Blogs: Pandammonia
The world that revolves around Caity Ross
Archive for the ‘Andrew’ tag
OxMorph1 revisited
Monday 1st September, 2008 @ 3.36pm BST Europe/London by Pandammonium
I said I would tell more about my Oxford conference trip after talking to my supervisor about it. So here goes: I got a result!
Although I never knew what the normal process of selecting an external examiner for a PhD student is, I do now. And let me tell you, it doesn’t involve a respected academic asking the PhD student, in person, can they be the student’s external examiner. It does involve the supervisor asking their first choice academic very nicely to be their student’s external examiner and hoping they’ve got the time and inclination to say yes.
I don’t do normal.
posted in Conferences, PhD | Tags: Andrew, examiners, Oxford | 1 Comment »
OxMorph1
Thursday 28th August, 2008 @ 11.12pm BST Europe/London by Pandammonium
I’ve been in Oxford the last few days for a conference on Romance verb morphology (OxMorph1). That’s what my PhD is about. It was great. More later, after I’ve heard back from my supervisor re the email I’ve just sent him at midnight, after having spent the evening drinking and eating (I’ve now had pigeon, which tastes like duck, which isn’t a bad thing, even when duck is your main course after a starter of pigeon) and drinking. I hope it didn’t come across as if I’ve been drinking. Still, I’m soberer than I was this time last night. I should also go to bed.
posted in Conferences, Food and Drink, PhD | Tags: Andrew, duck, Oxford, pigeon | 1 Comment »
Aspect in the past
Friday 25th April, 2008 @ 8.53am BST Europe/London by Pandammonium
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.
–
Wheeler, M. W., Yates, A. & Dols, N. (1999). Catalan: a comprehensive grammar, Routledge Grammars, Routledge, London.
posted in English, Language and Linguistics, Morphology, PhD, Romance languages | Tags: Andrew, Catalan, English | 3 Comments »
Ai can studies kitty pidgin?
Friday 7th March, 2008 @ 12.11pm GMT Europe/London by Pandammonium
Anil Dash: Cats Can Has Grammar
Yesterday, I spent far too long looking at cheezburgers, and I was wondering if I could do a study on lolcat grammar. It seems it’s already been referred to as kitty pidgin (between English and felinese), and there’s right ways and wrong ways to do it. It’s therefore clearly something that can be studied!
One email to my supervisor coming right up:
Teechr,
Ai can studiez kitteh pidgin?
Catteh
He’ll love it, right?
posted in Animals, Humour and Fun, Language and Linguistics, Memes, Weather and seasons | Tags: Andrew, lolcats | 4 Comments »
Deadlines
Tuesday 22nd January, 2008 @ 9.58am GMT Europe/London by Pandammonium
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.
posted in Life(style), PhD | Tags: Andrew, deadlines, Dusty, procrastination, studying, things-to-do | 1 Comment »
How to complete your PhD
Thursday 17th January, 2008 @ 9.40am GMT Europe/London by Pandammonium
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.
posted in PhD | Tags: Andrew, deadlines, Dusty, procrastination, studying | 1 Comment »
Writing up
Thursday 18th October, 2007 @ 2.17pm BST Europe/London by Pandammonium
I am writing up the proceedings of LingO 2007, which has to be no more than eight pages long. I wrote it all up and it came to ten pages. I usually go over the mark with this sort of thing, which is often due to me not writing concisely. This is better than not writing concisely and falling short. It’s now down to eight pages, thanks to replacing the verbosity with more concise sentences, removing some of the lesser content and a with a bit of jiggery-pokering with the formatting.
My supervisor is pleased with it, so I’ve just got to do a couple of minor things to it, then I can send it off - days ahead of the deadline!
posted in Conferences | Tags: Andrew, deadlines, Oxford, procrastination, writing | No Comments »
