OK, so I haven't posted since January. Yes. Fine. But I did write a 263-page dissertation that I successfully defended today. So I've got that going for me.
And, to answer your next question, yes, Dr. The Tensor is the proper form of address. (Um, after I file.)
I'll be attending the LSA 2009 meeting in San Francisco next weekend, and as in previous years, I think we should get together for drinks or food or something. Now, if you read those posts about our previous gatherings, you'll find the following, which I still believe to be true this year:
Given this, the last couple of years we haven't tried to organize a single event, but instead have designated a corner of the hotel lounge as the spot to hang out, if you're so inclined, after the day's activities wind down. I plan to reconnoiter the hotel to find a good spot and announce it here Thursday evening—and unlike previous years, I'm just going to update this post rather than adding additional posts, so watch this space. I see the Hilton has a place called the Urban Tavern, but it apparently closes at 10:30 every night, which is...disappointing. I'll let you know what I find out.
Did you notice the antecedentless "we" in the first sentence of this post? Who, you may ask, are "we"? "We" are a loosely-defined set of linguistics bloggers, language bloggers, and blog readers, along with our colleagues, friends, and others (signifcant and otherwise). Basically, if you're reading this, you're invited. There's no minimum unique-visits-per-week or posts-per-month requirements. (Whew!)
Thanks to Claire and Russell for reminding me about this, and my apologies for taking so long to get around to it. I've been busy, I swear!
[UPDATE: Fritinancy points out that the ADS Word of the Year event is actually on Friday this year. That makes Saturday evening more open than in previous years—maybe we should consider going to dinner after all?]
[UPDATE: Well, I explored a bit. The Urban Tavern is nice, but the tables do seem to be under hostess control, so we can't just wander in and stake one out. The only other alternative I can see is the "lounge" area near the registration desk. It gets of lot of traffic and is kind of noisy, but at least it has wireless. What do you think? Tavern or lounge?
Friday evening is going to be busy: in addition to the ADS WOTY vote, they're apparently giving an award to Language Log at the LSA business meeting. Afterward, I'm planning to attend the computational linguistics session, possibly followed by the grad student mixer (because I'm frankly feeling a little old for grad student mixers). I suggest we focus on a plan for Saturday. Is there any good Chinese food within walking distance?
Oh, and did I see Semantic Compositions wandering around earlier?]
The Wife sent me a link to the Wikipedia page of Alan Dundes, a professor of folklore at Berkeley, whose class we took together many, many years ago. She highlighted the final paragraph of the article, which concerns his final words:
Dundes collapsed while giving a graduate seminar; the topics that week were Marxist and Feminist theory, both approaches that Dundes disliked intensely, but thought were nonetheless important for his students to be acquainted with. He left his audience with a cliffhanger. He was introducing the topic (Marxist theory) and then said with a dismissive wave of his hand, "But there are really only two uses for Marxist theory in folkloristics..." and then collapsed.
Well done, Alan! This makes me want to concoct a similar open-ended gnomic utterance, which I will then pronounce when I feel the Big One coming on. That's dying with style.
It's that time of year again—time to organize the fourth (!) annual language-blogger get-together at the upcoming LSA meeting in Chicago. In previous years, we've had trouble finding a time that works for everybody, though we do seem to end up with a pretty big group nonetheless. I think Grant Barrett's suggestion from last year—that we pick a corner of the hotel bar, designate it The Spot, and meet there casually as we're available in the evenings—worked out great, so I'll try to scout out a good spot again this year.
Do we want to get ambitious and try to schedule a dinner? It'll be hard. Thursday not everyone will be there, Friday is the business meeting and the grad student social, and Saturday is the conference reception. Furthermore, the ADS Word of the Year vote is on Friday. What say you all?
After discussing reading pronunciations in academic talks just a few days ago, I encountered a perfect example today in a talk at a conference. All through the talk, the speaker used the pronunciation [di.ˈɪk.tɪk] (roughly dee-IK-tik) for the word deictic. The two standard pronunciations of deictic are [ˈdaɪk.tɪk] (DIKE-tik) and the less common [ˈdeɪk.tɪk] (DAKE-tik), but you can hardly be expected to figure that out from the spelling. I remember being surprised the first time I heard it spoken aloud—I had been pronouncing it [deɪ.ˈɪk.tɪk] in my head. Apparently today's speaker came to a similar conclusion, although I can't rule out the possibility that she's a faithful reader of this blog and decided to attempt to pull off the prank I proposed in my earlier post. If that's the case, then I salute you!
Run, do not walk, over to Crooked Timber and read this awesome Ph.D. defense story. It even has a linguistic angle, namely reading pronunciations.
Oddly, I was just telling someone over the weekend that I'd love to do this as a prank. I'd show up to my defense and pronounce all the technical terms wrong, as if I'd only ever read them: TYPE-a-LOW-gee for typology, ee-LATE-iv for elative, PAIR-a-DIME-a-tic for paradigmatic, HEER-artch-ee for hierarchy, and so forth. For extra points, I could even, with a condescending smile, correct the audience members who would try gently to help out by pronouncing the terms correctly in their questions. I think I could pull it off!
Today I was walking through the student union building at Unnamed University, and as I passed the mini-branch of the University bookstore I glanced into the display case out front. It contained, among other things, this:
Oh, brilliant. Nice work, University bookstore—what a great way to help students focus on academic excellence. After this, can University-branded crack pipes be far behind?
I'm back from the 2007 meeting of the Linguistic Society of America:
...and it was great. There's nothing quite like hanging out with a thousand or so colleagues for four days to renew your enthusiasm for linguistics. After the jump, you'll find my notes on the meeting.
The Word of the Day for those of you attending the LSA Meeting is plenary. You've all heard of plenary sessions, but I'll bet the great majority of you don't know what the word means. Well, the OED defines it as:
2. a. Of an assembly, conference, etc.: having all members in attendance; fully constituted, fully assembled; esp. attended by all participants, who otherwise meet in smaller groups. Now freq. in plenary session.
Get that? It means that when there's a plenary session, you're supposed to be there. If you're not, you're a bad linguist. For example, I didn't attend Friday evening's plenary address, and you know what? I'm a bad linguist.
Q.E.D.
OK, several people showed up to hang out at The Spot on Thursday night. Beforehand, we left the hotel to eat dinner, and from what I could see along the way, there don't seem to be many nearby restaurants, just more hotels. After some circling, we ended up eating at Catel in Downtown Disney, which wasn't much cheaper than the hotel restaurants. (Tasty, though.)
Rather than risking a long walk on Friday, let's meet at 5:00 sharp in the lobby of the hotel right at the entrance to "The Avenue"—that's the corridor with all the restaurants along it on the first floor. Look for me—I'll be wearing a black blazer and a gray shirt, carrying a black leather backpack, and wearing my name tag. (You can look my name up in your program—I gave the talk about phonesthemes in Thursday's "Modelling [sic] Phonological Learning" session.) If somebody (one of the locals?) knows of a convenient place nearby, we'll head there promptly at 5:05; otherwise, the Avenue has a bar for those who just want a drink and a couple of places to eat for those who want food.
See you at 5!
Recent Comments