John McWhorter uses the phrase “bristling morphology” to label languages like Old Norse. You like ending? O.N. has ’em. (BTW, ’em is the Old English (Continue Reading)
Pat’s Polemics
On-going brilliance
Review of Wilkerson’s Caste
06/26/2021 Pat Barrett 1 CommentLooking at the reviews I realize the very number of them will drown my little comment but It’s worth noting that regardless of the many (Continue Reading)
The role of morphology
04/29/2021 Pat Barrett Add CommentReading Matthew’s Morphology inspires observations such as the following: The -s of 3rd p. sg. present is deleted or not present in the subjunctive. However, (Continue Reading)
Pick up Ladder anew Feb. 4
02/07/2021 Pat Barrett Add CommentAs I picked up my Reading Ladder after neglecting it since January 2, I noted that each page I read contained a gem. Here are (Continue Reading)
Recent highlights
11/08/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentPulling books off the shelf at random, the Reading Ladder offers some highlights of why these books are in the ladder. Starting with the most (Continue Reading)
How can I show you?
10/31/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentVery often, statements of conditions are challenged. For instance, the Atlantic had an article titled How America Outlawed Adolescence. Without finishing the article, my thoughts (Continue Reading)
Tracing change in a language over millennia
09/01/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentReading Medieval and Modern Greek, we see the changes from Classical to Koine Greek, phonological and morphological. Most of such tracing I’ve learned has been (Continue Reading)
Donald Trump wants to believe he matters……..
09/01/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentThat is a line in John Dean and Bob Altemeyer’s new book on Trump, “Authoritarian Nightmare.” After doing a decent job of outlining Trump’s childhood, (Continue Reading)
Twilight of Democracy
08/21/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentAlong with my list of books on my reading ladder I’ve added another category, casual reading. By that I mean books I just need to (Continue Reading)
Here’s a reading plan
05/18/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentMy wife has expressed interest in the book Sugar in the Blood. It delves deeply into the social history of one island in the Caribbean, (Continue Reading)
The World and Acquiring Ergativity
05/17/2020 Pat Barrett 2 CommentsTwo books came, one yesterday on Ergativity and one today by Richard Haass who is seen a lot on Morning Joe. I’ve started both and (Continue Reading)
Why We’re Polarized
04/14/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentI dropped my 22 books I’m reading every day to spend 3 days reading Ezra Klein’s Why We’re Polarized. As a life-long liberal Democrat, I (Continue Reading)
Anthropological pitfalls
03/31/2020 Pat Barrett 1 CommentTrying to understand another culture is an amazing adventure. I have never lived in another culture other than my adjustment to African-American culture coming from (Continue Reading)
Reading for March 21, 2020 the year of COVID 19
03/21/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentOnce before I wrote up what I’d read in my reading ladder on one particular day. Things have changed around here, especially two: my grandson (Continue Reading)
Amy Chua on Tribal World
03/06/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentForeign Affairs put out an issue in July/Aug 2018 that featured an article on each division of our divided world: Realist, Liberal, Tribal, Marxist, Tech (Continue Reading)
A Maxim to remember
03/05/2020 Pat Barrett 2 CommentsSkidelsky writes of the Rothschilds in the 19th century that “profts came before peace” despite their resistance to financing wars. And now profits come before (Continue Reading)
Autism in bygone days….
02/20/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentReading Patrick O’Brian’s well-drawn characters in his Aubrey-Maturin novels, I am struck over and over again by the way the behaviors of some of the (Continue Reading)
Chilling memories prompted by Trump
02/19/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentSharp comparison given in article by George Packer on William Holbrooke quoting a woman who lived through the Balkan wars and was watching a Trump (Continue Reading)
The True History of the Modern GOP
02/06/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentAt the Republican National Convention in the Cow Palace in San Francisco in 1964, a piercing reminder of what these people have been thinking all (Continue Reading)
Nous – observations and questions
02/06/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentIn NOUS, pp. 78-79 I’ve noticed some interesting things. A chapter is titled Une drole de journee. I had read that de is used after (Continue Reading)
Finishing two books
01/30/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentI’ve finished Berlin and am finishing tonight Trade. Both deal with African slavery, the former in the U.S. The first is very readable and I (Continue Reading)
The way it really was…..
01/26/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentIn the wake of the Civil Rights Act passing, some people took it seriously. Here is an example of what happened (from Rick Perlstein’s Before (Continue Reading)
Cross fertilization
01/21/2020 Pat Barrett Add CommentMy reading tonight started with 3 books on economics and one on early Christian morals. (Morality, Money, Duflo, Pluto) In Morality, Meeks quotes MacMullen on (Continue Reading)