Geniuses Avoid Boring Grammar

Uh, I was home sick with the flu when they taught the rules of grammar. Been successfully avoiding it ever since. Besides, WIIFM (what is in it for me?) about stupid grammar decades later? Got a law degree and passed the bar without mastering it, right?

Turns out our brain comes pre-loaded with the rules of grammar for our native language and even a second one. So what? Our brain infers meaning, from the specific parts of speech; humans think, using the rules of grammar. Huh, meaning and thinking?

How did I learn that when I was home sick with the flu? We pick it up subconsciously by hearing and reading. Are we all copycats? Uh-huh. We OverLearn the grammar of our own language. It operates on auto-pilot like typing and driving your car.

What is it really? Nothing big, just the rules defining how your language is made. It contains morphology (form and structure) of word formation and how we communicate. Includes reading, writing, listening and speaking.

Comes from Greek and means: of letters. Does it separate winning and losing in the Knowledge Economy? Not if you are Bill Gates or Steven Jobs, but we aint.

Ambiguous Pronouns

More gibberish? My personal favorite song from kindergarten was B.I.N.G.O. Remember the first line? There was a farmer who had a dog, and Bingo was his name-o. You slapped your leg as you withdrew one-letter at a time with each new stanza.

a) Question? Whose name was Bingo, the farmer or the dog?

Wait. Drugs can kill kids. Keep them locked up.

b) Question? Who do we lock up, the kids or the drugs?

You just read two examples of Ambiguous Pronouns. But you really know the meaning of the sentence because you are experienced in thinking in English.

Google: Dr. J. Jarvikivi, 4.’05, Psychological Science. His team researched whether we decipher Ambiguous Pronouns using the order (first-mentioned) of the named (farmer, then dog), or use the rules of grammar. It turns out we emphasize the Subject more than the Object, and the first mentioned noun, than the second. But the subconsciously learned grammatical rules won.

It means your brain picks up meaning from the syntax (parts of speech), plus your cognition (thinking) is based on the grammatical structure of what we read and hear. Kind of important.

Pronouns Cool Your Brain

You know what Information Overload means, it is part of operating in the Knowledge Economy. If the average U.S. executive read all the reports, articles and books required daily, he/she would spend twelve (12) hours at it. No good.

Your brain is a master in adapting to processing new information. The first time you learn something new, your brain fires on all associated synapses. It is putting out a super effort involving both your frontal (executive) and parietal lobes.

The parietal lobes involve spatial processing and our sense of touch. Your frontal involves your left hemisphere specializing in language.

Profound Research Results

The use of pronouns maintains brain fluidity, connections and elasticity. It avoids information-overload of your neural circuitry and short and long-term memory systems. Pronoun usage instead of repetitious use of proper names, saves your three-pound computer (skull) from crashing. Acts like a firewall?

Dr. A. Almor at University of South Carolina used fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imagery) to discover the use of pronouns inhibits the use of our Parietal lobe. Aha. Your brain loves to use the path of least resistance, and avoid mental effort. Google: NeuroReport, 8.20.07, under language acquisition.

Your brain prefers to use your frontal lobe exclusively, and lose the effort of adding the parietal function. Why? All of us have a limited memory capacity, and holding proper names instead of pronouns, uses more memory.

The use of a proper name requires opening up a new representation of the person (named) to include his/her total associations included in our brain file. Pronouns avoid using additional memory. Remember, it takes cognitive effort to avoid losing information; pronouns require much less information to be held in memory.

Key Point

When you use pronouns instead of proper names, your brain has a fifty-pound weight taken off its figurative shoulders. It can now move swiftly from one thought, idea, and sentence to another. It has more usable RAM for cognitive processing. You get more bang for the buck, more meaning and intent of the ideas and thoughts.

Know These Pronouns In the sentence, I myself hate math, you are using an Intensive Pronoun. It emphasizes the noun that comes before it. Other Intensives are: herself, himself, itself, myself, ourselves, themselves and yourselves.

How about, The President himself knocked on our door.

Relative Pronouns

Here is an example; You may bring the book (that) you love best. Relative pronouns introduce a clause or part of a sentence.

Others are which, who, whom, and that.

More pronouns I never learned: Subjective: which perform the action of a verb. Can you list them?

Still more: Objective – Possessive – Demonstrative – Interrogative and Indefinite. Google these pronouns to lubricate your cognitive synapses.

Endwords

Who cares about stupid grammar? Admit it, we have to give it another chance. If you want to avoid Cognitive Decline, you require Cognitive Reserve. It illustrates the cliché, use-it-or-lose-it, as applied to maintaining a health brain. Try this one – the neurons that fire together, wire together. Dr. Donald O. Hebb.

We suggest learning to 3x your reading speed and 2x your long-term memory creates a unique competitive advantage in school and your career. It appears to add healthy years to your longevity, and reduces the incidence of Alzheimer and Parkinson by up to 50% in your senior years. Yes really.

Ask us how.

See ya,

copyright 2007
www.speedlearning.org
hbw(at)speedlearning.org

Author of Speed Learning for Professionals, published by Barron's; partner of Evelyn Wood, creator of speed reading, graduating two million, including the White House staffs of four U.S. Presidents.

Interviewed by the Wall Street Journal and fortune Magazine for major articles.

http://www.speedlearning.org