Trans activists want to control language as radically as any totalitarian.

The classic theory of grammar—which is the interaction between speech sounds (phonology), word shape (morphology), word order (syntax), and word meaning (semantics)—derives from linguist Noam Chomsky’s generative grammar model. In this theory, one can use predictive grammatical models to explain why words appear where they do in the sentence, and to explain the observed behavior of language. George Lakoff expanded this theory by recasting it in terms of our experience as embodied movers in a co-constructed conceptual space. Rather than a grammar module forming ex nihilo, generating sentences out of nothing, in other words, embodied grammar generates sentences that derive from and are actively applied to our memories and mental representations of ourselves as beings interacting with other beings in a space.

This is a long-winded way of saying that we use words to describe an experience we imagine, that what we imagine may happen in the future is based on what has happened already, and what we think is happening is based on what we think could be happening. All of this is happening in real time alongside the demands of language formulation—deciding what exactly you want to say and how to say it in response to stimuli and your own intentions—speech production (the motor movements of speech), and often simultaneous social reasoning in spontaneous conversation. This is all cognitively demanding and made more difficult in the context of neurological impairments from depression, brain injury, dementia, chemotherapy, ADHD, and other trauma.

In order to communicate, a person must first imagine their intended communication. Then they must imagine what the listener would need to hear for the listener to understand what the speaker intends to communicate. Then, holding that image stable, they must plan and formulate language, and then apply that language to the embodied language virtual reality simulator in a real time, dynamic fashion, so as to maximize signal clarity and efficiency while minimizing unnecessary information and deviation. This is cognitively tasking. The Chomsky and Lakoff phenomena occur in different areas of the brain. Sometimes, my patients come to me because the Chomsky generative grammar language area has been damaged, such as in an impact, leaving the Lakoff embodied grammar language module intact.

#Trans #Transsexual #Grammar #Pronouns