It’s really rather hard to go to your advisor and admit that no, actually you haven’t done anything in a month.
In my defense, I needed the break. But . . . oh well. I’ll do it all now. That’s why I have a light semester this semester. Not that I’ve done anything at all this semester in the sense of actual work.
I’m going to continue my highly successful strategy of not thinkign about it.
In my syntax seminar the other day we were discussing grammaticalisation in French negation. Personne can mean either “someone” or “no one”, depending.
And V mentioned double negatives in some dialects of French. (Ne really barely counts anymore.)
I looked sort of surprised and said it was unacceptable. Everyone knows full well that you can only have ne and one other element — pas, or personne, or jamais . . .
Then she wrote down three sentences. Damn. I’ve heard them all; they all sound right. The first, especially, sounds like the best way to (informally) say it. Goes to show what 17 years of grammar lessons will do. I’d fail a test on when to use the subjunctive vs the conditional vs whatever else, I’d get all the genders wrong, but I know the rules that people’ve stopped using (in Quebec).
1. J’ai pas vu personne.
I have not seen no one.
2. Pas personne est venu.
Not no one has come.
3. Il est pas venu personne.
He/it has not come no one.
I’m not sure what they’ve been doing until now, but suddenly there are mice again in the house. One, at least, which may or may not still be alive (Sam was sitting on it and growling at Matilda, and periodically walking around with it in his mouth and growling at Matilda, and then I took her away for a while, and now I don’t see it).
I wonder if I should make a category “complaints about winter”.
I did it. I made it back. It was hard. Hard because I didn’t want to. Hard because it was cold and the drive is long and I am tired.
We are having new roommate problems. I am tired of those, too; I almost hope my lease isn’t renewed so that I will have to move out, somewhere (anywhere) on my own.
My room is freezing. Today I am forcing myself to leave my room (I haven’t, yet) and get dressed (same) and buy a space heater. I plan also to turn on my humidifier.Because my hands are barely moving, and my right hand where I had the operations is starting to hurt.
Why I like living places that have winter I don’t know.
I want to go home.
I’m going to go back tomorrow, really I am.
I don’t want to. I ever so much don’t want to. And I don’t know why. My research is — was? I’m not doing anything now — going fine. I keep thinking of leaving. I wonder if it’s because I’m worried I won’t measure up or rather because the realities of the job market are getting to me.
I think of retraining as an electrician. I could work where I wanted. I could work when I wanted. There’s always a job. I could even get a PhD, retrain, work as an electrician and do research on the side.
Because, and sometimes I hate this fact, but I like the research. I enjoy it. I enjoy discussing it.
But I am unhappy now. I don’t want to leave. I am not doing anything.
I wonder if it’s just winter, biting. It’s too cold to go out, too cold to do anything. Winter is never going to end, not this year. It gets colder and colder, day after day. Too cold to be happy.
Can’t seem to import at the moment.
After I spent all that time formatting them. Oh well. Later. Still, I’m disappointed. I wanted to see if the rest of them worked.
I managed to get August’s up. Now I need to do July, September, October, November, December and January.
Alphabetical order’s a bitch, sometimes.
My (second) cousin is taking an introduction to linguistics course, of the applied kind. She asked me if I knew where she could get some of the basics of English grammar, since she grew up in Ontario and never learned it.
Things like, oh, parts of speech. I had done MadLibs, so my problem was prepositions — I also didn’t learn grammar in school. (For advice, I could only think of the old framing sentence, “The squirrel ran ____ the tree”.)
It’s funny. I suggested she asked the prof, or one of the TAs (not hers), who was a friend of mine. If those didn’t work, I can get her stuff.
But it’s funny, things they[1] assume people know. Despite never having learned formal grammar — and also despite what my writing here may show — I am a good writer. (I think it comes from reading a lot of good writing.) Still, it’s strange. How are there generations (between my mother, who learned grammar, and my aunt, who didn’t, up until now) who just don’t learn what a noun is? It goes a little far. Phonics and traditional grammar are not tools of the devil. Not always, anyways.
[1] Anyone, really.
I was so impressed with myself, once, for posting regularly.
That’s great. Now I’m trying to get all my old posts together so I can import them and I get excited about the days I don’t post. Also, I prefer the posts with no comments.
It’s just not, somehow, worth the 2.50 for me to be a premium user at blog-city for a day and do it. Why? Maybe because I can’t sleep.
Edit: change of mind. It is worth it to sign up. This is not a labour of that much love.
From The Cleveland Plain-Dealer, via Kimberly Swygert: a question for the new citizenship test.
Arrange in order, smallest to largest: jumbo, giant, extra large.
I generally order the “middle” one, which works well.