Transneptune

Language Log informs me that today is International Talk Like a Quaker Day, and so I think I’ll take the opportunity to think about plain speech, and what it means to me. I don’t think that thee-ing (not, as Language Log discusses, thou-ing) is really appropriate in the modern age. I’m generally against orthopraxy, and I think that the idea of plain speech is to set you apart not by strangeness, but by clarity, honesty and directness of speech. Continuing to thee really misses the point, as far as I’m concerned.

So, do I speak plainly? I try to. I fail in many ways, though: I certainly respond reflexively with clearly-false absurdities in many cases talking with small-f friends. I think I also, generally speaking, talk too much, and don’t allow time to consider my statements and what I’m responding to.

I’ll take today as a reminder to talk less, and mean more.

Tags: plain speech, quakerism by Kit
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A short one: I saw Easy A today, and it was fantastic. A great movie, possibly a classic-to-be. A great soundtrack. Surprisingly deep and nuanced. Go see it.

Tags: movies by Kit
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I fear I have gone a little mad. My mind and time have been so occupied by one thing—linguistics—that I retaliate by thinking about another—games and their design—as much as I can. I am filled with a manic energy, and sleep goes by the wayside. I read for my classes as fast as I can, internalize the ideas and render them almost automatic, and then go back to grappling with whatever the question of the week is—how to encourage this sort of story in a game, how to model that. I get to bed at 3am, I wake up at 9 on the days I can get up late. It all fits, somehow.

The theme of one of the games I am working on is this very madness—not the madness of someone trapped by their own mind, but the madness of someone driven, someone with ideas fighting their way out, demanding to be realized. Jonathan Strange in his time in Venice seems not an altogether inappropriate comparison; I fear that were someone to enter my chambers, I might very well be distracted by the sensation that a pineapple were issuing forth from their mouth, rather than words. Except, here, a pineapple is meant to stand for a narrative structure, or a game idea, or perhaps a strange discourse pattern.

This is what I came here for.

And yet, there is more. I do not simply overflow with game design and lack of sleep. I teach, and hopefully clarify. My students are a joy—they ask questions, they understand the material, they dig deeper until they reach the limit of what I can usefully explain and they can understand. I hope I help more than hinder, of course.

So, I ask your pardon if I have been monomaniacal. I am still here, just full-up. I’ve been singing, some. It helps.

Tags: madness, singing, time management by Kit
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This post by Ta-Nehisi Coates is one of the most beautiful things I’ve read in a long time. That’s all for now.

(More coming soon, some questions about linguistics and what areas of research I might want best to pursue. Also, I think a bit of Vincent Baker’s writing style is rubbing off on me.)

Tags: compassion by Kit
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Today, I was staring blankly at Information Structuring in Papago Narrative Discourse (Payne 1987), and getting nowhere. Ever alert and ever insightful, Allison suggested we go for a walk, and get out of the house.

And what a walk! We went up the Wonderland Creek Trail (how perfect for her, right?) where she’s been going for runs lately, and saw the hordes of grasshoppers bouncing around the tall grass. We walked along the creek under the shade of the trees, and it felt perfect. I am glad to have water like that so close.fantastic

But the best was yet to come. On the way back, we went through a tunnel that the creek and the path take under the road. And there, we found the echo. The perfect, amazing echo. We sang Foggy Dew and then I sang Patriot Game, and Allie observed that, given the melodic structure of the song and the strength and timing of the echo, I was accompanying myself. It was just what I needed.

Now, about that information structuring in Tohono O’odham (“Papago” being not the right name).

Tags: grad school, singing, water by Kit
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The semester is going well so far—classes that fill my head with ideas, questions, and new perspectives. TAing is good so far—running a classroom ain’t so bad, and can even be kinda fun. I have a social world, too, seeing people I knew last time I was out here, and meeting new people, too.

Yet. I long for Toronto, Stromness, Dublin, Machiasport. I long for places I’ve never been—St. John’s, Reykjavik, Halifax. I long to see the north Atlantic with a steel-grey sky above it, threatening storm. I long to sit by the window and drink tea, debating whether I should walk out into the wind and watch the weather come in, holding myself tight against the chill.

That makes the warmth and the music and friends all the sweeter.

Tags: north by Kit
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I think those are the truest self-identifications ever applied to me. Everything else about me is relatively ancillary.

Yesterday, I got to take the first steps on actually being a teacher. Today, I got to resume being a student. I’m taking two classes this semester: Syntactic Theory with Barbara Fox, and History of Linguistics in the 20th Century with David Rood.

Both classes have a historical bent, the latter obviously, but the former in that it is taking us through the development of discourse-functional syntax from the seventies (when people began to think that Chomsky’s approach might have some weaknesses) up to now, decade by decade.

Barbara was giving an overview of some of the ideas in discourse-functional syntax, and one really interesting idea stood out: some people have described syntax as being fossilized discourse. I find this idea wonderful—it opens, potentially, a mechanism for answering some of the “why”s that have, in my experience, always been dismissed or hand-waved as part of the set of arbitrary systems in language. Of course, as Barbara warned us, in this field, there are many more questions and notions than answers. That’s OK by me.

History of Linguistics was interesting, too. We had occasion to read some in French, and I am looking forward to reading de Saussure in French. Sadly, no one in the class speaks German—David was thrown for a bit of a loop there, and is gonna try to find some translations or workarounds for all the Prague-school stuff he was going to have us read in German.

This should be good.

Tags: academic quips, cognitive linguistics, learning, teaching by Kit
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So, I’ve met some nice other grad students—an Aerospace PhD student named Sibylle, a Ling Masters named Iris, and then … then I bumped into a friend from Swarthmore who’s also starting here, Fletcher. So there are at least five Swatties in town, including him and his girlfriend. The circle widens, or the world gets smaller. Depending.

Tags: people, small world by Kit
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So, classes, and thus TAing, begin Monday. I’ve been going to some How to TA meetings, and it’s been good. I’ve realized that I have some relevant experience, from explaining ling to my friends all the time, to wrangling classes of 4th graders, to GMing games. As to classes, I remembered that I took a ling grad seminar at Princeton while I was in highschool. I can do this. It’ll be great.

Tags: cross-training, linguistics, teaching by Kit
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We went to Boulder Meeting today, and it was good. It was full of people from the homefront, it seemed: people who’d lived in Bucks County, Montclair, and even someone who was a fellow Buckingham Friends School alumnus. The world is small and weird.

There were some new people in town, as well, so we all chatted. I sense impending community.

Tags: quakers, small world by Kit
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