first day of classes

[trochee]

and so begins a new academic year. I had my first class since the spring today. I did right by bringing a lab notebook to this class about experimental phonetics and phonology; halfway through class, the professor announces that he expects everybody to be using stitched quad-rule lab notebooks for the class, because "that's what a grant would insist on, and sometimes they audit. get used to it." I just had that idea last week.

and there were some interesting people in the class that I didn't already know, including an undergrad (another one, xaosenkosmos!) who's a math/linguistics double major. She seems pretty sharp.

This class is focused on improving our ability and comfort with the traditional experimental method (often lacking in much of linguistics), and started with the thought experiment:

how many times do you push the button at a crosswalk?
update: why?

Comments

is that really teh answer?

[http://users.livejournal.com/_dkg_/]

while i have absolutely nothing to back this up, i would offer a different origin (though i reckon i'm pretty out of touch with kids these days...):

i first started seeing teh used in the context where the author was mimicking a n00b in a rather excitable state. they are usually so excited that they don't sufficiently complete the end of sentences (leaving out things like "iest thing"). They also frequently overindulge in exclamation points, though they can't seem to hold down the shift key all the time. so you get statements like:

OMG WTF LOL GAT BAK IN TEH GM3!1!!!

given how easy it is to transpose consecutive letters typed by different hands (as h and e are on the standard qwerty configuration), i would argue that it's used most often to indicate extreme urgency, haste, or intensity of emotion, and the pursuant excitement.

but i might be spending too much time thinking about this too.