So, I need to always revisit why I am doing a thing. In this case, grad school seems unpleasant currently, so I am trying to see what it is that I like about it. And really, it is the teaching. I very much want to do that. I am sure that I want to do …
I’ve never understood the Quaker use of First Day for Sunday. It makes sense only if Saturday is your sabbath—He rested on the seventh day, right? However, that’s utterly irrelevant to what I intend to write. Today was the first day of my real graduate student career. I had a TA meeting and attended the …
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 …
Yesterday was good in many, many ways. Primarily, I attended a talk at UC Boulder by Adele Goldberg, which was excellent. She argued clearly, presented an interesting but convincing account of the facts observed in her studies (hear that, Chomsky? Real data!) and also presented a theory that seemed maybe, just maybe, implementable in the …
One quick note before I go to bed: I have just discovered that one of my idols, C.J. Cherryh* is on the board of the Foundation for Endangered Languages, the product of a near-idol of mine, Nicholas Ostler. And, of course, it is not just the conjunction of two people of Coolness, but also that …
…which I keep wanting to type as “piranha”. A mysterious commenter known only as “X” posted a link to this abstract. I didn’t approve the comment, as the poster was too mysterious, but the article looks interesting, though in a somewhat dubious location on the internet. However, one thing mentioned in the abstract seemed worth …
So, I am reading Dan Everett’s very interesting book Don’t Sleep, there are Snakes. His data and observations I trust very much, but his analyses are bizarre, as the following indicates: Continue readingPirahã