mercuriosity, posts by tag: lingeekery - LiveJournal (original) (raw)
11 October 2009 @ 04:48 pm
In section 1, we observed that the Case theory assumed in the Aspect model associates Case very closely with GRs. We also observed, in section 2, that under the G-CT assumed in the GB theory, the Case of a given DP is determined according to the structural position the DP occupies at S-structure. Independently of the G-CT, Chomsky (1981) proposed the idea that the GR of a given DP which is assumed to be a bundle of certain GFs is also determined according to the structural position of the DP at S-structure. According to this idea, the DP located at the Spec of Infl, for example, is regarded as having GFs linked with the GR SUBJECT. This idea about GFs/GRs has been commonly accepted under the GB theory. The important point is that Case is correlated with GRs through the mediation of structural relations under the GB theory.
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what the hell did I just read
29 August 2008 @ 01:52 am
Did you know that the company name "YAMAHA", written as it is in all capital letters, is made up entirely of bilaterally symmetrical letters? I noticed it this afternoon when I saw a reflection in a window and thought for a moment I was looking at a sign for some company called "AHAMAY". (Then I couldn't think of the word "symmetry", and it bugged the hell out of me.)
This has been your useless realization of the day!
On a related note, the Chinese name for McDonald's is "
麥當勞" (mai4 dang1 lao2); a friend pointed out that the top part of the first character kind of looks like an "M", and I thought--yeah. huh. That's pretty clever.
There's also a Toys R Us I drive by every day; the Chinese name is "
玩具反斗城" (wan2 ju4 fan3 dou4 cheng2), with the character "反" upside down, akin to the backwards "R" of the original. I don't know what the whole name means, but "反" itself can mean "turn over, reverse", &c., so...visual pun!
Thinking..."玩具" means "toy", "城" means "city", so I'm guessing "反斗" (fan3 dou4) is an approximation of "fantasy". Googling "反斗" results in at least one online fantasy RPG, lending support to my hypothesis. "Toy Fantasy City". Sweet.
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From the "Oh, Japan!" file: 2008 PenSpinning Tournament. With videos. Scary, impressive videos.
11 August 2007 @ 02:50 pm
My IBARW posts: Mon | Tues | Wed | Thurs | Fri | Sat | Sun
I'm in a hurry, so instead of the well thought out post I had planned, you get a hasty shove in the direction of other resources.
My plea today is: please take a moment to educate yourself about African American Vernacular English (AAVE). This is something about which many progressive, liberal-minded and well-meaning individuals in the US are sadly ignorant. As a result, you get statements like, "I'm not racist, but [racist views expressed as disapproval of language]." Only a few years ago, I would have made statements like that about AAVE. My very first linguistics class at university immediately made it a little harder to complacently hold on to those biases; now, having earned a degree in linguistics, I find them impossible to maintain. Knowledge brings change.
The Wikipedia article on AAVE is kind of messy, but may be a useful introduction. Bill Labov is a leading researcher in the field, and has some papers available on his website. Here's a transcript of a radio show where Geoff Pullum criticizes the media frenzy surrounding the 1996 decision of the Oakland School Board to acknowledge "Ebonics" as a language, and explains why the view of AAVE as a deficient version of English is wrong. Here's a page with an intro to AAVE and some links to other resources. Here are some notes and discussion by John Rickford from a somewhat more technical perspective that other linguists might enjoy.
Oh, and if you don't believe that language and racism can have anything to do with each other, why not get an introduction to the field of sociolinguistics?
International Blog Against Racism Week
I just got a spam e-mail in French, and I'm so tickled that I can read most of it that I feel more pleased than annoyed.
...*saves*
( The saga continuesCollapse )
Bottom line: I have no idea what response to expect from Penn. I'd be disappointed not to be accepted, obviously, but I'm pretty sure I'd get over it sooner rather than later, because I know, on the basis of my visit, that it wouldn't mean I'm unworthy--it's just that the odds are small to start with, the competition is incredible, and it does take a somewhat lucky combination of factors. And if I haven't found mine yet, well. Try, try again.
*crosses fingers*
26 February 2007 @ 10:50 pm
The sentences we have to translate for this Chinese homework are the craziest things ever.
For today's busy family, there is an obvious need for togetherness. "People really begin to value the experience of the entire family doing activities in the same space. Maybe that has to do with the fact that people aren't home so much anymore," says one of the authors of Patterns of Home.
Togetherness? Shoot me.
As any teenager will tell you, all this family togetherness has its limits--like, 15 minutes, OK? But their parents who insist on maintaining common space are just as determined to create their own separate world as well. Almost all the parents surveyed say that they are obsessed with the quietness and comfort in master-bedroom suites that are the size of apartments.
These are lifted straight from a Time article. They're just- they're not even trying to pretend this is legit second-year stuff anymore. *boggles*
...really, I should have a tag just for Chinese-class wackiness.
The worst part is that this assignment is eating up all of my time which is supposed to spent on the other schoolwork I have, and I know it's just going to be a tick mark in a notebook somewhere, worth like half a point. SO WHY AM I EXPENDING SO MUCH EFFORT ON IT. ARGH. This is exactly what I told myself I wasn't going to do.
真是愚蠢得使我受不了﹗
Ah, I only wish I knew enough rude language in Mandarin to properly express my frustration. If they offered a class in that, I'd be on it before you could say 幹你老母.
25 February 2007 @ 06:33 pm
oh. my. god. This Kenstowicz syllable chapter has got to be the thickest, most sleep-inducing thing I've ever tried to read. I swear I've been trying to read it for a week now, and I'm only half way through. And the half that I have read isn't doing me much good, because I can't make heads or tails of it. Apparently there's going to be a quiz on one of the data sets in class tomorrow. I CAN TASTE THE FAILURE ALREADY.
...argh. I call for an emergency sanity break.
PS Also I am banning myself from Facebook for the time being.
12 January 2007 @ 10:16 pm
I got up two or three times last night to put on more clothes. I could have saved myself a lot of trouble by putting the long underwear on in the first place, but I don't think I was ready to accept just how cold it was. How cold was it? I think penguins spontaneously appeared in a few locations.
My mood's been very unstable the last few days, so I'm not entirely sure how I feel about classes and such. You would think that after last quarter, after conquering The Research Project and The Grad School Applications, that nothing in the rest of my undergraduate education should be able to stress me out or get me down, because I Know I Can Do It. Except that I'm sick, and the rules of logic don't apply. Plus, I am working on a senior thesis this quarter in addition to my three other classes, where "working on" can be interpreted as "currently doing my best not to think about," so that's kind of big. But really, I am simply not allowed to get too stressed out about anything academic this quarter. It would just look silly.
Speaking of classes, here's what I've got:
Chinese is the same as it always is, which means I learn a lot but sometimes the way the class is run makes me want to scream. Actually, I think I might detect faint traces of some of my suggestions from the course evaluation last quarter, which is encouraging. This quarter I made a sort of resolution not to expend as much energy on this class as before, because so much of it is busywork, and if it means I get a 3.8 instead of a 3.9, OH WELL.
Phonology I is the only thing standing between me and my linguistics degree--well, that and ten credits of fluff, to be taken next quarter. So far it's just...phonology. Very introductory, not really anything we didn't already talk about in phonetics. I don't have any particular opinion of the prof yet. We'll see about this one.
The Chinese Language is the class I'm most excited about. The prof seems cool (and is, incidentally, definitely not Chinese), and I'm just generally excited to finally learn some linguistic stuff about Chinese, specifically. I have occasionally tried to apply what I've been learning in my ling classes to what I've been learning in my Chinese classes, but my knowledge of both is still so rudimentary, and Chinese is so different from English, that I can't make heads or tails of it. So finally, I get to sit and read about what other, more knowledgeable people have already established about the structure of Chinese, and go from there. The class is interesting in that's it's in the Chinese department, rather than the linguistics department, so no previous ling experience is required. But I think that even with the boredom factor of hearing about basic linguistic concepts I already understand, the course as a whole will be very useful and informative.
I had to get up halfway through writing this and wrap a blanket around my shoulders (in addition to the sweater I'm wearing). Methinks 'tis time to go take a hot shower and then bundle up for bed.
Current Mood: tired
...'til my eyes fall out of my head, apparently. Just now I came across this bit:
If you simply ask educated people how many words they know, you will get very low estimates, and they are even stingier when estimating the vocabularies of others. Jean Aitchinson (1994) remarks that one respected intellectual in the nineteenth century claimed that peasants have a vocabulary that does not exceed 100 words[...] More recently, the writer Georges Simenon explained that he makes his books so simple because most Frenchmen know fewer than 600 words. (Simenon also claims to have slept with 10,000 women in his life, leading Aitchinson to suggest that he suffers from a general problem with numerical cognition.)
Bloom, Paul. How Children Learn the Meanings of Words. The MIT Press, 2001.
Is it only because I'm such a nerd that I find that absolutely hilarious? Or possibly all this reading's fried my brain, because I can't stop giggling. It's moments like this that make slogging through a bunch of academic articles on a Sunday evening survivable.
(In case you were wondering, by some estimations, the average American high school graduate knows 60,000-80,000 words, possibly twice as many for someone who reads a lot. Education or no, a person would have to know well over 100 words to be able to function in society--even a peasant's society!)