A Good Day

Today has been a good day.

The highlight was my trip to the mail room. I wasn't sure there would be anything, but I had been alerted to the possibility. I had to wait on the housing assistant to get off the phone, and then I followed her to the mail room. There were boxes and letters all over the place. She navigated to the LSA pile and started looking through the stack. The first few were addressed to other people. They were sizable envelopes, which was as much as I expected to get, and I began to think there wasn't anything for me. Then she looked at the large box underneath the letters and saw my name about the same time I noticed the Godiva tape on the box. I literally gasped for breath.

I muttered some incoherent things as she told me to enjoy, and grinned all the way back to the dorm. Therein, I found a beautiful birthday package of mixed chocolates with a sweet note from Trey. I think I complained to him once that I didn't have any chocolate out here. (I've been complaining that he's not out here, but I don't know if he can ship in a box.) In the spirit of good Christian giving, I offered a piece of the chocolate to my roommate, Yoko, after I'd had a few pieces, but I think that's a case of motivation that will definitely have to be covered in the blood of Christ :). Chocolate is wonderful! and I want it all for me. Thank you, Trey!

This morning, my intro to morphology class started. A friend yesterday told me that if I like puzzles, I'd like morphology, and I can see how that's true. Instead of messing with truth and the meanings of things (like the semantics), morphology is more about how the pieces of language fit together. It's different from syntax (though some apparently define it as the last step in syntactical analysis), and some languages don't even have morphology! I'm just regurgitating some of the facts I garnered from class this morning; hopefully by the end of the course, I'll be able to speak more knowledgeably on the subject. But I do think it's something I'm going to enjoy if I can get a grip on the terminology.

My other class on literacy acquisition was very exciting. It is dually taught and both professors are passionate about helping kids learn to read and using linguistic tools to help them. They look at phonology and how that relates to the written word, but they also take into account things like kids' discouragement about learning to read and teacher/student misunderstandings, lack of family support, etc. as obstacles to literacy acquisition. It makes me wish that I wanted to/could work with kids on reading and had had some experience doing it. It seems like something that would be so useful, especially at Redeemer's tutoring program or Alice Lusk's summer reading program that is going on at Redeemer while I'm out here. Maybe I'd do better tutoring than in a classroom. I'm not sure what I'll end up with from this class, but I hope I can pull out something I can put to use back in Jackson.

Also, on Sunday I'm going to Peninsula Bible Church with Jeeyoung, my friend from Korea whose name I now can spell, and her husband. I think I'll go with them to get either Vietnamese or Korean food afterwards, too. She usually goes to lunch with her bible study group, and invited me to come along.

God is good!

Cont.

So, to finish out my thoughts from yesterday, I don't think semantics is a field I want to explore further, at least not as a specialty. I kept wanting the "so what?" answered, and no one really seemed interested in that question. The logic class wanted to pin language down as a machine. You put this (x) in, you'll get this (y) out. While admitting that this hasn't been accomplished, I don't really know why people would think you could do that to language. Even the human "machine" doesn't always act like it's supposed to . . . because it's not a machine! I don't think language is, either.

I think the classes I'll be taking in the regular session will have some more practical applications, though. And I don't mean to be saying that I dislike the exploration of theory. I just like to know the "so what?" And I know that semantics can be useful and helpful, but just trying to break down words into component, isolated meanings for the sake of breaking them down, doesn't appeal to me. I suppose the object then is to build them back up into a language, supposedly superior to natural language? And I think "natural language" is another technical term I don't know.

Can you tell I'm barely able to swim through this stuff?

This morning for breakfast, I had a little bit of raisin bran (which made me think of Uncle Jim), which I mixed with granola and a few cocoa puffs for flavor. The mixing of the cereals made me think of Aunt Melinda, Aunt Susan, Mom, and Grandma, who all taught me how to mix my cereals. So, it was like I got to have breakfast with my family! :) If only they had Daddy's bread to toast, I could eat with him, too.

Yipe! now it's time for lunch. It's weird when you have a closed window of time to get your food. Maybe being on a schedule will be good for me. :)

Happy 4th, everyone! Neills, blow something up for me. Thanks. Grace, you can send off some firecrackers for me, too. I hope the Owens, Jr. family time with the Owens, Sr. family is blessed. I'm sorry I can't be there to meet everyone. Love y'all!

Lexical Semantics

Pretty much everybody I spoke to who has any exposure to linguistics said the lexical semantics of verbs is a rather small area of focus. Truthfully, the class consisted of a lot of words apparently said in no particular order. Ha! I guess some people may have understood some of it.

Basically---what I gathered, at least---to study the lexical semantics of verbs, you are trying to pull the verb out of a sentence and by observing its behavior determine its meaning or the meaning of its component parts that make it behave in a certain way. Since I didn't have a general introduction to lexical semantics in the first place, I may be way off the mark. Unfortunately, I really know nothing about semantics, either, but I didn't see how it would be useful to try to determine the function of a component of a sentence outside of the sentence. It's like pulling a leaf off a plant to see how it works; once you have it off, it doesn't work because it's made to work with the plant. I guess you may be able to garner some helpful information (take, for instance, cadaver dissection) in looking at a dead thing to learn how the living thing functions. But it seemed like taking a dead thing and trying to find life in it apart from what makes it alive.

More on this later! I have my floundering statistics class to attend!

Day 1

Well, I don't remember much from my first two classes. About mid-afternoon, I talked to Trey and we decided I should go ahead and drink some coffee. The idea that I can't focus or have energy without coffee disconcerts me. I suppose I could have caffeine in some other form, but I do prefer to take it in coffee form. Anyway, I'm starting tomorrow off with coffee. Then maybe I can tell you more about my classes!

The most exciting thing today was meeting Chiyungye, whose name I unfortunately have no idea how to spell. We were chatting---she's from South Korea and is studying Asian languages at Stanford; her husband is getting a PhD in electrical engineering---and when I mentioned I was engaged, she asked about Trey. I told her he was a seminary student. "Oh, are you Christians?" "Yes, we are." "We are too!" Yay! So, now I have a Christian friend here! She's going to take me to her church next Sunday.

I got lots of wonderful birthday messages today. People tended to call while I was in class, which wasn't hard considering that's where I was for most of the day! But I'm glad I have messages now, I can save them for a while and re-listen to them.

In the dining hall tonight, there were lots of kids with "Great Books Conference" on their t-shirts. Any of you who have heard me talk about the positively amazing Great Books class I took my sophomore year will know I was practically drooling. But I guess I can't do two conferences at once. I also sat at a table with some high school students who are here for eight weeks total (they've already been here one week), taking summer courses for college credit. One was from Spain, one from Austria, one from Wisconsin, and one from Texas. I also ran into the professor from Pakistan who shared a cab with me to campus. I'm getting lots of cultural exposure over here. I just wish I could remember foreign names better than I do.

And I think I'll go do a little reading before my classes tomorrow. We have two more days of this schedule, a big barbecue and no classes on Wednesday, and the regular courses starting Thursday, which I think I already mentioned. I'll be taking MORE fun classes like Language and Identity, Language and Thought, Introduction to Morphology, and Minority Dialects and Literacy Acquisition.

I've got a mosquito bite. I thought they didn't have those over here. :(

Quick update

I'm in California. The weather is as beautiful as everyone said, and the campus is amazing. I'll hopefully get some pictures up here or on facebook sometime soon.

The Owens will be happy to know that this computer lab has all of three PCs and approx. seven Macs. I guess y'all (you, Owenses) will take over the world one day. Glad I'm marrying one of ya. :)

I signed up for a three person dorm room, but so far there is only me and Yoko, who is a graduate student studying in Canada (Toronto, I think), originally from Japan. I'm not sure about the grammar of that sentence.

We unfortunately have classes today, but the following Sundays will not be like this. These are some presession classes; the regular session classes start Thursday. So, today I have the Lexical Semantics of Verbs (oooOOooo!), Statistics for Linguists A (eeeeek!), and Logic for Linguists.

The dorm room is very nice for a dorm room. There are three adjoining rooms; the middle one has two bunk beds. The side rooms have shelves, desks, and a little closet with a sink in it. There are great big windows in all the rooms that open but not without a little noise, as Trey can confirm.

My shoulders are very sore from carrying all those bags around yesterday. And I had something extra salty for supper last night because my eyes are all puffy this morning. I think the food will be very good. I got to have Indian AND Chinese food last night (hm, and I wonder where the salty came from. . . .).

I'll try to post more info later. I get a little sad when I think about how long it will be before I see any of y'all, but I can't really do anything about that right now, so I'll just keep on keepin' on.