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Sunday, July 6th, 2008
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10:12 pm
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| Saturday, July 5th, 2008
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8:13 pm
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Mac came over this morning and since we got stuck on the Finn episode last time, we read Klaeber's introduction to all the confusing things, and then the Finnesburg fragment.
( dissertation update details )
I realize no one else can follow most of what I'm talking about, because you have to be doing exactly what I'm doing with the same corpora and way of arranging the information (in other words you have to be me), but for this week at least, it's helping me to get my thoughts down in written form, and to post this where I know other people can see the progress or lack thereof I'm making.
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| Friday, July 4th, 2008
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11:02 pm
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Saw the tennis this morning. Expected outcome and not the most fantastic match ever, but still good to watch.
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) futonsulo came later than I had expected, so I had plenty of time to input all the preterites for Early Modern English. I may have missed a few, as I feel I was getting sloppy when I saw the end in sight--I do this at the ends of books as well, which is unfortunate as they often contain the climaxes, major fight scenes, etc.--but I'm going to go back over everything again anyway. I made some decisions about what to include that with a bit more experience I wouldn't have made, and I have to do a ton of double-checking for "is this the right verb?" anyway. I think next time I get into campus I'm going to print out all my alphabetical lists, because it'll be faster to flip through them than to open all 12 files and scroll down them. Tomorrow, though, I want to figure out what the notation is for tagging verb forms that are not preterite, and make up word lists. Possibly begin inputting to the spreadsheet, although Mac is coming to read Old English, and I really should finish watching Streetcar, which is due back at the library tomorrow.
futonsulo did come, with her husband, and we went out for Italian, and then to the beach. Santa Monica didn't have fireworks, but we walked along the beach and saw a lot of shows north of us in the Malibu area, and then when we turned around we caught the end of the Marina del Rey show. It was a very successful and enjoyable evening, and I'm quite tired, or you might have been graced with another paragraph on the dissertation. I do remember spellings like "knue", "grue", "thrue" that made me go, "Huh." I didn't realize people had attempted those, yet it makes so much sense, even though they never caught on.
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| Thursday, July 3rd, 2008
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11:00 pm
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I've put in all the preterite data from Middle English. I think when I go back and double check for lemmata, I'm going to start with the later periods and work my way back. The early stuff is rather more difficult, although I have figured out that the variety of forms for the past tense of "see" was not me throwing everything that began with an 's'* in. They really did have 15 or 20 forms. Crazy.
I checked out A Streetcar Named Desire on DVD, but I got about halfway through before I was distracted by the decision that I needed to copy-paste all the Early Modern English text files into large period files and run my search and sort program on them, so I would have the data ready in case I need something to keep me awake at 5 am when I'm watching the Wimbledon semi. Watching a ball go back and forth can be more hypnotic than rousing, and Middle English worked wonders for keeping me awake yesterday morning.
So I did that for two hours and never really got back to the movie, since I wanted to listen to the recording of nastasie reading Portuguese a few times before bed. It's def. getting easier to make out the words.
Can I just say that it's really cool to go through word lists and watch modern spellings emerge and become more common over time? And kind of poignant to watch more and more strong preterites get replaced by weak ones...
Props to anyone who catches the MP allusion.
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| Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008
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9:47 pm
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Finished pulling all the verbs out of the M2 and M3 files that looked interesting on the first pass. This will mean nothing to any of you, and would have meant nothing to me a scant week ago, but tonight it means progress. M3 is the longest file, although M4 is not far behind. I want to finish that tomorrow, and if I can get a good rhythm going--no reason I shouldn't be able to, I'm going into campus and all I have to do is meet with Mac for some Beowulf reading--I might be able to finish all the files. Unless I get tired of it, at which point I will acknowledge that there's no real rush. Friday will be a dead loss between the tennis and futonsulo coming for the 4th, but after that I have no friends in town until August, so all distractions are the responsibility of nastasie!
I did manage to get up at 6 for the tennis, and regardless of what I think of what goes on in Safin's brain, he's still one of my favorite players to watch when he's on, and I'm really looking forward to the semifinal against Federer on Friday, even though I expect a straight-sets trouncing.
The dogs were so cute in the pool today. I had never seen them swim before, and it was very fun. Reina--you throw her a toy in the pool, she goes at it at high speed with a determined look on her face. Chad--wasn't supposed to go in the pool because of his bad back, but sneaked in when Stephanie's back was turned, and all she could do at that point was put a life jacket on him. He played off at one end with the toys and was totally oblivious to all the other dogs. Bryce--swam, played with toys, ran around the edge of the pool, barked at Reina and tried to boss her around, and got chased by Zach. Very funny to see a 20 pound mini Schnauzer chasing a 110 pound Rottweiler. Kind of like futonsulo's turtle that used to chase her cat. Zach--stayed out of the water except when Stephanie hauled him in a couple feet from the exit, using the handle on his life jacket, and then his legs would go all stiff to brace himself, and once he was in the water he made a determined swim back onto solid ground. It's only his third time in the water and he's still getting used to it. But he can swim! Now it's just a matter of getting him to believe he can swim, and getting him to like it. He spent a lot of time running around the edge of the pool, and running up to us to get petted. And then some sitting in the shade trying to camouflage his bright-orange-vested self like, "Don't throw me in!"
And of course we all got quite damp from 4 dogs shaking themselves off constantly. Chad kept shaking himself off while he was in the pool, which was funny, as was the fact that he would shake his front end first, and then his back end.
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| Tuesday, July 1st, 2008
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10:18 pm
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As of an hour ago, I'm back to not wanting to do anything but work on my dissertation. I now regret that I have friends, and that I signed up to work for Donka this summer. That level of obsession sounds healthy, yeah? ;-)
( progress )
Yes, I am married to my dissertation. Now I need to go to bed so I can try to get up early and watch the Wimbledon quarterfinals. Anna's also coming over tomorrow afternoon, and we're going to watch the dogs swim in the backyard pool.
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| Monday, June 30th, 2008
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10:56 am
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From a recent post at LanguageLog, "I still remember the blinding flash of light when I realized years ago that the speech hesitations spelled "er" and "erm" in British texts are intended to sound just like the hesitations spelled "uh" and "um" in American texts. I'd been reading them internally as [əɹ], [əɹm], and if you'd asked me to read them aloud, that's how I'd have done it, even though never in my life had I heard anyone hesitate with such a noise. What a ninny."
OH. *blinding flash of light*
I knew of course that I was dealing with a non-rhotic dialect, but there are so many lexical (if a sound of hesitation can be called lexical) differences that I took it to be one, reinforced by the Sphinx's riddle in Goblet of Fire:
"First think of the person who lives in disguise,
Who deals in secrets and tells naught but lies,
Next tell me what's always the last thing to mend,
The middle of middle and end of the end?
And finally give me the sound often heard,
During the search for a hard-to-find word.
Now string them together, and answer me this,
Which creature would you be unwilling to kiss?"
I was misled by this into believing that I should be pronouncing "er" as in "spider", forgetting that I pronounce "spider" differently than JK Rowling.
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| Tuesday, June 17th, 2008
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11:09 pm
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Oh, we've had a new dog for a while now. A mini Schnauzer named Zachary, who's about a year old and still practically a puppy. This one loves me madly--haven't had one like that since Hank died--wants to follow me to school and everything, and he's quite funny and crazy. So he's allowed in my room on the bed sometimes, and we play.
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| Saturday, June 14th, 2008
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8:59 am
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Sorry, but this is the kind of thing you can't resist sharing...
100% on Craig Melchert's IE morphology final, and an A+ as the course grade.
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| Thursday, June 12th, 2008
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8:56 pm - I am a dissertating person!
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Why have I not been posting at all this quarter? I have been
TAing
taking 3 (2 1/2, really) classes
preparing for and taking 2 qualifying exams
attending Michael Weiss's guest seminar
reading Beowulf beyond the exam preparation
editing proofs for articles to be published
The way our program works, we have 5 qualifying exams--4 languages and 1 linguistics--to be taken individually at times of the student's choosing. Having passed Old Latin my first year, I had 4 left, all of which I took this year. You've heard about the Greek and Sanskrit; the latest news is that I passed Old English/Germanic 4 weeks ago, and Indo-European linguistics yesterday.
I've also had my most enjoyable teaching experience so far, with my classical mythology students. I still have to finish grading their finals, but I'm otherwise done, and I'm going to miss these guys in section. They talked. And they cared! It was amazing. We had fun.
Before I advance to candidacy, I technically have two requirements left: write and defend the prospectus, and take an archaeology course. The prospectus is in my head and a draft of it is on paper. The archaeology class will be a baby freshman gen ed class in the fall for pass/fail, probably.
Which means, unofficially...I am a dissertating person!
I got the mentorship for next academic year, which is quite competitive (let's hear it for wisclassic too) and gives me full funding to work on my own research rather than TAing or RAing. I also got the summer mentorship, somewhat less competitive but very nice to have, to work on my Munich paper (Rio trip after Munich, yay!). I'm also working for Donka this summer, on answer keys to her textbook, and scanning and tagging some Beowulf in an Excel file. I have a couple of weeks to make up my mind whether I want to go to a conference in Poland in November.
I worked weekends, I arrived on campus at 7 or 8 am nearly every weekday and didn't leave until 6:30 or 7, I had a 45-75 minute bus commute each way, which I used to study, I didn't have energy to answer emails, or even breathe sometimes, but I did it! And despite how busy/exhausted I was for eleven weeks, I have managed to keep the stress level to an absolute minimum. I've actually taken all my quals and other exams this year without any pre-exam anxiety at all. Post-exam anxiety, yeah, for some of them. But I'm quite proud of being able to eliminate the pre-exam anxiety; I used to stress all my major exams (like a normal person). But I'm not a normal person, I am a dissertating person!
current mood: accomplished
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| Thursday, April 3rd, 2008
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8:48 pm
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I went to see Stephanie about my Vedic translation of "Holding Out for a Hero", and she suggested very few changes!!! (Three exclamation marks called for.) I went through line by line explaining my choices, and she kept saying things like, "Yeah, yeah, uh huh, that sounds idiomatic, yep, that's the sort of thing a Vedic poet would do..."
So as soon as I'm not exhausted, I will post my revised draft and allow it to be distributed more widely (although I am operating under no illusions that it is error-free).
This made my day beyond belief.
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| Friday, March 28th, 2008
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8:59 pm - Way sucks
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During the course of reading some Beowulf today, we in the study group ran into the following most delightful word.
waesucks It is not itself in Beowulf, but is listed in the OED as a Scottish interjection, meaning "Woe!" "Alas!" "Alack!" and the like. The first member of the compound is a Scottish form of the word woe, and the second member "apparently represents sake(s." The pronunciation, with stress on the first syllable, is exactly as "waysucks", as in, "That way sucks, man." We have now decided that we are going to use it at every opportunity.
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| Tuesday, March 25th, 2008
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5:39 pm - Futher adventures involving Sanskrit
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I have not looked at Old Persian in a year and a half, but thanks to Sanskrit, I now read it a good deal better than I did when I was actually studying it.
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| Wednesday, March 19th, 2008
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10:32 pm
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I have always loved Queen since my first encounter with "We Are the Champions" (if memory serves, Dad had just bought Jock Rock 2 and played it in the car on a road trip), but recently I have discovered "I Want It All" and rediscovered "Who Wants to Live Forever", and I have decided that they are perfect. I'm not sure I've ever said that about anything other than an instrumental before, because the number one thing I judge music by is lyrics, and the second is the singer's voice.
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| Sunday, March 16th, 2008
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7:10 pm
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3:37 pm - Doggy soap opera
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We're back down to the three Rotties. The dynamics with JoDee (the boxer after she got renamed) weren't working. She got along fine with Reina; they were buddies, and Reina let her dominate her--sit on her, lie on her, step on her, jump on her, push her aside, whatever she wanted--and it was all smooches and love. But JoDee kept going after Chad, acting like she was going to hurt him, spraying him with saliva, growling, etc. and although she didn't hurt him, not a hair out of place, and although Chad himself was utterly unconcerned, Reina kept defending him by biting JoDee on the leg. It's pretty strange, because we thought at first it might be Bryce biting her, since Chad raised Bryce from a puppy and he might feel inclined to defend him, it turned out to be Reina, who's only been here about a year and you couldn't even tell she likes Chad, much less that she would have a problem with anything JoDee did.
But JoDee kept going after Chad when they were fighting over a toy, and Reina kept biting her, and it was only a matter of time before Reina hit a nerve or a tendon and JoDee was seriously injured, so JoDee had to go. She's in a good home on a trial basis, and she'll be much happier as an only dog; she didn't like sharing.
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| Friday, March 14th, 2008
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9:42 pm - Bragging
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Congratulations to nastasie for finishing the first draft of her first novel! It has been a most successful week for both of us.
current mood:  proud
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| Wednesday, March 12th, 2008
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6:19 pm
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The email notifying me came with the qualification that I should have written more, unlike the notification for the Greek qual, which came with great praise, but it's official: I passed the Vedic qual. Three down, two to go.
current mood: Yay!
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| Sunday, March 9th, 2008
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1:40 am
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| Saturday, March 8th, 2008
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9:11 pm - HELP!
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I'm wanting to translate "Holding Out for a Hero" into Vedic!
current mood: flabbergasted
current music: You guessed it...Holding Out for a Hero
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