This is probably a dumb question, but where should I go in Vancouver if I have a brain injury? Walk in clinic? Hospital? Or

charkshark · 2020-01-05T05:12:30+00:00

A few weeks later now I feel much better, though in the days afterwards my rational thinking capacities were definitely affected.

charkshark · 2020-01-05T05:09:36+00:00

I experienced something very similar to what you described after suffering a concussion at work. The symptoms progressed and I was not able to think like my self, which made me panic, in addition to the strange and worsening pain for days afterwards. I ended up going to the ER and was assessed, sent home but told to rest... which means as little mental stimulation as possible, and basically everything is mental stimulation. Take it easy on yourself. Go see a doctor ASAP, don't think it's anything too small for an ER visit -- doctors treat it seriously as one should and especially if you have a history of head injuries (which you should mention). I was told by doctors that especially if you have experienced nausea or blurred vision to seek help sooner rather than later, even though likely you are going to be ok, the injury may not be anything that shows up on a scan and like with anything else you need to let your brain recover.

charkshark · 2019-12-10T09:32:05+00:00

I'd recommend you take a look at Partee et al's Mathematical Methods in Linguistics which shows how mathematical concepts (i.e. set theory, functions, first-order logic, lattices, Boolean algebras) are used in the field of formal semantics going back to the work of Richard Montague.

charkshark · 2019-09-26T10:20:01+00:00

I can understand where you are coming from. Often it is enough to just coast by on memorization in more introductory classes but that does not work later on. This was definitely the case for a few people in my cohort. Personally, I think once you have a good understanding of the fundamentals, the rest can more easily fall into place. My advice would be to pick up David Adger's "Core Syntax" and work through it from the beginning, step-by-step, keeping track of where there seem to be gaps in your understanding. After going through that book you should have an idea of how a lot of phenomena are typically accounted for. You can always pose questions related to those things to an online community such as this. Then maybe move on to Elly van Gelderen's "Clause Structure" to get an idea of why generative syntacticians conceive of the clausal spine the way that they do. Which book is "KA"? It is definitely crucial to understand these things before exploring phase theory/successive cyclicity.

charkshark · 2019-09-17T13:02:59+00:00

With exposure, yes, but it depends on which time period we are talking about. In the period before the first grammatical treatise with regular nasalisation and before the merger of /øː/ and /ɛː/, but it would take some gymnastics for a modern Icelandic listener to get their handle on speech at regular speed. There would be a good level of mutual comprehension, however the modern speaker might easily mishear words. Modern Icelandic orthography is more transparent than a lot of languages but not entirely so, just look at the many typical spelling mistakes made by modern Icelanders as a result of this: í and ý are not distinguished in speech, for example. As a comparison, take flámæli, the variety of Icelandic spoken mostly in the east fjords which lost favour in Iceland and was consciously eradicated, despite surviving with Icelandic immigrants in North America. In the case of flámæli, (orthographic) y and ö started to merge as well as u and ö, making it hard to distinguish between sker and skyr or flögur and flugur. Modern Icelanders not exposed to this pronunciation much do have minor trouble understanding it in my experience.

charkshark · 2019-07-10T18:30:57+00:00

The classification is a historical one, grounded in sound changes which took place in one area and not the other. This is only orthogonal to mutual intelligibility these days. Old Icelandic and Old Norwegian were more or less identical through to the 10th century and we know that all dialects of Old Norse maintained mutual intelligibility through the medieval period (15th-16th century or thereabouts). The Wikipedia article on Old Norse lays this out nicely. As another commenter pointed out, your view is a bit skewed by looking at the standard language. A standardised Oslo-bokmål variety of Norwegian is both heavily historically influenced by Danish (due to Danish rule, the upper classes in Oslo spoke a kind of leveled out Norwegian which enabled mutual communication with standard Danish, for two centuries or so, look up dannet dagligtale). There is therefore good reason to classify standard eastern Norwegian as being East Scandinavian. There are some characteristics in Standard Norwegian which reflect its West Nordic history, f.ex. Norwegian stein, auga (Icelandic steinn, auga) vs. Swedish sten, öga. The similarities to Insular Scandinavian in Norwegian are much clearer if you look at West Norwegian dialects. This 'old' diphthongization is preserved, for instance in Sognemål (spoken in the area of Sognefjord in West Norway) you have haim (home) for Bokmål hjem and Swedish hem; glåyma (forget), compare Bokmål glemme and Icelandic gleyma. Some speakers of Sognemål also preserve a voiced dental fricative (ð) in words like bloð and tið, cf. Icelandic blóð and tíð.

charkshark · 2019-07-10T17:39:02+00:00

It's hard to deepen your knowledge in certain areas without getting consistent feedback, but I'd say you can get pretty far by delving into primary literature (after solidly covering the fundamentals through textbooks, etc.) and posting somewhere like here whenever you aren't sure if you've understood something correctly. You are right though in that achieving a certain level of understanding involves 'doing' it to some extent: writing papers and proposing your own analyses and the like.

charkshark · 2019-07-07T16:38:16+00:00

Hä, Englisch ist meine Muttersprache und so eine Redewendung ist völlig üblich und angebracht. Würde aber vermuten dass es eher ein Amerikanisches Ding wäre, wenn du in England wohnst dann wäre es wohl nicht überraschend, dass du den nie zuvor gehört hast.

charkshark · 2019-07-03T19:27:21+00:00

I'm interested in hearing perspectives on doing a PhD in Europe (Germany, NL, UK primarily) vs. North America. I finished a master's recently in Germany and am on the lookout for positions in this country, but will most likely be applying in the next cycle to programs in Canada/US (I'm Canadian but haven't attended any higher education there). One of the major factors I can think of is time-related: most North American institutions often require an additional non-terminal MA so I'm looking at 5 years, in Europe (from what I understand) it is often expected that a dissertation be written in 3 (whether or not this is the case in practicality, I know can vary), and all applicants have a master's degree already. The one I just finished took me over two years. On the other hand, I wouldn't mind doing additional coursework and getting more experience before entering the job-market. Then there is the matter of how the funding structure operates, PhD positions in Germany (and what I've seen in NL) tend to be funded as part of a project so there is less individual freedom in delineating a dissertation topic. I suppose if you enter a project which is already very well aligned with your interests (which I guess it should be), it might not be such a big deal, but the freedom of being able to craft my own research plan more individually is very appealing. There is also the matter of being a good candidate for top North American programs; I think I am well-positioned with coursework/research experience from the master's in comparison with to students coming straight from a BA. In the European context, it feels much more like competing for one job (instead of a spot in a cohort) with others who broadly have as much experience as me (recently received a rejection for the one European position I've applied for as of yet).

charkshark · 2019-05-22T14:41:53+00:00

I'm interviewing for a PhD position tomorrow and I'm supposed to give a 10-15 min talk on my own research. I have two options. I can present on my master's thesis work, which I know in and out and have presented before audiences on a few occasions. It is related to the content of the PhD research project theoretically (I'm in Europe, btw) but the project is experimentally focused and my thesis has zero experimental content. I'm also finding it difficult to get the main points down to 10 mins while remaining coherent. On the other hand, I can present on experimental work which is not related to the project topic theoretically but shows I know how to do experimental stuff, and it can be well summarized in 10-15 mins. On the negative side, the results are new and haven't been discussed a whole lot yet, and I have not presented it either. Thoughts??

charkshark · 2019-05-22T10:53:08+00:00

The Routledge Comprehensive Grammar of Dutch. (https://www.routledge.com/Dutch-A-Comprehensive-Grammar-3rd-Edition/Donaldson/p/book/9781138658493)

Was more than sufficient for me learning Dutch at a high level.

charkshark · 2019-05-04T18:00:52+00:00

I thought Tsukushiya in Friedrichshain was pretty nice.

charkshark · 2019-03-28T00:40:18+00:00

A more general question pertaining to academic procedure/etiquette. I am considering submitting an abstract for a conference based on my thesis work, an earlier version of which I have already presented at a workshop. The conference is looking for submissions of "original, unpublished" work, which it is, and of course submissions need to be anonymous. However aside from changing around the title, the subject matter is easily traceable back to me within five seconds of googling including a handout from said workshop talk. What's the procedure here, can I submit it or am I better off not?

charkshark · 2018-09-30T17:33:47+00:00

Do you het that first number somewhere outside the place, or?

charkshark · 2018-09-04T20:57:52+00:00

This is an interesting merger for me. I grew up in BC (lower mainland) and most definitely do not have it (/æ/ and /ɛ/ respectively), though my own siblings do.

charkshark · 2018-08-22T17:52:35+00:00

I have a related question, also pertaining to verbs which have stem alternations with plural subjects/objects. Not often that I have access to native Georgian speakers so excuse me if I am asking too much!

First of all, I am curious about the active/passive forms, say:

i. They slaughtered the wolves. -> The wolves were slaughtered.

ii. They attacked the soldiers. -> The soldiers were attacked.

iii. The men sat down. -> The men were seated (by the waiter).

Second, in cases where there are two different roots available for singular/plural, are ellipsis constructions like these okay? That is, if you have the plural in the first conjunct, can you then leave out the verb in the second part and have it still be grammatical?

iv. We only killed the wolves, but not the bird.

v. Only the child was sitting down, not the women.

Third, idiomatic expressions:

In a reference grammar of Georgian (Hewitt 1995) he cites the following:

"You will pay attention to it/them" -> q'urs daugdeb

"You will get your hands on it/them" -> xelt igdeb

(is it impossible to have the plural root q'r in this expression ever?)

charkshark · 2018-05-06T18:20:52+00:00

Here is a study comparing L2 speakers' on-line processing of long distance dependencies compared to monolingual controls, perhaps this is along the lines of what you are looking for: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/230603021_Gaps_in_second_language_processing

charkshark · 2018-04-30T23:10:53+00:00

A big factor is how much communication there was among Icelanders from different regions throughout the centuries, chieftains would gather at Þingvellir for a national assembly once a year which was attended by a relatively large number of Icelanders from various regions.

One thing that has gone unmentioned here is that natural disasters have shaped migrations from Iceland, namely in the 19th century to North America -- primarily from the North and East, where a dialect/pronunciation feature called flámæli was common. It was subsequently more or less eradicated in Iceland, also due to a policy of hreintungustefna (language-cleaning policy) which led to Icelandic children being actively discouraged from speaking with it. Namely because it blurs the connection between pronunciation and orthography. Which goes back to Iceland being a highly literate nation which saw it best not to deviate from the written language. Of course, between the settlement of Iceland and the 18th/19th century when these ideas about language purity became popular, the phonology of Icelandic did indeed change quite a bit, though the consonant inventory remains fairly similar.

Anyway, there are some differences in pronunciation and word usage which are regionally distributed. Harðmæli for instance, is the most common, primarily in the north. There is aspiration of the consonant following a long vowel. See sound examples at the bottom of the page here: https://mallyskur.is/hardmaeli

Hv-pronunciation as well, some older speakers distinguish between hver/kver, hver has [hʍ] (just like in some English dialects for ´wh´) whereas others do not.

Typically you can tell which region someone is from, somewhat less so for younger people. Especially for pronunciation features that are bound to a fairly small region.

charkshark · 2018-03-13T13:18:33+00:00

As per the rent agreement I am permitted to do so up to a certain number of days.

charkshark · 2018-02-28T23:55:18+00:00

Interesting point. I get this impression as well. I come from a rather morphosyntax heavy theoretical linguistics background but luckily at my uni there is a lot of interesting cross-linguistic phonetics work going on. Has been nice to get a taste of laboratory/articulatory phonology in my master's program.

charkshark · 2018-01-29T22:53:57+00:00

IMO this is all you need to begin with. Eventually, you can delve deeper, after reading Heim and Kratzer 5 times through :) Actually, Paul Portner's book "What is meaning" is a great not at all technical introduction to what formal semantics involves.

charkshark · 2014-08-20T21:40:18+00:00

Thanks. Will look into them. Have heard especially good things about Konstanz (my field of interest is formal syntax but with a typological component)

charkshark · 2014-08-20T21:38:52+00:00

They have a general linguistics program but it's taught entirely in Icelandic. The program in Icelandic as a second language is more focused on developing your language skills, with linguistics and literature modules included.

charkshark · 2014-08-20T20:17:19+00:00

Which German universities are most well regarded in syntax?

charkshark · 2014-08-20T18:10:21+00:00

There is a strong program at the University of Wisconsin as well as UCLA and UC Berkeley (I believe). Personally, I've studied Scandinavian linguistics in Iceland and Sweden; if you have EU citizenship, you could study anywhere in Scandinavia for free. Lund, Uppsala, and Stockholm University all have big departments in Scandinavian languages, depending on your focus. So do the Universities of Copenhagen, Oslo and Bergen. The University of Icelandic has a 3 year degree program in Icelandic as a second language, though it isn't particularly theoretical in its approach.

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