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Music is the Language

What job would you do for free? No would here: Since I retired in 2015, my work on Grammar and Linguistics is free to access via my WordPress Blogs on Higher Education. The Grammar Beneath the Grammar — P.H. Blöcker bloeckerblog.com · Language & CultureP.H. Blöcker Linguistics · Anthropology · Culture The Grammar Beneath the Grammar If Chomsky is right that language is hardwired into the human brain, then music may be the evidence he never quite got around to citing — the universal deep structure that was there before the first word. P.H. BlöckerApril 2026bloeckerblog.com In 1957, Noam Chomsky published Syntactic Structures and quietly detonated a bomb beneath behaviourist linguistics. His claim was simple and radical in equal measure: human beings are not born as blank slates onto which language is written by experience. They are born with a language acquisition device already installed — a Universal Grammar, a set of deep structural principles shared by every language on earth, regardless of how different those languages appear on the surface. A child in Tokyo and a child in Nairobi and a child in rural Queensland are all running the same underlying programme. The surface outputs differ enormously. The deep grammar is the same. It was a liberating idea, and also, in retrospect, an incomplete one. Because if Chomsky was right — if human beings carry an innate grammatical structure that…

Community

How would you improve your community? Knock at the doors of me new neighbours, one by one. Then see who slams the door and who wants a 10 min chat. Then trying to get to know my neighbours, one by one. Then an X - mas street party though summer at the Gold Coast. A wine fest in winter. Kids most welcome for sure. No kids, no fun. Grandchildren? Yes, why not? Age means getting tired early. No brainer? Too true, blue! Aussies are not Ossies. Good, indeed! Happy Easter from Gold Coast OZ Jena | Best friends Schiller & Goethe discussing Democracy The Wizard What is a Knight Bus? Kindly yours Peter H Bloecker

Bloecker

If you could have something named after you, what would it be? The Wood Workers in Holstein in North Germany were the Blockers, blocking wood. Ein Holzblock. Die Holzbloecke. Auch gut als Unterlage, einem Gefangen den Kopf abzuschlagen. Mit einem Schwert. Was als ehrenvoll galt bei public Executions. Die Kriminellen wurden in der Regel aufgehaengt, wobei die Raben dann die Toten frassen, bzw deren Leichnam. Die Seele war ja in der Hoelle, so die Kirche. The forests all over the globe have been cut down either to harvest the timber or wood, or burning to cook and heat the homes or more. Logging was the word to ship the red cedar trees in Australia along the rivers by steam boats and then via larger Steamers across the ocean to Sydney and Melbourne. One tree was enough wood to build one house. Red Gold - Red Cedar Trees. Nothing left, indeed, but a few National Parks. Look at the USA, look at the Forests in South America. Humboldt went there and was blown away. His brother in Berlin was a linguist like Chomsky. Credit phb | Red Cedar Tree

Quantum Physics

What’s something most people don’t understand? Why? The mother of all questions, indeed ...

iPhone

How has technology changed your job? Significantly, indeed! And as I started my job in Brisbane as the last German Language Adviser of the Goethe - Institut in 1998, I designed my first website learning HTML. Now we have AI and Bots writing code. And this is only the beginning. Have a great Easter Vacations and a few days with your Families and Friends. You might detox as well. Kindly from the Gold Coast QLD Australia Linked Linked https://phbloecker.wordpress.com Peter and Maria Ines

Lying

This Essay is about White Lies and The Truth I read Sam Harris Lying and the Interview with his teacher. This Book and the Interview is about the Master and the Disciple and how they may interact. I understand Harris published this essay plus interview and what he learnt from his University Teacher Ron Howard as a kind chapeau id est simply Thank You. Education can succeed, but it needs two to tango. Passion Flower or teaching with passion l Credit phb First the English Version LyingSam Harris, Ronald Howard and the Art of Telling the TruthP.H. Bloecker · bloecker.wordpress.com · 2026 I. A Thin Book with Considerable WeightSam Harris’ essay Lying is not a long book. Barely a hundred pages, no academic apparatus, no mountain of footnotes. Those who pick it up because it is short will quickly discover: it is short the way a scalpel is short. It cuts deeply nonetheless.The argument is simply stated, and therefore provocative: lying is always wrong. Not almost always. Not in most cases. Always. Even the white lie. Even the protective lie. Even the polite silence that deliberately misleads. Harris acknowledges edge cases — the Nazis are at the door, Anne Frank is hiding in the attic — but he refuses to let the exception become the rule. Whoever makes habits out of exceptions has already dismantled their ethical architecture before realising they…

Elephants

Which animal would you compare yourself to and why? Why is the mother of all questions: Not because of the ivory, though ... When observing elephants in Namibia and Zimbabwe at the Chobe National Park for weeks, I came to the conclusion, I wished I was a mighty Elephant Bull in my next live. Not a monkey.

Learning

What is the last thing you learned? There is no last thing, as I learn about three new things per day. My definition of learning is very unique and only valid for myself: Observe and focus and reflect. Inspired by Atomic Habits and other authors. We all are standing on the shoulders of giants. Like Einstein. And many others. We are born to learn daily.

Namibia

Describe a phase in life that was difficult to say goodbye to. When working at the DHPS in Windhoek, I was asked by the Principal and Board of the German Private High School to extend my contract of 6 years to another 2 years. Credit phb | Hartmann Valley However, a new Principal took over and came back from BVA / ZfA, my extension was not approved by the ZfA, though the Board of the DHPS had asked me and my family to stay until 1996. My two children were both students of the DHPS and had to leave their best friends behind in Namibia. I found this heart breaking, indeed … So my wife and myself took a serious decision to compensate their frustration and losses: We both took 6 months of unpaid long leave and travelled via Van and two tents 6 months through NZ instead of taking our two children back to their German High School in Lower Saxony. Later they both confirmed: The best decision we had ever made since leaving Germany for six full years in 1988. We arrived in WHK on 1st Jan 1988.

Panama

The most important invention in your lifetime is... For me the old style iPhone, as this device is with me all the time. Not wasting my time with Facebook or SM or Non Sense, rather use it for Navigation and my own reading plus research and more. Walking mostly without my iPhone. Why? The Mother of all questions, indeed ... Think and find your own answer, pls … How Beautiful Is Burleigh Beach? Once upon a time there lived an old swimmer in a little house in Burleigh Waters. Every morning he would go down to the beach and swim in the great ocean. The water was sometimes wild and sometimes gentle, but the old swimmer loved it dearly. "Oh, how beautiful is Burleigh Beach," he would say each day as he came out of the water. One day he found an empty coconut on the sand. Written on the coconut were the words: "Gold Coast Paradise - Queensland." "Aha," thought the old swimmer. "Gold Coast Paradise must be even more beautiful than Burleigh Beach. Everything there must be golden – the beaches, the waves, the fish, simply everything!" He went home and told his wife Maria Inés about the coconut. "We must travel to Gold Coast Paradise," he said. "I'm certain everything there is far more beautiful." "But we already live on the Gold Coast," said Maria Inés. "Yes, but…

Dream Job

What's your dream job? My dream job was High School Teaching German and English Literature. No regrets & loved it till I retired in 2015 in North Germany.

Road Trip

Think back on your most memorable road trip. Quite a few, actually, when living in Windhoek Namibia: The first three years from 1988 we travelled around 10 weeks into the Namib and National Parks annually and slept on our Landrover with a roof top tent, we had imported from Germany by container, awesome experiences, indeed! Credit phb

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