Posts (page 2)

For this post, I'm going to attempt to create some charts like the ones we did in class concerning verb tense.
T= Today (like Feb. 21)
MC= Maggie cook
VB= Vickey bake

When Maggie cooked the turkey, Vickey baked the cake.
                        VB            T
                        MC

When Maggie cooked the turkey, Vickey had baked the cake.
            VB            MC            T

When Maggie cooked the turkey, Vickey was about to bake the cake.
            MC            VB            T

When Maggie cooks the turkey, Vickey has baked the cake.
            VB            MC
                              T

When Maggie cooks the turkey, Vickey bakes the cake.
                            MC
                             T
                            VB

When Maggie cooks the turkey, Vickey is about to bake the cake.
                       T         VB
                      MB

When Maggie cooks the turkey, Vickey will have baked the cake.
            T         VB         MC

When Maggie cooks the turkey, Vickey will bake the cake.
            T            VB
                          MC

When Maggie cooks the turkey, Vickey will be about to bake the cake.
          T         MC         VB

Since I missed all but one of the aspect questions on the homework, I'm going to test out aspect and see if I'm doing it correctly.

(a) States:
    Kentucky is geographically placed below Ohio and Indiana.
    My middle name, Victoria is the same as my Grandmother's name, Victoria.
    Tom Cruise has a daughter.

(b) Activities:
    *I am going to dance for 24 hours this weekend!
    She might sing karaoke at mainstreet tonight.
    People stormed from the burning building.

(c) Accomplishments:
    *I am going to dance for 24 hours this weekend! (can this be an accomplishment and an activity?)
    She is doing ten loads of laundry today.
    I am working on my essay.
 
(d) Achievements:
    I arrived in Salt Lake City at 10:45.
    My friends and I will graduate on the same day.
    George ate his entire bowl of dog food.

(e) Semelfactives
    I drank.
    He banged on the door.
    The horse ran around the track.

After class today I created some hierarchies I'd like to share with you!  I was thinking this is one way to organize these hierarchies we didn't talk about in class.  Do you think this strategy works?

(1) Taxonomic:

Formal Education:

Who                  What                  Where                   When                   Why

students          further education     school                primary                become more intelligent
teachers                                       university            elementary              
                                                    home                  preschool
                                                                            highschool
                                                                               college
                                                                              graduate (masters)
                                                                            doctorate

(2) Meronomic:

School:

Building                  Offices                 Nurse                  Cafeteria                 Labs

Classroom               Desk                    Bed                     tables                    computers
                                                                                   Kitchenware
Desk                                                                             
Chiars                                                                            dishes
chalk board                                                                   cookingware
                                                                                       

To make sure that I am fully understanding Pleonasm, hyponyms, and superordinates, I'm going to try out a few examples. 

Lets start with a simple example like in the book.
(1)   female sister (pleonastic)
       sister who's a queen (normal: queen is a hyponym to female)      
       sister relation (normal: relation is a superordinate to sister)

(2)   The hot heater warmed the cold room. (pleanastic)
       The space heater warmed the cold room. (normal - space heater is a hyponym to heater)
       The space heater increased the temperature by five degrees in the cold room. (normal: increased the temperature is a superordinate to warmed/heated)

(3)   Having dinner on top of the tall skyscrapper made me dizzy. (pleonastic)
       Having dinner on top of the tall building made me dizzy. (normal: tall is a superordinate to building)
       The skyscraper seemed to reach the clouds, it was so tall. (normal : In this context, could tall be a hyponym to skyscraper?) 

If you can figure out the last one, let me know.  Not sure I did that right...

I am going to make sure that I understand Identity Inclusion correctly and attempt to make an example similar to the Jason Ray one used in class.

He went to class and took his backback, two notebooks and a pencil.  - This would be hyponomy because backpack, notebook and pencil are all a form of school gear. 

He was bored in class and tore pages from his notebook. - This would be meronomy because pages are a part of a notebook.

Am I correct or does meronomy have to be a relationship more humane like finger and hand?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cm3pnWplnHw&feature=related

This song has become more popular as you probably have seen this commercial or the youtube video with the dancing fingers.  I think the effect it has (as this effect is often portrayed in music) is obviously the acoustic ability to change the voice/sound of the music.  It's addicting in some ways.  This commercial is an example of Zeugma because of the repetition and the effect the language has on the audience.  It also has descriptive qualities of intesity and quality as well as evoked non-descriptive qualities such as dialect and temperal.  You could even stretch it and say the commercial could even have social qualities because of the Kansas City football player. 

I liked the concept of "shades of gray."  To make sure I get it though, I wanted to throw out some examples and see what you all think.

The example used in class was:
Have you seen the credit card bill?
This would be a shade of grey because you can be speaking of the information on the bill or the actual bill itself. 

What about this example:
Did you watch Cashmere Mafia last night?
I would think this could be shades of grey because it could mean did you stare at the tv with no sound and not really pay attention to the show, or it could mean did you understand the context and follow what happened. 
For that matter, we could just say:
Are you watching the TV? That would be shades of grey because you could mean are you watching the TV as the repair man fixes it or are you watching sportscenter.

How about this example:
Are you going to DanceBlue this weekend?
No, I have no talent whatsoever.
Would this be micro senses.  Because you could go to DanceBlue and not dance, or you could go and dance poorly, or you could not go at all.  What do you all think?

When we were discussing major questions linguists ask from Chapter 5, it got me thinking.  One question I wrote down was, Why do some words have different meanings when spelling is the same?  These are Homonym's such as bank (the place we all keep our money) vs. bank (on a river).  This was actually from Chapter 6. 

Notice in the question how I underlined "different."  When I first started writing I accidently wrote "the different" because I was going to write the same then realized different was the word I needed (not same).  I started thinking.  Why do we say "the same" and not "the different." 

This is just one thing I was thinking about that I'm guessing we will get to at a later point in the semester. 

Back to Homonym's.  I think this is very interesting and confusing.  Are there Homonyms in other languages?  How do you learn a language if two words are the same?  Is that why they say English is so confusing?  Are names Homonyms?  For example how about the name, Apple.  All of these crazy famous people keep naming their children things like Apple.  Does that count as a Homonym because it means (the little girl) and the fruit?

    I am recently reading the book, "Invisible Man" for another class.  The book takes place in Harlam and discusses the life journey and struggles faced by the main character, a black male who is harassed by upper class white men.  There is a scene where a black farmer is speaking to a high class, intelligent white man and says, "And I caint stop -- although I got a feelin' somethin' is wrong.  I git aloose from the woman now and I'm runnin' for the clock.  At first I couldn't git the door open, it hand some kinda crkily stuff like steel wool on the facing. But I gits it open and gits inside and it's hot and dark in there."
    I was thinking about the way the author portrayed this character through her writting when we normally would not write this way because it is spoken and therefore the mode is different than the norm.  Online messaging also came to my attention.  Do you think that instant messaging and text messaging have different modes?  Sometimes I use the same words, but sometimes I dont' because it takes too long to type on text messages.  Do you all have this same problem? 

    If you haven't heard the unfortunate news, Heath Ledger passed away earlier today.  I immediately turned on CNN to hear how it happened, when it happened, why it happened and what his family and friends thought.  This is what I found:
    "Actor Heath Ledger found dead."
    "Ledger found dead in Mary-Kate Olsen's appartment."
    "Pills found alongside of Ledger's bed, but no assurance of cause of death."
    As a journalist, I am always wanting to know the major details of events.  I am always looking to report the main events of the game, the player with the most points, the coach's reaction, etc... After thinking about this I realized that journalists use speciticity, probably more than anyone else.  We are taught in our classes to find out details and always report details.  If you think about it, it's kind of interesting, because it's what people want to hear.  Just thought that was interesting. 
    I didn't mean for this to be disturbing, but it was major news today and triggered my thoughts about linguistics. 
RIP: Heath Ledger