User Profile

I'm a linguist. This doesn't mean that I speak dozens of languages. (At my absolute best, I can claim to speak five-ish; I also claim not to speak at least 33.) Nor does it mean, contrary to the Army's expectations, that I am a trained, or even competent, translator. (I do translate from French to English for fun, and I've been known to interpret the Vagina Monologues from English to ASL. But these are hobbies, not entailments of linguisthood.) And it doesn't mean that I'll check your grammar. (Well, ok, sometimes I will. But mostly I'm looking for cool new ways you say things, not for split infinitives and sentence-final prepositions, both of which are perfectly fine.)

What it means is that, in June of 2005, Harvard University gave me a degree in linguistics, with a related field (read: minor) in education and a citation in French. And the University of Chicago was kind enough to allow me to keep studying linguistics and avoid the real world as long as possible. It also means that, simply put, I love language. I love knowing why members of linguistic minority groups, especially, act the way they do when their language is at stake. I love knowing why members of minority groups which may or may not be language-based use language the way they do. And, I will confess, I love listening to people speak at parties and guessing where they're from. Occupational hazard.

This is where you'll find some of my linguisticky musings. I'm liable to find a story about language policy online and post it here for comment, or make a wee fuss about a lovely new word or structure I've heard or seen recently, or even ask you dear readers what you think about certain linguistic issues. (Please, please comment, especially when I ask whether certain sentences are sayable!) I'm also likely to make posts about life as a linguist. This includes whinging about schoolwork and academic bureaucracy, as well as updates from conferences I attend and breathless descriptions of new cities I study in (which include not only Cambridge/Boston and Chicago but Montreal, thanks to a Killam Fellowship my senior undergrad year).

I also post about my personal, non-academic life (when I have one). If you don't see these posts, it's probably because I don't think you'd find them interesting. Nothing I post here is especially private, though, so if you have a reason to want to know who I had lunch with last week and what my friends look like in scrubby medieval peasanty garb, let me know and I'll probably give you friends access. The rest of the world, however, will be spared the mundane details.

I try, especially in my earlier posts, to write in both French and English. I've been falling down on the job lately, and on top of everything I'm going to try to add posts in Catalan as well. That said, don't be surprised if you see bilingual posts or series of monolingual posts in quick succession; they're roughly equivalent to each other, and they're just my way of being an even bigger geek than I already seem to be.






Montreal / Boston / L.A. / Chicago

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BEGIN LINGUIST GEEK CODE BLOCK

version 0.9b1


LGC F++$ Pc+ Pn+ M++ !Sx-(+) H(+++) O+++$
Lg+< L(4.5)D()>
Data: So-ASL Pn-ASL M-ASL So-LSQ Sem-LSQ So-QFr So-Eng

C Im- S+
END LINGUIST GEEK CODE BLOCK
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