spring term...

is nearly over, and this has been a good term. Finals approach, and today is a day to work on a major project- this one for my rhyme and meter class. I have chosen to write about Edgar Allan Poe's poem, the Raven. It is an interesting poem, and I think that the paper is going fairly well so far. On Tuesday, I will turn in a rough draft, and then have a chance to make any changes for the final project. My other major project will be more time consuming and difficult, but possibly more fun as well. That will be for applied linguistics, and it will be a synthesis of three of our weekly articles in an artistic form. Only two terms more before graduation :-)

Serbo-Croatian epic decasyllable

This meter is sung improvisationally. Each line has ten syllables, which is broken into two parts, the first with four syllables and the second with six. An important rule for this meter is that syllables three and four must belong to the same word. That word can be disyllabic or trisyllabic. The same rule applies to the nineth and tenth syllables. The use of stock phrases makes improvising with this form easier for the participants. We applied this meter to English, and wrote some verse in class:
Hasty people travel in the subway
old bums begging for change in the subway
hasty people who won't pay attention
big rats scurry around hasty people
Our topic was New York city, and our stock phrases were 'hasty people' and 'in the subway' It works out nicely to have the phrases be four syllables long, because then they can go into either the first or the second part of the line. Anyway, this was a fun meter to study. If you feel inspired to write a little in this meter, please post it as a comment- that would be fun :-)

Some Fun Quotes

That is what marraige really means: helping one anothere to reach the full status of being persons, responsible and autonomous beings who do not run away from life. -Paul Tournier

Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too; this is why a great and clear mind loves ardently and sees distincly what it loves. -Blaise Pascal

There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness. -Friedrich Nietzsche

Among those whom I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those whom I love, I can: all of them make me laugh. -W H Auden

Linguistical Limericks

There once was a verb from intransitive
who scoffed at the noun phrase from transitive
one day it collided
with two nouns elided
and now it is living ditransitive

A linguist without any witnesses
set down to the business of synthesis
but her words fell apart
in a scramble for art
and she ended her days in analysis

There once was a poet who tried
to study linguistics applied
when she had to read Krashen
her teeth fell to gnashin'
at the monitor model inside

These were written for my group project in applied linguistics. A very fun class, where we are encouraged to be creative. I have never had a class with a set-up like it before. We have two professors. One Linguist, and one Applied Linguist. We meet three times a week- each professor takes a day to discuss the article of the week, and then the third day a group does their presentation. I was fortunate to have my week be week 5, it made the project into a 'midterm', and now I can focus on the final project, which will take a lot more time to put together. In fact, I picked up three books from the library to read.

analogies

In applied linguistics last week, we made up some analogies for linguistics. There were five started for us, such as: linguistics is to applied linguistics as_____is to____. I came up with one good one myself: pragmatics is to grammar as je ne sait quoi is to savoir faire. Those that got it were tickled pink with this one. Meybe it wasn't fair to do one in French, but those phrases are pretty commonly borrowed into English... Some other ones brought up in class were: lie is to figure of speech as daggar is to pocket knife, and linguistics is to applied linguistics as architecture is to construction. It was a fun class! But then, this class has been one fun surprise after the next... Tomorrow, my group is presenting. I hope that goes well, and I expect that it will...