(no subject)

I'm struggling with trying to set up a research assistantship in the EE department, but officially I'm enrolled in Linguistics. The problem is that each department thinks the ball is in the others' court -- and there's only a few days left to work this out.

EE thinks the Linguistics department needs to set something up, and Linguistics is waiting for the word from EE. I need to be enrolled or I (1) don't have health insurance and (2) don't get paid. Furthermore, I want to pass along the other RA-ship I was offered to another student, but I'm leery of doing so until I have the EE-based one in hand.

I'm psyched about the project -- relating syntax and (statistical?) grammatical structure to intonation prosody (or at least a symbolic representation of prosody). Also, it's working on spontaneous speech, which is a treat -- it's so different from "standard" written language, and there's so much more complex stuff happening there ("rules? I know no 'rules'.").

It's a great fit for me, and (as a bonus) it provides me with work for this summer. Beats unemployment all to heck. Now if only I can get everybody to sign the papers -- or even just figure out what papers need to be signed....

Language invention, Nicaraguan Sign, and language change in ASL

So She found out about this event at a local center for the deaf and hard of hearing. A professor from SCCC, who teaches ASL, was giving a talk presentation about two fascinating subjects:

• Nicaraguan Sign Language
• Language change in ASL

Needless to say, they were both fascinating.

First neat detail: the entire lecture was given in sign, with interpreters speaking aloud for us non-signing audience members. All (save one) of the questions were in ASL as well.

( serious linguistics geekout follows )