consonant g is read twice: once in the course

of pronouncing the first part, ai - : forang; then jel :

forgel. Where our corpus reveals other words like this, we

will discover much of great interest.

Class 4 words are frequently of letter-length 4 and many easy

for students to learn in view such word-sets inherent logics:

examples would beface, make, gate; and more sophisticated

ones,snake, place.

(F) is grammatical type I try to innovate as much as possible in my

categories hereand (G), Semantic Field were I seek broadly

anthropological categories for words and their concepts. Its a classic

bottom-up approach: the map enlarges its scope as my coding


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analysis proceeds. I am using the hierarchical database Snip-Its as an

initial matrix for this material. We see the evolving chart of hierarchical

dependencies on the left, and on the main screen, the entry for the part of

the program which is currently being accessed: cf the screenshot, Figure

1, below, where we see accidentcoded 5.1.None of this is intended to be exhaustive, because once coded, sorted

and grouped, words will be amenable to further secondary and tertiary

analyses, which may further/completely change our

imaginative/mnemonical landscape.

Figure 1: Snip-Its: The matrix for (G) Semantic Field/

anthropological categories. We see the first seven categories


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and their sub-categoriesemerging from an analysis of

around 25 words

5: Zenos Paradox

It is well known thatconsidered mathematicallythe

speeding hare will never catch the tardy tortoise. The same

can be said of memory when it is given an inequitable load. It

rebels against completely finishing what it knows is

essentially a sub-set of something else; and hence not themain task. If that imaginative drive is allowed to go to sleep

as a result of being sidetracked for too long by something on

the way, no amount of frantic chasing will suffice to revive

it.

In this spirit, after coding 60 or so of my 3000 words

(working, of course bottom-up) Im keen to change the focus.

The exact circumstances of the completing of the coding itself

becomes a parameter in the experiment. So its essential to

take a top-down view now; and to workin this way on

Georgian.

Zenos Paradox, however, also offers us an imaginative model

for the mature workings of memory when a language is more

nearly mastered than is currently the case with my Georgian.

There is the dichotomy of the patient accretion of bottom-up

elements versus those imaginative swoops of the mind when it

successfully finds a missing piece of the jigsaw. Second, it is

a true metaphor of the always incomplete language-learningprocess; whereas language learning methods generally

proceed quite differently: from the erroneous premise that a

student will actually complete and then successfully retain

everything, if not now, certainly very soon. Finally, if it is

looked upon a little differently, Zenos Paradox may also take


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on an added meaning. Seen as a race from A to B, the position

of the tortoise looks hopeless; but if we also imagine it also to

be, simultaneously, a race from B to A, things are rather

different. The tortoise knows the route well, and has,

generally speaking, already visited more of it than the hare. Itcan easily reverse its direction of travel and go back in the

direction of B to A; whereas the hare must overshoot, and

additionally gear himself up for a second dash back the way

he came, which will take time, and (above all) fruitlessly

expend further energy. However, we shall now play devils

advocate and take on the role of the hare, building up a

hypothetical model of how Georgian may work, not worrying

yet about the inches of the race which we have not yetcovered, or maybe will never visit. And to do that we will

need to look at a jigsaw text about Van Goghs Sunflowers.

6: Sunflowers1

The book in front of me, about art (Masters of ArtTbilisi

[Palitra L Publishing Ltd, 2011]) which comprises six

jigsaws, has been published in two identical editions, one

English, one Georgian. So we should not go too far astray in

construing the meaning from the English and thus and attempt

to recall/discover how Georgian operates.

Georgian is said to be unrelated to Indo-European languages;

but thats something I occasionally question. English painter

for example surely has something in common with Georgianphermtzeri Sanskrit havingpingah, reddidsh andpimsati,

he cuts/carves/adorns; while the words for to write in both

Russian(fpeesaht) and Lithuanian (piesiu) also beginning

with p.


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Our text begins: Vinsent Van GogiHollandeli Phermtzeri da

Graphikuli; and then an opening paragraph:During different

periods of his life, Van Gogh worked as an art trade broker,

teacher and clergyman:which in Georgian is: skhva-da-skhva

drosof other-and-other timeVan Gogi iqoVan Goghwassamkhatvro savaCHro phermis komisionelia

painting-merchant-firmscommismastsavlebeli da

modzvoveli teacher and priest.

Second sentence: ris shemdegatspresumably, after which

things- ra meaning what and shemdeg next; withats as a

kind of adverbial formant in postposition 27 tslisamat the

age of 27gadatsqvita khatva sheestsavlahe decidedto

paint to learn/take up the study of (?)Just as I did for English, I have decided to code the new

Georgian words. For their consonant patternswhich strike

me as their most salient feature I have constructed a simple

table (Figure 2- one and two vowel word)


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A word such as enalanguage an e and then an a - would

get a coding of 11. The tables for 3 and 4 syllable words

would naturally be more extensive, giving a theoretical total

of (5+625=630) options for a Georgian word of up to 4syllables:

Now to cater for all possibilities

would make for a very unwieldy table, even if we restricted

ourselves to four vowel words as a maximum. The twenty-

five combinations which have accrued for each of a,e,i,o,and

u above (nos 6-30) would each need 25 entriestaking us to

155 entries before we even came onto considering four-vowel words, which are really the norm in Georgian. So I

thought of a short-cut: jump directly to the four-vowel words

but limit the table to 155 entries to be read in a particular way,

viz:

for four-vowel words, except those with an initial a (whose

series is complete) only those where for the possibilities

(w,x,y,z,) x = y do we read all off all 4 vowels: for the rest we

must be content with a coding based on the first 3 of the 4

vowels, always reading from the second column: a procedure

sufficing for 3-vowel words as well. Where there is a lacuna

(for example, if we code sheidsleba (e-i-e-a)meaning

maybe proceed as follows: from the second column as

starting point (viz. at Entry 81) jump over an unfruitful

column; and where necessary jump up for the entry to read

from; thus sheidsleba is coded 78 - with just 2 of its 4 vowels

figuring.

To emphasize this flexible

approach, I have coded three and four vowel words not from

31 but from 51, leaving a gap of 20, which may in itself act as

a mnemonic division of some perspicuity (Figure 3):


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Figures 3/4

Four- and Three- Vowel Georgian Words

Our words samkhatvro and savaCHro would get a coding of

54; modzoveli 168; gadatsqitva 61; khatva 6; and

sheestsvla 81

Theres not much point in coding loan words, or easy words

which I already know and which the reader may infer: this

study is meant to document a learning curve in action. The

journey of a thousand miles which starts under my feetshould be just that: Zenos tortoise has already left his

starting blocks.

Whats of great interest are the characteristic roots of

Georgian which - using Snip-Its - we can lay out as an


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anthropological schema of the language, much as we did in

our Semantic Field category for the first 3000 English

words. And with the same program we can build an ordered,

bottom-up chart of these encountered roots (see Figures 5,6b, 7 below. )

Figure 5: Snip-ItsGeorgian roots organized

by initial consonant

So far, three important roots have presented themselves: khat- paint;

tsqv- begin and stsavlearn. Weve also seen stsav- in mastsavlebeli*,

while mostavle is pupil: there is some crossover, in Georgian as

in German, between the concepts of studying and learning.*teacher


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Vowel patterns in Georgian have an advantage over those of

English: there are only 5not 20vowel possibilities

(diphthongs do present themselves from time to time but seem

generally capable of being split) The learning challenge is topin down the territory with the vowel coding; while

stimulating the remembrance of the complex consonant

clusters separately, using our table focusing on root forms. The

combination should prove ideal for unconscious memory.

7 : Sunflowers (2)

Georgian has a prefix of fixity, sa- which we saw in

savaCHromeaning literally, I think, merchant house (for art

works); and one of personality m- , which we see inmastavlebeli and mostavle. So we can discover another root,

vaCH- trade which is there in vaCHari, merchant. Im now

making the educated guess that, as in Arabic, its the

consonants which are important in the roots of words; and thus

classifying this as vch-.

Vinsents mteli tskhovlebis : all Vincents life [lit: Vincents alllife] ganmavlobashi umtrosi zma Teo ekhmareboda(?)

younger brother Theo helpedtavis rchenistvis autsilebel

tankhas ugzavnida.da saCHiro rchevebs adzlevda.


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rchena means to maintain; autsilebeli means indispensible

(Ive heard it spoken a little; the other day my Head Mistress

said that having a textbook was autsilebeli); tankhleba means

to accompany; saCHiro necessary. rchevebs is from rcheva,counsel. dzleva means give, so adzleva means he gave. Thus,

the second part of the sentence means, and gave necessary

counsel.

Ugzvanida is at first obscure, but gza means way, and we are

getting closer.

But at this point I discover that tankha means asum of money;

and has nothing to do with tankhleba , to accompany.

Ekhmareboda clearly means helped; the dictionary gives

dakhmarebaand I have used it myself (indirectly, via a

translation) when urging the students at my school to help each

other.

The problem lies with ganmavlobashi. However,shi is a

postpositional infix, meaning in ; and gan- a frequent suffix

with an apparently strengthening (although also on occasion

negating and dividing off) adjectival function. But now I

discover that movale means a debtor and movaleoba means to

owe; so I guess ganmavlobashi may mean in his debts so that

the sense is:All Vincents life in (his) debts (his) younger

brother Theo helped. Im assuming mvl- is a root meaning

owe. The text thus continues [and] for his maintenance,

essential sums sent along.


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When the idea ofsending alongcame to me, I was able to

factor in waygza : and sure enough, the dictionary gives two

words forsend gagzavna and gadagvana both

incorporating gza. u

it now comes to me

is a dative, tohim , a third person personal enclitic pronoun. Therefore,

ugzanida meanssent to him. Finally I remember that Georgian,

which has no infinitive, can also give a participle sense to

verbs like ugzavnida : so jettisoning our temporarily-borrowed

andwe can havesending along,for his maintenance, essential

sums.

The full text reads:

All Vincents life his younger brother Theo helped him with his

debts, sending along essential sums and giving necessary

advice.

The book has:

During his entire life Van Goghs younger brother Theo

supported him and offered advice.

*

Roughly a year later I discovered that my inference a couple ofparagraphs above about ganmavlobashi was flawed:

ganmavlobashisimply means during, and qualifies a

preceding expression of time. I might have guessed that from

the absence of a reference to debts in the books translation.


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8: After the Theft of Sunflowers

Liszt wrote a wonderful piece of piano music entitled, Aprs

une lecture de Dante; and indeed I felt exultant after decoding

the above piece of Georgian; with nothing but a 15,000 word

Georgian-Italian Dictionary (Bukhnikashvilis: 2011) and a

similar English-Georgian one (Sisauris online one in an

offprint; maybe 10,00 words) as well as the text itself, ofcourse. I was told when at school that making backwards

inferences by looking up likely words from ones own

language was a good tactic to employ; and so it turned out. Ill

wait for the strange dischords of Georgian in my head to die

down and reflect meanwhile on John Cassidys wonderful

lines:

I left him late, almost at nightfallMy head was turning with the stimulus of talk.

Any philologist would have envied me;

To be received by Jespersen, and shown such courtesy.

He walked me to the station. And shook hands.

We did not meet again.

I found that my passive memory for Georgian was immediately

strengthened. I went out and bought oranges at a market stall:simple enough, but the word phortokali came out quicker than the

time it would have taken to remember it: there was no conscious

reflection about the situation on my part. That's the first time this

has happened with Georgian; although on my own I recall that

after a prolonged water cut, when I heard a gushing sound at last


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in the pipes, I declared (to no-one in particular) tsqali modis ('the

water has come back').

*

The Snip-Its chart, giving the material encountered to date,

looks compact and helpful. It is collated (behind the scenes)

with the Excel spreadsheet (above) with the same information.

Below: Figures 6b (showing the first five or six entries, open at

Space 42 [o-e-imodzveli - tskhovlebis, priest; life] and

Figure 7 (with all the words of the text to date included).

Figure 6b: modzvelitskhovlebis [o-e-i-]


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Figure 7 : Chart showing the first Georgian vowel patterns

encountered in the Van Gogh text. Open at Space 42:

modzoveli (priest) tskhovlebis (lifedat.) Theres no way of

making the entries obey any numeric order; which suits the

random fashion with which we encounter language.

9: Let Nothing Affright Thee


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I had hoped in my youthful studies of medieval illuminated

manuscripts to find some golden mean of intellectual harmony.

According to this ideal, Saint Teresas words would have been

true for me. However I realize now that harmony must be

brought into the fabric of our studies by ourselves, and by theapproaches we take to them.

For although Isaiahs images of an arrow cleaving the air, and

sharpened swords vanquishing intellectual confusion, remain

appealing, we live in a quantum universe, where the

experimenter affects the experiment. Nowhere is this more

apparent than in the study of languages.

I have a textbook of Georgianby no means a long book

which has about forty learning points per page; the book has

more than 200 pages. No-one could master 8,000 learning

points; so I must conclude that the book in practice never

fulfills its overt aim. Quantum effects will result: people will

give up the book at various stages, or will take from it just this

or that (which they will also soon forget, if my overall premise

is correct).

Im more than happy, therefore, to pursue my experiment with

memory even when its consequences may seem incomplete

and bizarre. Indeed, Im coming to believe that

incompleteness and sudden unexpected jumps are,

paradoxically, tokens of progress, rather than of confusion.

*

After 84 entries of my database of some common English

words I sensed it was time to proceed to some preliminary

analysis. The study of Georgian and of English had merged

into one; and I sensed that the results of now applying a top-


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down view to a sample which had been created bottom-up

might be very fruitful.

The concept of the syllable is a typical dinosaur idea which

linguists have taken over uncritically from the days whenEnglish and indeed all languages were analyzed as if they were

Latin. In Latin verse, clearly, a syllable-count is necessary for

the metre; and has, naturally, a symbiotic relationship with it.

In imitation, a great deal of English poetry was subsequently

written in a similar (that is to say, classical) manner, with

scansion and vowel-length determining the finished result; but

that is irrelevant to the understanding of English as a living

language by modern foreign students.

I scored English words beginning with a 5, 10, 14, 15, 20,

*20, 25, 30 or 35 according to perceived syllable

phenomenology- syllablicity - with typical examples : a all

alligator alike admire ambitious address afternoon acrobat,

altogether.

Principles and Exceptions

5 represents a half-syllable and 35, three-and-a-half syllables;

while *20 as in ambitious was used for words which ended in a

typical ex-Latin terminationthe idea being to direct attention

there, as its a detail having richer long-term mnemonic

potential, and there are lots of words with such endings. 14

was used for two words nearly one-and-a-half syllables long:

alike and alive. These are already Class 3 words (see above)

with unhelpful neighbours in their endings ( a+i: producedby a and i invaded by k and

v ). My idea was to reinforce this perception, drawing

attention away from syllablicity in favour of the words

Class 3 qualities. However, on reflection I have scored these

two words 15 and included them. amaze might have been


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coded as a Class 3 word (it has the unhelpful neighbour

phenomenon) but since it is marginally longer than the alike

and alive it scores 15 and is also here in our tables for the

purposes of this chapter.

The resulting sample of around 70 words which may be sorted

in respect of increasing syllablicity (Figure 8a):

Figure 8a: Sorting English words by increasing Syllablicity

Next (Figure 8b) I apply a sort by sonic feel and/or stress

pattern using (1) the subjective categories short flat compact

breathed mid-breathe 2-minim (i.e. equal weight) and train


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rhythm (i.e. a regular pattern of four short accents) for various

sonic feel categories; and (2) the quasi-notational

symbolisms 1z and aB to denote stress patterns: here lower-

case z is obviously subservient to numeral 1 and the lower-

case a subservient to upper-case B (denoting thereby thatwords with stress on the first part or second part are

respectively indicated). While words with immediate stress

often stop short, words with stress second always have a halo

of continuance to them, which I have indicated thus aB- and

aB-(). Examples would be adult and although, respectively

although I also have 1z() and 1z-() for absence and absolute

(contrast with agent, 1z) : which are words with stress first

which do have some sense of continuance and do not stopshort. When the different categories are labeled (A to M) we

get what would make a very fine English language classroom

chant:


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Our fourteen categories, A to M may be described as follows, under four

main headings:

1 A-C - QUAVER-crochet stress group

A - stress on first part, quaver CROCHET, stops short, example actress

B - stress on first part, quaver CROCHET, does not stop short, example

absence

C -stress on first part, quaver CROCHET, does not stop short but has

'tail', example absolute

2 D-E - crochet-QUAVER stress group

D - stress on second part, crochet QUAVER, has (obligatory)

continuation, example again

E - stress on second part, crochet QUAVER, has (obligatory)

continuation; but also 'tail', example advantage

F - triadic stress with central climax, crochet QUAVER crochet, example

amazing

3 G-K - words coded by 'feel' rather than stress; within a general

analysis of 'syllablicity':

G - breathed - example ache

H - compact (i.e. may seem to have a plurality of components but is

pronounced so fas*t that the general effect is one of the word being

speeded up and compacted) - example albatross

I - flat words - very soon over example addJ - mid-breathe words - significant softening - example age

K -short words - like flat words but in territory more e than strictly

consonantal example all

4 L and M : even and regular stresses


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L - quadripartite but regular/equally stressed, 'train rhythm', example

altogether

M - bipartite but of equal stress in each part, example airplane

*

That is all very well Kenneth Clark might have saidbut fine words

butter no parsnips. Would you more readily believe a statement by the

architect or the finished building? In our context, the question is:

would one more readily believe the results of such a chant when

practised by a group of foreign language students; or the pedagogues

statement of intent?

Its obvious this research will go on long enough for me to report back

on the efficacy of such a chant in stimulating the students long-term,

passive, unconscious memoryalthough my proof will clearly have to

be in terms of unexpected quantum effects that such drilling

accidentally inspires.

From my perspective, however, its more important to avoid a classical

temptation, which was so wonderfully depicted almost 1300 years ago in

the Book of Kells:


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Figure 9: Temptation of Christ on the Roof of the Temple, Book of Kells

With about 3.5% of our sample coded, its easy to get carried away and

imagine the learning potential of all the chants which could be

developed from our words. With 13 other parameters for each letter,

thats around three hundred (25x13=325) pedagogic possibilities, on the

basis of one spreadsheet aloneassuming it gets finished. But as

quantum physicists have recently said in a slightly different context, you

cannot go back and measure the detail of the experiment you have justhad, without abolishing the existence of that experiment itself.
http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?um=1&hl=en&sa=N&biw=1024&bih=454&tbm=isch&tbnid=WpsyUW5xLzwohM:&imgrefurl=http://www.journeywithjesus.net/Essays/20070219JJ.shtml&docid=WB6W8__Y0IrgvM&imgurl=http://www.journeywithjesus.net/Essays/Book_Of_Kells_sm.jpg&w=189&h=281&ei=nFboT8e0HI66-Aaoxa2xAw&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=329&vpy=80&dur=702&hovh=224&hovw=151&tx=74&ty=157&sig=114379630515732151973&page=1&tbnh=122&tbnw=88&start=0&ndsp=16&ved=1t:429,r:2,s:0,i:78


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No to think like that is to think with the old physics. Its to fall into

the trap of Kraveishvili and Nakutshrishvilis Teach Yourself Georgian

which no-one will ever finish because (like most language-learning

books) it ignores three important things: the memory of the user,

quantum effects, and the effect that those same quantum effects will

have on learning and memory itself. Clearly there are a multitude of

paths which will be taken by both myself as experimenter and by those

upon whom I may try out the experiment; and each stage on each path

will trigger its own set of unique reactions. Its to those that we must

remain faithful: its within that matrix that my experiment with memory

must to bear its richest fruit, stimulating not just memory, but maybe the

creativity of the brain tout court.

*


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Figure 10: Field of Sunflowers near Bolnisi, Georgia

Vinsent van gogis nakhati larnazi tortmeti mze-sumzirit inakheba akhal

pinakotekashi (miunkheshi, germania) we read. Vincent van Goghs

painting Vase with Twelve Sunflowers is exhibited at the Neue

Pinakothek, Munich, Germany. nakhati must meanpainting: the na

seemingly a suffix of instantiaton; the khat the root forpaintand the i

ending signifying to us that here is a noun. In Georgian counting, 1,2,3

are erti ori sami ; for the teen numbers meti is added and where the

number begins with a vowel, a t is prefixed: tortmeti. mze means sun,

so its easy to deduce mzesumzir- as sunflower (the dictionary tells us

that the word is mzesumzirathe form here is in the instrumental case

so that the way Georgian has it is 12-sunflowered vase painting.


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*

Meanwhile a further sort of our English sample above reveals that

Englishlike Chineseis actually a tonal language. All words which

do not have a strong initial stress should be pronouncedpiano; those

with strong stress first,forte. It will be interesting to see if that rule-of-

thumb holds true with a much larger sample (Figure 11).


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10: The lesson with Sunflowers

The third meeting of the Bolnisi Summer School, 2012, gave me anopportunity to try out a small experiment in which I could stimulate the

students imagination and unconscious memory to the maximum,

building on recent researches and material used.

The lesson as planned and delivered contained a number of agreeable

strands, designed to complement each other and to build into the mix a

maximum of benevolent contrast.


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This is feature of great works of art. Munchs The Scream has an

opulent tangerine sunset vying with an ultramarine fjord, contrasting

with the severe diagonals of the bridge and the wavy lines of the

evening sky, themselves in geometrical opposition.

The Mona Lisa plays off mystery and light in the background

landscape against mystery and darkness in the figure. The one could

not be more alluring: its an imaginary paradise we wish to visit. The

other pushes us away: she is there with all her enigma, her reserve: she

does not welcome our intrusion.

The use of space in Breughel the Elders Fall of Icarus privileges sea and

sky against the earth, and the humble ploughman against the mythical

hero; the continuance of everyday life against a cosmic catastrophe

which goes unnoticed. (Figures 12-14.)

In a lesson, then, we need the intellectual aspects played off against the

lightest play; the severe against the charming; the theoretical against

the intuitive; the simple against the complex. As well as this we need an


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overarching theme. Munch has anguish; Leonardo, mystery; Breughel,

the impersonality of fate. I used Van Goghs Sunflowers: radiance, a

child-like simplicity of vision, joy. (Figure 15.)

Figure 12: Edvard Munch The Scream

Figure 13:Leonardo da Vinci The Mona Lisa
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/Mona_Lisa,_by_Leonardo_da_Vinci,_from_C2RMF_retouched.jpghttp://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/Mona_Lisa,_by_Leonardo_da_Vinci,_from_C2RMF_retouched.jpg


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Figure 14: Pieter Breughel The Elder The Fall of

Icarus

Figure 15: Vincent Van Gogh Sunflowers

My first priority was to place sunflowers in all the rooms to be used and to display

themed posters as well as a couple of reproductions of the famous painting in the

school. There was also a publicity poster in the local bakers (Figure 16).
http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/upload/img/gogh-sunflowers-NG3863-fm.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/vincent-van-gogh-sunflowers&h=371&w=295&sz=62&tbnid=aw48Kpq4bWuh9M:&tbnh=97&tbnw=77&zoom=1&usg=__0YFSue796sqWtxX8Btb4_dddS4Y=&docid=wRODiHTTbo5ZxM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=OnDwT6-oMKrg4QSPv5DSDQ&ved=0CGsQ9QEwAw&dur=200http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/upload/img/gogh-sunflowers-NG3863-fm.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/vincent-van-gogh-sunflowers&h=371&w=295&sz=62&tbnid=aw48Kpq4bWuh9M:&tbnh=97&tbnw=77&zoom=1&usg=__0YFSue796sqWtxX8Btb4_dddS4Y=&docid=wRODiHTTbo5ZxM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=OnDwT6-oMKrg4QSPv5DSDQ&ved=0CGsQ9QEwAw&dur=200


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Figure 16 mzasumgirit gakvetili

poster

Next, it was natural to complement art with musicI wanted a little

gentle music in the background. So I chose English romantic music of

the early twentieth centuryBaxs Tintageland Waltons Violin

Concerto particular favourites of mine, which in Georgia (a country so

starved of music in spite of having influenced Stravinsky) sounded

wonderfully well. It is maybe the sense of nostalgia locked into

Georgias archaic rural landscape, whose small field patterns resemble

those in Impressionist paintings; or maybe the long starvation of

freedom of the spirit which the country has suffered, subconsciously

communicating itself to the visitor: either way, these works, which

seem to come across a shade faded and histrionic when listened to in

England (probably because they live under the shadow of so many


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other late romantic, landscape-inspired pieces) have a renewed bloom

and a freshness when echoing down the sunlit corridors or a Georgian

rural school.

The Bax at full volume greeted the children as they arrived; and

contributed to a feeling of summer, out-of-doors, well-being and

excitement. The Walton was played without much explanation as a

backdrop to the children reading out the short Van Gogh text whose

Georgian version I studied in Chapters 6 and 7; and to their chanting of

the 74 words of increasing syllablicity which I listed at the end of

Chapter 9 (cf Figures 10 and 11 above).

Art and music then needed a play element: so the children tackled the

jigsaw puzzles of Sunflowersand the Georgian and English parallel

texts which I have been studying; but in a structured fashion which I

predetermined. As there are 50 words in the two English sentences

about Van Gogh and 50 pieces in the jigsaw puzzles, it seemed natural

to link the them: the words were written up on the blackboard and

then erased one by one as the children spoke them, simultaneously

deconstructing the Sunflowersjigsaw piece by piece from finished to

unfinished state. The pieces removed had to be preserved in pictorial


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order on an adjacent piece of white card, with a view to their being

replaced in their due positions during a re-run of the same pronouncing

exercise (Figure 17).

Figure 17: The Van Gogh jigsaw

In the event, second group did not preserve the removed pieces very

logically; and were therefore unable to reconstruct the jigsaw; so the

first group came to their assistance. Although the pronouncing aspect

of the exercise was lost along the way, the activity gave the students a

challenge they enjoyed.


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When the combination of removing the pieces and pronouncing the

words began, I immediately felt a definitefrisson suggestingthat here

was a learning technique of great potential. The feeling was short-lived,

due to those mishaps with the jigsaws, but its a moment I would like to

capture again if possible.

Wed had three contrasting and quite brief learning curves obviously

building up to the high point of painting sunflowers in the art room

(whether from life or after Van Gogh remained to be seen.) But

before moving on to practical art I wanted the children to come back to

the first room and view famous Van Gogh paintings with colour

swatches of the colours Van Gogh had used reproduced alongside

(Figure 18).


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Figure 18: Van Gogh: Cypresses with

colour swatch

I had maybe three aims in mind. I wanted to demonstrate that great art

if only you can work out how to do it is in essence simple. Second, I

wanted the students to think about choice of colours ahead of their

contact with the materials, which I had also laid out in colour groups.

Finally, I wanted them to respond to simple questions about how many

colours and which. The paintings which had been selected for this

colour swatch treatment contained only homely objects such as the

chair, table and bed in Van Goghs bedroom. The English language

element followed on from the artistic one quite naturally (Figure 19).


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Figure 19: Van Gogh: Bedroom at Arles with

colour swatch

Finally the process was reversed; and a splendid artistic effect followed

upon the priming of the students minds, which the earlier parts of the

lesson had achieved. The students whose ages ranged from 5 to 13

kept colours clear, worked intelligently and carefully, and produced the

paintings which I reproduce in below (Figure 20).


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Figure 20: Student Paintings of Sunflowers at the Bolnisi Summer School, 2012

The flowers in front of them were in glass vases; but many of the

paintings included earthenware pots, as in Van Goghs original, so I

deduce that a transference of ideas had indeed happened, and the

children had been inspired by what they had learned of Van Gogh.


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Chapter 12: Reflections in the Lily Pond

Fig 21: Monets Nymphas (Paris)

mones ert-ert nakhats shtabeCHdileba: mzis amosvla hkvia.

Monets a certain paint-ing Impression: sun rise is called.

erti means one in Georgian; ert-erti means a certain. (It is

curiously written with a hyphen; which does not serve the

same purpose in Georgian as in English, and seems only to be

used occasionally in the interests of disambiguation.)

Grammatically, subjects governed by what Id call an

essentive or quasi-essentive verb of equivalence go into the

dative:picture in its unchanged form is nakhati. Im sure its

best to avoid thinking about this and just pick it up along the

way: its as if a positive charge has been applied to the

electrons at the beginning of the sentence and they change

polarity. shtabeCHidileba seems a tremendous word,

assuredly as semantically complex in its origin as English

impression which means a pressing of something in or upon

something else; typically a printed page. Sun is mze(genitive:

mzis) as we know from mzesumzira sunflower; rise amosvla

contains an initial a which seems to have connotations of

immediacy and up (Easteris aghdgoma and oriental


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aghmosavleti ; aghdgoma is one of those particularly teasy

Georgian words which seem to want to reverse sonic

direction in mid-word). Clearly, I am sticking to a certain

Monet-like scholarly Impressionism in my analyses; butwould plead that language was invented before it became

necessary to conceive of grammar to explain it (Once the

whole is broken the parts need names said Lao-Tzu) . mo

in mometsi give me seems to have a feeling across to me,

to me; svla in its naked sense seems to mean a going ; De

Biasi and Bukhnikashvili have it as andimento in Italian, which

means trend. hkvia is the third person of the verb to becalled; me mkhvia means I am called.

We find this same root kv in the next sentence: stsored am

nakhatis mikhedvit daerkva sakheli mkhatvrobashi ert-ert

mimdinareobas impresionizms, rats prangulad

shtabeCHdileba nishnavs. Precisely this painting according-

to is called the name in art a certain movement:

Impressionism, which in French Impressionism signifies.

Clod mone daribulad tskhovrobda.Monet lived poorly.

sadaribepoverty.

Mogvianebit rodesats misi nakhatebi sakhveqnod tsnobeli

gakhda later when his paintings universally known became (I

deduced universallyfrom kveqniereba world, universe)


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khatvars satsualeba the painter the possibilitymietsa gave

lamazi baghisheekhena a beautiful garden to acquire. The

she- seems to suggest an initiatory set of circumstances,

compare sheestsavla begin to learn to paint. The idea of anentire clause governing the verb gave (although unproven)

seems the sort of thing Georgian might well do in the

interests of concision.

Am baghis mtsenaveebis of this garden the plants khatva to

paintmas dzlier uqvarda him extremely it inflamed. A

conventional translation would go: he loved extremely to

paint; but I wanted to bring out the impersonal construction

with the dative pronoun mas really controlling the clause as

powerfully as a Kings Indian bishopfianchetto; as much as it

is technically not the subject of the sentence! Find me the

subject! The subject in defiance of grammatical orthodoxy

is arguably the segment am baghis mtsenaveebis

implicitly in the dative (!) at the start of the sentence:which its best to see as having two loose meta-grammatical

identities, first subjective then (by the time you reach the

end of the reading of the sentence) that of an object; two

successive local inflectional colourations (genitive then

dative) as well as being globally in two successive cases

(nominative, accusative). The whole thing is quite subtle, and

enfolds and changes as the sentence is read:


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Figure 22: Semantics in action in a Georgian sentence

The readers mind has thus to keep track oftwenty-foursuccessive apprehensions changes of semantic status as

it tracks the iridescent shifts of meaning which this simple

seven-word sentence generates (see above) over the short

maybe three-second period of its being read.

That says something for both the elegance and complexity of

Georgian! May Georgian readers pardon me for the mistakes

and slips which are probably present in the parts of this

essay! If I know one thing about the Georgians, they will not

be slow in coming forward to point them out!

The Georgian books translation (exactly as given):

One of Claude Monets works is named Impression. Sunset

(sic). In response to this painting art critics labeled one of thetrends in art as Impressionism. For some time, Monet lived in

poverty. Later on, when his paintings became extremely

popular worldwide, he was able to afford to buy a beautiful


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garden. Monet was fond of painting the many plants and

flowers, which grew in his garden.

Chapter 13: In the Theatre of Ultima Thule

The Setting

For most people, languages are difficult to learn and situated

imaginatively in a most distant and even ancient place, the Ultima

Thule of the imagination. Ultima Thule (maybe Greenland, Norway or

Iceland) is of course the mythical place which delimited the bounds of

the ancient world for classical geographers such as Strabo and

Herodotus.


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Fig 23: Thule in Modern Greenland (town of Thule, relocated to accommodate a US air base, in

extreme North West of Map)

If music is an incantation, speaking a foreign language is an act of

theatre. So when forced into the role of speaking a foreign language

when abroad, the Foreign Speaker may be said to be imaginatively in

the Theatre of Ultima Thule and by extension in a whole succession of

imaginative playgrounds which touch on deep archetypes (Figs 24-27).


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Fig 24: Ultima Thule (1539) with whale and sea monster adjacent

Fig 25: The Globe Theatre (1596)


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Fig 26: Giulio Camillos Theatre of Memory (1550) which attempted, bottom-up, to stimulate

imaginative memory


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Fig 27: Hieronymus Bosch: Garden of Earthly Delights (1490-1510). Renaissance luminaries

advocated strolling in gardens in order to remember and reflect in a cool setting.

So when we break out of the globalized thought-mold of the present

age which would have us all speak English, and utter words in a

foreign tongue, we are participating in an act which goes back to well

before the scientific age. For Georgians, of course, rooted in a tongue

as ancient as Hebrew, an opposite but no less momentous

transformation occurs when out of context and alone they speak in

English.


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The preponderance of technology has in fact somewhat minimized but

essentially changed the nature of the language we need to cope in

international situations. In doing so it has made it a norm that people

await instructions in the global language, English at least while

travelling and has ironed out the obvious possibility of speaking the

local language when in transit situations.

The need to speak at all is indeed obviated in many modern scenarios,

the advent of internet-booked tickets for example; but I believe this

conspiracy of silence in fact in a way heightens the drama attached to

the act of speaking a foreign language in the twenty-first century,

thereby making it even more appropriate to train for the event in a

theatral way.

There are two givens in this act of theatre: the scenario in question,

determined by the parameter of the circumstances of the interaction

in question; and the Foreign Speaker himself or herself (a term I am

using with deliberate looseness to denote conveniently a person in a

foreign setting trying to communicate in the local language). See Fig

28.


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Fig 28: Components of Foreign Language interaction

The Communication System of Language Learning

The Transit Lounge of the airport at which we change flights is

probably the first place where we become aware of our inadequacies

in communicating in a foreign tongue. Here we invariably find a coffeeshop. Coffee shops are much the same the world over nowadays. The

passenger must approach the counter and order a drink or maybe a

cake or a sandwich. He or she must either ask a question, e.g. Do you


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serve wine? or more likely - present a request, Id like (See Fig

29)

Fig 29: Zurich Airport coffee shop

Conventional systems of language learning leave the Foreign Speaker

entirely alone with his Kirkegaardian angst sink or swim as if there

were some paradoxical merit in being an enterprising Titanic

passenger, post iceberg-strike.

But what we might provisionally entitle The Communication System

of Language Learning - CSLA - recognizes that real language

communication almost always involves speaker, listeners, and one or

more interlocutors it is a public act in a group setting. Thus the

method itself should rigorously involve all three parties in each and

every situational scenario.

The scenario has two instances: one virtual, the version which in

anticipationCSLA affords. The second instance is the live scenario

which each of us meets when he or she takes the plunge and finally

ends up in the foreign country and thus inevitably in a foreign context.

But first moving down the chart let us look at what might be


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termed the existential conditions of the Foreign Speaker, as I have

delineated them.

The trainedness to scenario of the Foreign Speaker is, of course, the

state which results in him after CSLA input; as well as a reflection of

the individuals prior history of linguistic functioning in a given context.

If once you bought a railway ticket at Azay-le-Rideau, youll probably

be OK at the Hauptbahnhof in Berlin.

On the hoof behaviours are more subtle. This is where linguistic

aptitude, commonsense, resourcefulness, imagination and creativity

come in. Its the area where the basics of a linguistic knowledge

which CSLA hopes to convey to the widest imaginable constituency of

users may be converted into the beginnings of fluency.

Here always critically constrained, of course, by the circumstances in

question is where strategic advantages may be gained by asking for

the translations of things in the local language whenever possible; by

enquiring (for example) into what is the opposite of a concept; by

occasionally seguing into a permitted if off-piste language (a touch of

Russian in the course of speaking Georgian, maybe) again to trigger,

free-of-charge, helpful teaching from any local interlocutor. And

teaching from which one may even if this aspect of the construction

of linguistic readiness in properly considered remember things.

Inner, mental behaviours would be that whole complex mental dance

of anticipations which occurs when we try to make sentences,

however ungrammatical, in an alien tongue. Here we will be informed


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by hidden mnemonic templates urging us to structure sentences

Subject Verb Object, Subject Verb Complement, Verb Subject

Complement, or whatever; depending on the language in question and

the skills we have to date been able to develop for ambushing in real

time its characteristic semantic cadences.

Moving back up the chart to Scenario how is the CSLA scenario that

essential rehearsal for real life conditions achieved?

There are two inspirations here. Firstly, the Blueprint series of English

textbooks published by Longman in the late 1980s and 1990s.

Just as Classical Music reached its acme with maybe the string

quartets of Haydn, so English teaching methodology was at its best

around three decades after its initial definition by some enterprising

people at Oxford University Press in the 1970s. These Blueprint

books premiered the notion of situational dialogues; and no-one since

has done it quite so well or so charmingly.

In this context I am tempted to quote the Diderot phrase with which

Geoffrey Payzant innocuously ushers in his epoch-making book on

Glenn Gould: Un sage tait autrefois un philosophe, un pote, un

musicien. Ces talents ont dgnr en se sparant.

Secondly, Im inspired to take a leaf out of the madrigal-book of the

Cambridge-based, English choral conductor Tim Brown. Reflecting on

his praxis, Ive determined that the teacher must, with clear signs,


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start, progress and stop every micro-drama within the CSLA lesson

and thus become not a teacher, but a conductor.

Not only that, but conductor should become a transferrable role: the

student can and should quite easily take over the conducting role

from the teacher in his turn; and thus fulfill the modest but unstated

ideal of every pedagogue: Ive taught you all I know. You must now go

and study with Horowitz. So it was with Beethoven and Neefe. So I

hope it will be on many occasions with CSLA.

A small down-beat and an eye glance is all that is required to start the

process (Figs 31 and 32) whereas to stop it you make a clear,

leveling gesture (Fig 33).

Fig 30: A small down-beat

Fig 31: An eye glance


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Fig 32: A leveling gesture to denote

stop!

Next, timing. Typically, foreign students speak our sacred English

tonguewhat the French call, the language of Shakespeare too

carelessly, and far too fast; and above all without reference to the

necessary (and eloquent) counterpoint of silences and meaningful and

subservient stresses which give our language its fatidic meanings; and

incidentally (correctly handled) ought thereby to make it exponentially

easier to master

As a result, I no longer trust them to do it on their own. There have to

be three parties:

(a)the teacher/enabler/conductor (C)(b)the student/Foreign Speaker (FS)(c)the listener (any member of the rest of the class) (L).

As already indicated (a) determines the scenario; and drives it forward

from beginning to end and thus indeed interprets it; (b) closely


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attends to and follows the given instructions, looking for cues where

appropriate; (c) keeps quiet, attentive, and on-message; and follows

what is going on closely as he or she will have to do it in a minute.

Its of interest that what the FS speaks is entirely subservient to the

scenario and almost subsidiary; in spite of instantiating what

contemporary jargon would call the learning goal.

The second standee as the Leicestershire Bus Company would have

itis what I call the Stand-In Foreign Person (SIFP). This is the

patient student who says Good Morning or Gamarjobat when you

say Good Morning or Gamarjobat to him. He has everything going

for him. He can serve fictitious coffee. He can play the part of the

waiter. Once all these rituals and disciplines are observed, some

mnemonic and deep learning will have occurred. He or she can then

make the leveling gesture and bring the music of memory to a

temporary stop. Its a process which is probably more universal than

mankind itself; and will surely go on evolving aeons after the present

cohort of human beings has long since left the earth. A small gesture

of humility is sometimes important; and hopefully does not go

unrecognized


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Fig 33: Sir Colin Davis (1927-2013) at the Royal Albert Hall

Documents

An Experiment With Memory