DCblog: On `boilt’

Yesterday, I was discussing aspect in Catalan with my supervisor. It’s all very complicated - more so than you might think. More so than my brain get comprehend, anyway.

So it is with interest that I come across what appears to be a distinction in aspect in synthetic forms (i.e. ‘one word’, not ‘made up, invented’) in certain verbs in British English. The -t form (e.g. burnt) is more focused on a completed action, that only happened the once and it’s over and done with (The house burnt down, to give Crystal’s example) and the -ed form is for more continuous actions, perhaps it’s more describing a state: The house burned for hours (again using Crystal’s example). Anyway, the point is that the -t form appears to correspond to the Catalan preterite tense and the -ed form, only where there is an alternative -t form, corresponds to the Catalan imperfect tense. Yet another complication to add to the list provided by Wheeler, Yates and Dols (1999). It’s possibly reasonably safe to say that this would also to apply to other Romance languages.

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Wheeler, M. W., Yates, A. & Dols, N. (1999). Catalan: a comprehensive grammar, Routledge Grammars, Routledge, London.

Pandammonium: career [reading academic papers]

Just thought I’d bring this to your attention.

PHD Comics: Why? Why??

This is how I spend all my days. Then I wonder why I don’t seem to be making any progress….

I have to admit that the writing-1000-words-a-day thing didn’t work out for me as well as I’d hoped it would. It just didn’t seem meaningful to stop writing at some random place, and I never seemed to have scheduled enough time to continue to a sensible stopping place.

So then I decided to complete subsections. The document I’m currently writing isn’t that big, so this seemed reasonable. However, I can’t tell how long a given section will take to write, even though it doesn’t look long from my notes, it still seems to take a while because there’s thinking and stuff to be done as well.

I’m also trying to move the deadline because I’m going to a course on how to get published on Thursday, so I’d like to not have to go to Essex twice in one week - have you seen the price of petrol these days?! Plus, it’ll be more productive if I spend less time travelling.

I told my supervisor I need deadlines, so he’s given me the choice of two: either next Monday or next Tuesday. This was supposed to help. So far, it’s nearly ten o’clock, I’m not ready, and I’ve played two games of the evil DTD. I have written out a timetable/things to do list for the day, but I’m behind schedule already.

I’ve also been writing 1000 words a day, although whether they mean anything together or not is a different matter. I review them the next day, and rewrite them, generally. Yesterday, I didn’t write anything because I was worried about my poor cat.

Academic Productivity » How to complete your PhD (or any large project): Hard and soft deadlines, and the Martini Method

Maybe this will work. I’ve been meaning to tell my supervisor to give me deadlines for work. There was a short time when I had to produce something weekly, and I got loads done then, but it’s all pretty wishy-washy at the moment.

Also, Parkinson’s Law is very true - I’ve known this for some time, although I never knew it had a name. And Hofstadter’s Law is true as well, even if you do take into account Hofstadter’s Law.

Link sent by The Hubster.

Update: another way to get stuff done is to not have an attention-seeking cat.

I’m back to the day job, now, after working at UCLES before Xmas and after New Year. I was hoping that having to get up and get to work for a certain time every day would help me establish a routine whereby I would get up in the morning, get ready, and get straight to work, but so far, it’s not working. Yesterday, I spent much of the day playing the evil Desktop Tower Defence and some time pottering around my website. Today, I’ve Facebooked, DTDed and generally Internetted.

Come on, girl. Get a move on!