What must we understand before we know the words?
Linguists call this question, “Deep Structure.”
Why are linguistics, deep structure, and understanding important?
Watch our Truth in Two to find out (full text below).
Getting below the surface of words is to understand how others think.
Subscribe to “Truth in Two” videos from Comenius (here). Mark is President of The Comenius Institute (website). Dr. Eckel spends time with Christian young people in public university (1 minute video), teaches at Indiana University Purdue University at Indianapolis, and interprets culture from a Christian vantage point (1 minute video). Consider becoming a Comenius patron (here).
Picture Credit: Luke Renoe, thesagenews.com, sciencemag.org
FULL TEXT
The class is “Linguistics.” It is the last course I am taking for an M.A. in English at the public university. Honestly, this class has been kicking my hind parts. I have struggled through the first segments of the coursework on phonology, morphology, and syntax. Every week I try to wrap my mind around ideas that seem foreign to me, even in my own language.
One night the professor discussed the “deep structure” of sentences. Again, my mind was reeling. There was a synapse problem. I was having trouble crossing the divide, between my own language and what seemed to be an alien language. Suddenly, my feeble brain recalled a sci-fi thriller, Arrival, where the hero of the story is a linguist, starring Amy Adams.
There is a scene in the film where she is trying to convey the difficulty of understanding an alien language. The military officer questions why she is using “grade school” language with aliens. Adam’s character goes to the white board to write a sentence. She then begins to talk about the “deep structure” of the sentence. She says, it is impossible to understand the words before one understands the underlying idea, of say, what a question mark is.
It was as if the sun rose, lights came on in a dark room, balloons dropped in celebration! I was ecstatic! I finally got it through my thick skull. “Deep structure! I get it now!” I struggle with learning as much as anyone. But there are times for all of us when the learning “bulb” goes off over our head. I had arrived with the movie Arrival.
For Truth in Two, this is Dr. Mark Eckel, President of the Comenius Institute, personally seeking truth wherever it’s found.