to John Grinder, A/ Many thanks for your answer John. I don't know yet how this game lead to metaprograms.  You wrote: "take the set of distinctions that are current among linguists" I presuppose that the set of linguistic distinctions that would lead to the discovery of meta-program patterns or distinctions should be more complex than the example cited.  (correct me if I'm wrong) Based on that presupposition, I was wondering where the persons involved would get more complex linguistic distinctions from, so I turned to your "Guide to Transformational Grammar" (Grinder 73), which most of them might have read at the time. So do I interprete correctly that doing this exercise for instance trying out the "Negative preverbal adverbs" mentioned on page 79 of Grinder 73 (never, scarcely, hardly, rarely, seldom, barely, little) and other elements from Klima's effort to make a unified treatment of the entire system of negation in English would lead to the discovery of the distinction "away from - towards"? B/ I had 2 mentioned other questions in my previous mail in this tread.  B1. I was wondering if you could share more about the family structure you grew up in (being the first of 9 children is all I found in Whispering p.122), such as how many boys, girls, age differences, ..).  By the way, happy aniversary - while re-reading that paragraph of whispering, I just noticed that you celebrated your 62th birthday last friday) B2. I was wondering what you studied during your BA at the University of San Francisco.  Was your mayor philosophy as Dilts & Delozier write in their "Encyclopedia"? (Given the birth year the Encyclopedia mentions for you is 1939 in stead of 1940, I'm not sure whether they got your major right...)   If your major was philosophy, I was wondering which theories or books of philophy of science were you most "impressed" by at the time (was it e.g. Kuhn's "Structure", which only appeared in 1962, or something else?) What was your minor? Patrick www.merlevede.biz