Restate a passage and find its ambiguity: Grammar, Round 1

1 Learn

You will be able to

Restate a passage of about 100 words without copying its phrases.
Sort its claims into stated and inferred in two columns.
Say whether a passage resists you because a sign is unknown or because it is ambiguous.
Give two readings of an ambiguous word or phrase, and settle it by Augustine's order of remedies or say why it stays open.

LibraryHow to Read a Great Book: Levels, Modes and the Completion Standard · Reconstruct before you criticizeState the author's claims fairly, in your own words, before you object.2 min glance · 6 min
LibraryObserve, Define, Represent: The First Three Moves · Submitting to realityThe two-column practice separates what is observed from what is interpreted, a split close to stated and inferred (the page's columns are headed Observed and Interpreted).2 min glance · 6 min
LibraryAugustine on Signs, Interpretation and Eloquence · Why a text resists youAugustine's two causes of a text's resistance, unknown signs and ambiguous signs, each of which can be proper or figurative.2 min glance · 6 min
LibraryAugustine on Signs, Interpretation and Eloquence · Ambiguity: an order of remediesFor an ambiguous word: check the punctuation or pronunciation first, then the plainer passages, then the context.2 min glance · 6 min
LibraryHugh of Saint Victor's Didascalicon: Wisdom First, Then Order · Method: letter, sense, inner meaningThe sense is the plain meaning on the surface, which a restatement captures before any interpretation.2 min glance · 7 min
LibraryHow a Liberal Education Forms Judgment and Expression · One act in three moments: the triviumGrammar takes in exactly what is said. Skip it and you argue with a clause nobody wrote.2 min glance · 7 min
LabDefinitionsThe entry on ratio: logos means word, account, reason and ratio all at once, one word with several senses.

2 Practise

Answer each card from memory, then grade yourself honestly. The cards join your review deck and come back just before you would forget them.

recall
How does Augustine distinguish natural signs from conventional signs, and what example does he give of a natural sign?

Show answer
Natural signs lead to knowledge of something else without anyone intending them as signs, as smoke indicates fire. Conventional signs are those that living beings exchange to show what they feel or think; among people, words hold the chief place.
apply
A clause in a policy can be read two ways depending on where a pause or comma falls. Following Augustine's order for ambiguous words, what do you check, and in what order?

Show answer
First whether punctuation or pronunciation is the problem; then the rule of faith, which Augustine gathers from the plainer passages and the authority of the Church (for a policy, its plainer clauses); and if both readings still fit, the context, what goes before and what comes after.
apply
A bug report says "the server is overloaded and the app is clearly broken." How would you apply the page's two-column practice to it?

Show answer
Both phrases go in the Interpreted column: "overloaded" and "clearly broken" are conclusions, and the report contains no plain observation. Rewrite each as a checkable claim, such as which requests failed, how and how many times, and what load measurement crossed what threshold.
connect
"The Weekly Loop: Read, Reconstruct, Make, Defend, Log" builds this page's rule "reconstruct before you criticize" into a weekly routine. What makes a reconstruction fair, and why must it come before you object?

Show answer
A fair reconstruction is one the author would accept: a person who holds the view could read your summary and say, "yes, that is what I think." Without that, any objection you make is aimed at a stand-in rather than at the author's actual argument.

3 Prove it: the mastery check

5 questions drawn from a pool of 11. The pass mark is 80%. There is no time limit, and you can retake it with new questions; your best result counts.

4 Prove it: the performance task

Restate a passage and settle an ambiguity

Choose a published passage of about 100 words that makes a claim, for example from a policy, a contract, a news report or a book. Do not use your own writing or a private message. Then: (1) restate it in your own words, copying no phrase of four or more words; (2) draw two columns, 'Stated' and 'Inferred', and sort every claim the passage makes or implies into them; (3) mark one word or phrase that can be read two ways, and write out both readings; (4) say whether the difficulty comes from an unknown sign or an ambiguous one, then work through Augustine's order (punctuation or pronunciation, plainer passages in the same text, then the context) and record which step settled it, or that none did. Allow about 30 to 45 minutes. Last, read your restatement against the passage and correct anything its author would not accept.

What to hand in: A one-page sheet with the passage quoted at the top, or a link to it, then the restatement, the two columns, the two readings and the record of the remedies. Save it on the page or download it.

Saved only in this browser. To keep a copy, download it or export your progress.

5 Discuss: the seminar

Read the text, then think, write or talk through the question with someone. There is no answer key: the aim is a better question.

Grammar · Round 1

Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, I.8.13 (Book I, chapter 8, section 13)J. G. Pilkington's translation (Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 1, 1887), public domain, as revised for New Advent. Read the whole of section 13, where Augustine describes how he learned to speak.
Dionysius Thrax (attributed), The Art of Grammar, sections 12 to 25 in Davidson's numbering (12 the word, 13 the sentence and the list of eight parts, 14 noun, 15 verb, 19 participle, 20 article, 21 pronoun, 23 preposition, 24 adverb, 25 conjunction)Thomas Davidson's 1874 translation, 'The Grammar of Dionysios Thrax' (Journal of Speculative Philosophy 8, pp. 326-339), public domain. Davidson thought the work genuine, but its authorship is now disputed: Vincenzo Di Benedetto argued in 1958 and 1959 that only the opening sections go back to Dionysius (2nd century BC) and that most of the rest, including the parts of speech, was written in the 3rd or 4th century AD. Leading scholars at first rejected his argument, but it is now widely accepted by specialists (status: Provisional, taken from a general reference summary and not checked against Di Benedetto's papers). Read it as the short school grammar that shaped later Greek and Latin teaching, not as the certain work of one author. Other editions number the sections differently.

Augustine says he learned to speak by watching which things his elders named and moved towards, and by reading their faces, glances and tones. Dionysius sorts the words of a sentence into eight kinds. What does each account assume a word is, and which of the two explains better how a child first learns what a word means?

Augustine says he gradually gathered what things words were the signs of. Are all eight of Dionysius's parts signs of things, or do some, such as the article and the conjunction, do a different job?
Dionysius defines a noun as a declinable part of speech signifying something concrete or abstract (section 14). Is 'nobody' a noun by that test, and what does the test miss?
Augustine's account suggests that a child learns a name by seeing an elder say it and move towards the thing. What is left to learn after that, and who must already know what?

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Restate a passage and find its ambiguity