Ha! This is what linguists do when no one is watching:
"How To Do Things With Words And Wands: The Pragmatics Of Casting Spells"
"Now, don't forget that nice wrist movement we've been practicing!" squeaked Professor Flitwick, perched on top of his pile of books as usual. "Swish and flick, remember, swish and flick. And saying the magic words properly is very important, too -- never forget Wizard Baruffio, who said 's' instead of 'f' and found himself on the floor with a buffalo on his chest." Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Chapter 10.
Wands, speech act theory, pronominal reference, Professor Flitwick! Yes, I know what you are thinking, could linguistics be any cooler? Probably not, my friends, probably not.
I've asked to have my blog moved back to covblogs so if you don't find me here when you look next time I might be there.
sword.covblogs.com, I expect, just like old times.
Spent the afternoon sitting at a coffee shop in my neighborhood. I left the house to concentrate on my Pragmatics reading (modularity of mind theory is tying mine up in knots and I'm not sure I have the module in my mind to understand modules!), but ended up being distracted by the Columbia Saturday afternoon-ness. There was the game on in the coffee shop but I sat outside. I periodically got a score update. I also got the rundown of what's happening this weekend, the local photography scene, a local school and how one of the teachers is annoying one of the moms who might just take her son out and homeschool him (this motivation for homeschooling is one of my pet peeves, had to work hard not to insert something into that conversation). I listened to some men talking beside me who I first decided were speaking a Bantu language, then Indian, then Arabic, then maybe just an unusual Spanish dialect, but they kept switching in and out of English so it was confusing. All I know is that they had some great uvular consonants. A woman from Texas, in town for a wedding, talked to a man who recent got stationed at the local army base.
One overheard conversation that really intrigued me was a white-Rastafari guy talking to his friend about how he's recently had to buy a laptop, but he doesn't plan on using it much. I've recently become acquainted with more people in this young, computerless counterculture and it really kind of impresses me that they can live like that, no cellphones, no computers, occasionally using wikipedia or checking cnn.com at a local library. Of course it makes them damn hard to get ahold of, but even that is kind of cool. Mystique, I guess that's what it is. What they do seems like magic to me, living without the technology I need to get by. I guess it's the simple life, it's the Thoreau in my Bobo heart, telling me that life would be better if I would go to the woods.
Just had to throw this link to Mom's blog up. Dad ran a marathon yesterday, on his 55th birthday. I think this just totally extended my life expectancy!
Columbia is finally cooling down, welcome to September. My semester has been crazy so far, but crazy with a lot of empty time. Finally things are settling down into class routines and readings, assistantships are making apparent what they will entail, articles are getting read for thesis proposals, ideas are working there way out of my brain like little worms out of the core of an apple (vivid, disgusting similes, experimental fiction writers would love me and take me out for cups of thick black coffee in damp, underground coffee shops), okay, maybe more like lost miners, hacking their way out of the side of a mountain with blunt pickaxes and finally being reduced to their bloody fingertips--it's a difficult process, you get the idea . . . . Our linguistics program is getting the year off to a good start, with a pub trip last Friday and a colloquium this Friday. I'm excited about all the new students. (I'm also excited that I'm not a new student.) I'm so glad the linguistics people are so close, it feels homey.
The independent movie scene in Columbia has also been beautiful the past couple of weeks. Our Nickelodeon Theatre is really amazing, any movie that I've heard about and wanted to see has gotten here eventually, even that crazy little one about the font Helvetica, only sadly I was gone when that was here in July. We've had Paprika (the same director as Millenium Actress, for Cricket and William who've seen that) about people getting into each other's dreams and singing frogs and dancing kitchen appliances, then we had Interview which was intense and Who's-Afraid-of-Virginia-Woolf-esque (with Steve Buscemi and Sienna Miller, oh my!), and most recently Once. It didn't quite live up to the hype, and I have the hardest time with the Southern Irish accent, but it was pretty. We're getting La Vie en Rose this weekend, I'm just going to move to the theater (thankfully it's cheaper than a normal theater and even cheaper if you're a member!).
Alright, I should stop taking a break and carry on with the readings I want to get done tonight. Lately my reading time has slowed to a standstill, I spend so much time just distractedly staring out of the window. This is not how we win linguistics! I must be processing ideas, that's what I tell myself, they're all going to pop out one of these days, fully formed. Like Athena.
"Whatever death involves, it will be different, a venture into the unknown, and we are all afraid of the dark. At least I am--a fear made bearable by faith and joy."
-A Circle of Quiet.
Madeleine L'Engle died on Thursday. I'm still kind of in shock.
So for the project I'm working on for my thesis I need to decide whether some sentences are acceptable English sentences (i.e. whether a native speaker would actually say or write them) or not. Some of you may have gotten an email from me about this already, but there are a lot of sentences and a lot have not been rated yet. Tell your friends (also, you can do the test more than once if you want!).
Okay, so the program will give you some sentences and you just click the dots to show how acceptable you think they are. I asked for a five-point scale, but it would be most helpful if you would just ignore the 3-dot possibility, unless you really have no idea whether the sentence could be used or not. 1-dot and 5-dot responses are the best, but the other possibilities are there if you want them. Just so you know, the sentences were not written to be grammatical. If you find them completely weird, give them a 1. Don't think too hard, this is about your instincts about English (and for that reason, data from native English speakers is what I'm looking for here).
http://parsable.org:8080/frogverbs/frogverbs.jnlp
Click on the link and then it will download the little program. I think you have to have java in order to use it, but really, you should have java anyway, it's part of being a healthy human being. Then there will be instructions and then the sentences will come up. Go all the way through the sentences (it won't give you more than 50 at once and I think it's actually less than that) and then click the "complete" button in the last box so that your responses are added to the program. That's all. Have fun.