A Girl With a Sword

all roads lead toward the same blocked intersection

Okay, sorry about the Most Boring Blog Entry Ever yesterday. So damn and blasted tired lately, cloudy today, apparently chances of snow or rain or something. Anyway, it's so dark and I just want to sleep or read a good book. Unfortunately I finished the good book on Thursday, and I just went back to bed for like three hours, so I've kind of cut out those options. Guess it's back to good old model theory in Semantics and reading about what the Greeks and the Romans had to say about language, nothing that influences us today, that's what I think. When I take a class on the history of linguistics I want it to start when they started calling it linguistics, which was probably no earlier than the 19th century. I like the history parts, though, it's just weird having it be with linguistics. I guess any history of a science is like that. Science is so right here, right now that you don't need to look at history at all, so when you do I feel like you better have a damn good reason for it. We spent last class talking about this Indian (from India) guy called Panini and how he made this whole big grammar so people could get their Vedic rituals right. And then it got lost and then Jacob Grimm and Karl Verner and everyone is going about their merry linguistic way back in the 1900s and later someone finds this whole grammar from India and it's like, well yes, that's all very nice that we have all of this stuff written about the structure of ancient . . . whatever, but how does that help us today when what we really are focusing on is language here and now (or in the case of Grimm and Verner, who were historical linguists, language there and then) and is there really even a place for the information Panini gives us? And is there a place for the Greek and Roman studies of their grammars, and will there be a place for what we're writing now a thousand years from now? Only if it's right? How continuous does the scientific study have to be for our work to be significant in the grand scheme of things? Sure, the Sumerians might have made great discoveries in physics, but do we care when we've even discounted Newton (disclaimer: everything I know about physics I learned from Arcadia, the play by Tom Stoppard)? And if I believe or don't believe Madam X from UCLA in her paper on the dative alternation doesn't that matter more than if I believe or don't believe Calpurnia from 2nd century Rome?

Oh, and Republicans are voting here today, in the cold rainy/snowyness. I'm voting next Saturday, found my voter registration card and everything. Yay. Barack Obama wants me to come to his rally tomorrow but rallies are hard, see, they take a long time and involve lots of yelling and I think other people might think I'm not getting into the spirit of things if I'm reading about model theory in Semantics while they are making up cheers with bad rhymes. I love Barack Obama, and I really hope he becomes president and saves us from everything, but I'm not good at politics myself, thanks.