I love my linguistics textbook.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I was doing my linguistics reading. We’re on morphology and syntax. (morphology is more or less the structure of words.) I was reading the section on infixes, which are words inserted inside another word. The book gave the example of a common English infix. F**king. (I don’t know if the language is appropriate for this forum, so I’m erring on the side of caution.)

any college textbook that contains the word absof**kinglutely and analyzes it from a language standpoint is beyond cool.

2

That reminds me of a physiology text I had in college that was dry as a bone. I’m paraphrasing because I haven’t seen the book in 20+ years, but the passage was truly funny, particularly in light of the complete absence of any non-technical writing anywhere else in the book. It said:

The hypothalamus regulates the release of adrenalin to the nervous system, adrenalin controlling the four ‘F’ behaviors: fleeing, feeding, fighting and mating.

3

I thought that was fleeing, feeding, fighting and “Family Activities”! Learn something new every day! :wink:

4

andygirl, which text are you using? Sounds like a good one!

5

Linguistics- an introduction to linguistic theory. The editor is Fromkin, publisher is Blackwell. 2000 edition. It’s good stuff.

6

I think that’s the same one I had in my introductory linguistics course, but that was fifteen years ago so obviously it was an earlier edition. We also read Peter Farb’s Word Play, which had a long passage on the history of f**k, IIRC. Linguistics is fun.

7

Andy: since when are you taking linguistics, girl? That’s great! (You knew I’m a ling major, right?)

(cheerleading)
Chomsky! Chomsky! He’s our man!
If he can’t parse it no one can!
P! P! AP P!
VP CP IP P!
Noooooooooooun Phrase!

8

Aw, honey, you knew that I was, didn’t ya?

And I knew that you were. :slight_smile: We should write a book on gayspeak… big seller, no?

9

Truly.



  IP
 /  \
NP   VP
|   /  \
N  V    CP
I guess / \
       /   \
      C     IP
   [that]  /  \
         NP    \
        /  \    VP
       AP  N    | \
       |   |    V  PP_
       A queen  |   | \
       |        is  P  \
     *some*           |   NP
                   on  /  \
                      /    \
                    art     N
                     |      |
                     a *schedule*!
10

Matt, What are you going to do with that linguistics degree? I went to grad school, Ph.D. track, got the M.A. after passing comps, but just couldn’t come up with a good dissertation topic. Now I teach English at a college in Japan, which isn’t a bad gig really. I even had a chance to teach an intro linguistics course, but the students just couldn’t get into it like me and you guys.

11

Teach: As it happens, I’m actually in university for a degree, not an apprenticeship.

What I intend to do for money is translate, which I’m doing now.

12

Translating is fun and challenging. I sometimes wish I had gotten into that line of work. I suppose I still could. What languages do you work with? Do you find that your linguistics courses help at all? Just curious.

13

I translate French to English, seeing as how Montreal is for obvious reasons the French-to-English translation capital of the known universe. :slight_smile: And “linguistics major” sounds impressive, if nothing else.

14

Sorry, Matt. I knew you were in Montreal. Why not English-to-French translation, too?

“Linguistics major” is impressive indeed. I just wish I could say, “I have a Ph.D. in linguistics.” Now that sounds impressive.

15

Practically everyone translates into their first language. That’s because you have to understand the source text, but you have to have really good writing skills and a native-speaker knowledge of the target language. I’m simply not good enough in written French, although I speak it fluently.