How exciting, I get to be the pedant: it’s “stream-of-consciousness,” not “stream-of-conscious.” Conscious is an adjective; there can’t be a stream of it.
On the other hand English is highly imbued with lake of morphological inflection and other explicit lexicalization by grammatical type. So this is really just following the main stream tendency.
I was about to object that the latter is not in fact a noun but was surprised to see that wiktionary lists it as such. However it provides no usage examples and I strongly suspect it is in error.
I think it is occasionally used with "the," i.e. "the conscious" (referring to the conscious part of your body, for example). Adjectives sometimes become nouns this way, like "the poor"
I searched the Corpus of Contemporary American English ( https://www.english-corpora.org/coca/ ) for 'conscious_n', which means the token "conscious" with a 'noun' part-of-speech tag.
There are five results. All five of them are tagging errors:
If we scan to get enough info, then model the cells well enough, and have enough computers to run the simulation of the models, then the input-output of the emulation of the brain will be the same as the input-output of the original brain. It will act like it is conscious. [adjective, modifying it]
Well, first we work on working the body together, so that we can go places with both of us conscious. [adjective, modifying both of us]
Lady Bertram looks barely conscious. [adjective, modifying Lady Bertram]
In a few years, he believed, this institution would be needed in Ukraine, as new conscripts became more religiously conscious. [adjective, modifying new conscripts]
It is in this sense that Rahner means that grace is conscious. [adjective, modifying grace]
Examples 3 and 4 are so far from being nouns that they're being modified by adverbs.
It seems safe to conclude that in fact there is no nounal use of the word "conscious".
> Adjectives sometimes become nouns this way, like "the poor"
That isn't actually what's happening in "the poor". The position occupied by the token poor in that phrase can be filled by all kinds of things:
God loves everyone equally. The rich and the poor, the just and the unjust, the sane and the schizophrenic, the possessed-of-billions-of-dollars and the penniless...
Do you want to argue that "possessed of billions of dollars" is a noun?
We can apply our in-passing observation from earlier and contrast the fully-awake with the barely-conscious. Here, as above, it's impossible for conscious to be a noun, because it is being modified by an adverb. And it's... dubious... for barely conscious to be a noun phrase, because it is headed by conscious, which we know isn't a noun.
> Is my impression correct, that in general "the {thing}" is a noun phrase without implying anything about {thing} itself?
Yes, with some minor caveats:
1. Some people prefer to see "the {thing}" as a 'determiner phrase', where 'determiner' is the name for the part of speech to which the belongs. You can call it a 'noun phrase' without losing anything meaningful. 'Noun phrase' is definitely a better term if you're not deep in the technical weeds of grammatical analysis.
2. There are conclusions you could draw about {thing}, but they're more complex than "it's a noun". It's fair to just not talk about them.
3. In language, there are always problems somewhere for any analysis. (Which is why an unbroken chain of transmission can have Latin on one side and French on the other.) I wouldn't even say that a noun phrase with that structure exists at all in an example like "The more you say it, the more I think it". But that particular construction is weird enough that I'm perfectly comfortable saying it's just outside the scope of your qualifier "in general".
Isn’t it an adjective on both? Being conscious because you have consciousness. Otherwise you’re repeating the same thing. I’m happy because I’m happy. I’m pink because I’m pink? Disclaimer: ESL
I’ve never heard that usage, it doesn’t sound right to me. (Relatedly, “an autistic” is generally considered dated / mildly offensive / just incorrect. Better is “an autistic person”, which makes it an adjective again. There does exist the noun “autist” which I do hear occasionally, but not from autistic people as far as I’m aware, so would probably avoid as well.)
But being 'conscious' of something is being aware of it; your 'subconscious' is the part of your brain 'below' your awareness (although it is true that it's also below your consciousness! So perhaps both would work)
I think it's actually the last 10 lines of code, not 12. I just wrote these 10 lines:
Remember A as forty-two
Tell me about A
Remember B as A
Tell me about B
Remember C as B
Tell me about C
Remember D as C
Tell me about D
Remember E as D
Tell me about E
And you can see how it plots the dependencies as a graph on the right, which is kind of neat. But when I add the 11th line:
Remember F as E
You see the graph being turned into a forest with no dependencies, because it has forgotten the root dependency A. Indeed, if you enter "Tell me about A", it will say it does not remember A.
Another neat thing to try is:
Remember x as zero
Remember y as x
Remember x as y
How do they get comments without being on the front page? :)
A post just needs to get a handful of organic upvotes soon after submission, to get near the top of the front page. And submissions can easily stay on the front page for hours without much discussion. They just have to be interesting enough that people consider them worthy of an upvote.
How exciting, I get to be the pedant: it’s “stream-of-consciousness,” not “stream-of-conscious.” Conscious is an adjective; there can’t be a stream of it.
On the other hand English is highly imbued with lake of morphological inflection and other explicit lexicalization by grammatical type. So this is really just following the main stream tendency.
I see your pedantry, and raise it one more!
Through substantivization one can definitely have stream-of-<adjective>. Think "a stream of blue" or "a stream of the poor".
People often shave off the tail of well-known expressions:
“same difference” → “same diff”
“no big deal” → “no big”
“It’s no big.”
“fair enough” → “fair”
“Fair.”
“good enough” → “good enough” → “good”
“Yeah, that’s good.” (implies good enough)
“I don’t know” → “dunno”
> People often shave off the tail of well-known expressions
Though typically not in writing, that’s more of a speech thing.
This is how British people feel every time we read "full-featured".
And every other adverb! I often find myself shouting (not necessarily audibly) 'ly!' at American TV/movies/podcasts etc.
It's 'real annoying'.
It's a noun too
I was about to object that the latter is not in fact a noun but was surprised to see that wiktionary lists it as such. However it provides no usage examples and I strongly suspect it is in error.
I think it is occasionally used with "the," i.e. "the conscious" (referring to the conscious part of your body, for example). Adjectives sometimes become nouns this way, like "the poor"
I searched the Corpus of Contemporary American English ( https://www.english-corpora.org/coca/ ) for 'conscious_n', which means the token "conscious" with a 'noun' part-of-speech tag.
There are five results. All five of them are tagging errors:
If we scan to get enough info, then model the cells well enough, and have enough computers to run the simulation of the models, then the input-output of the emulation of the brain will be the same as the input-output of the original brain. It will act like it is conscious. [adjective, modifying it]
Well, first we work on working the body together, so that we can go places with both of us conscious. [adjective, modifying both of us]
Lady Bertram looks barely conscious. [adjective, modifying Lady Bertram]
In a few years, he believed, this institution would be needed in Ukraine, as new conscripts became more religiously conscious. [adjective, modifying new conscripts]
It is in this sense that Rahner means that grace is conscious. [adjective, modifying grace]
Examples 3 and 4 are so far from being nouns that they're being modified by adverbs.
It seems safe to conclude that in fact there is no nounal use of the word "conscious".
> Adjectives sometimes become nouns this way, like "the poor"
That isn't actually what's happening in "the poor". The position occupied by the token poor in that phrase can be filled by all kinds of things:
God loves everyone equally. The rich and the poor, the just and the unjust, the sane and the schizophrenic, the possessed-of-billions-of-dollars and the penniless...
Do you want to argue that "possessed of billions of dollars" is a noun?
We can apply our in-passing observation from earlier and contrast the fully-awake with the barely-conscious. Here, as above, it's impossible for conscious to be a noun, because it is being modified by an adverb. And it's... dubious... for barely conscious to be a noun phrase, because it is headed by conscious, which we know isn't a noun.
Nice dataset, I didn't know about that one.
Is my impression correct, that in general "the {thing}" is a noun phrase without implying anything about {thing} itself?
> Is my impression correct, that in general "the {thing}" is a noun phrase without implying anything about {thing} itself?
Yes, with some minor caveats:
1. Some people prefer to see "the {thing}" as a 'determiner phrase', where 'determiner' is the name for the part of speech to which the belongs. You can call it a 'noun phrase' without losing anything meaningful. 'Noun phrase' is definitely a better term if you're not deep in the technical weeds of grammatical analysis.
2. There are conclusions you could draw about {thing}, but they're more complex than "it's a noun". It's fair to just not talk about them.
3. In language, there are always problems somewhere for any analysis. (Which is why an unbroken chain of transmission can have Latin on one side and French on the other.) I wouldn't even say that a noun phrase with that structure exists at all in an example like "The more you say it, the more I think it". But that particular construction is weird enough that I'm perfectly comfortable saying it's just outside the scope of your qualifier "in general".
No it isn't. Can you give an example?
They call your subconscious sub- because it is below your conscious. Hth
I am a conscious because I am conscious. Similar to how I am an autistic because I am autistic.
I would argue, though, that doesn't make conscious a noun, but simply uses an adjective as a noun.
Isn’t it an adjective on both? Being conscious because you have consciousness. Otherwise you’re repeating the same thing. I’m happy because I’m happy. I’m pink because I’m pink? Disclaimer: ESL
I’ve never heard that usage, it doesn’t sound right to me. (Relatedly, “an autistic” is generally considered dated / mildly offensive / just incorrect. Better is “an autistic person”, which makes it an adjective again. There does exist the noun “autist” which I do hear occasionally, but not from autistic people as far as I’m aware, so would probably avoid as well.)
I think the same when I see "your subconscious". No, it should be "your subconsciousness"
But being 'conscious' of something is being aware of it; your 'subconscious' is the part of your brain 'below' your awareness (although it is true that it's also below your consciousness! So perhaps both would work)
I think it's actually the last 10 lines of code, not 12. I just wrote these 10 lines:
And you can see how it plots the dependencies as a graph on the right, which is kind of neat. But when I add the 11th line: You see the graph being turned into a forest with no dependencies, because it has forgotten the root dependency A. Indeed, if you enter "Tell me about A", it will say it does not remember A.Another neat thing to try is:
In my country, we call that an interactive shell.
Fun fact, if you run Python from a command line, with no options, it defaults to such a shell.
Most scripting languages are designed to present a REPL (read-eval-print loop) in such a scenario.
reminds me a
Needs a compiler for the Mill architecture.
why does the knob in the top right corner do nothing?
This is intriguing.
On another note, I do not understand how posts make it to the top of the front page with essentially no comments.
How do they get comments without being on the front page? :)
A post just needs to get a handful of organic upvotes soon after submission, to get near the top of the front page. And submissions can easily stay on the front page for hours without much discussion. They just have to be interesting enough that people consider them worthy of an upvote.