Interest meme

[cactuswatcher]

from masqthephlsphr

Meme-age:

* Scan my interest list and pick out the one that seems the most odd to you.
* I'll explain it.
* Then you post this in your journal so other people can ask you about your interests.

Comments

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

I really liked historical linguistics. I'd been interested in Anglo-Saxon while a lit major and had studied Latin before the Romance languages, so had a little background. Working out theoretical old forms was as fascinating to me as an archeological dig--sort of felt that way. I did some papers on the development of modals from AS to Modern English, but didn't pursue it partly because I didn't want to devote myself to the particular person who taught it at my university and partly because I was administering a writing program at the time and thought discourse analysis was a better fit with what I was doing. But still find myself getting side-tracked into speculations about historical morphology when I'm studying a new language.

Oddly I first encountered Chomsky as a political figure (why are you not surprised) when I was in the English Education program at Berkeley but did go to one of his linguistics lectures, back in the early days of TA and of course it might as well have been in Japanese for all I understood at the time. It was fun much later when I took syntax courses to speculate on what I might have been hearing. But to be honest, I did my linguistics at the local university just because I was here and it was easy, and didn't think much of the program, although my dissertation director was excellent. One of my good friends in graduate school was in Slavic languages and I really understand the fascination.

Just from a purely academic standpoint, I really regret not having recognized how interesting linguisics was when I was younger and could have studied at better school, but then linguistics itself changed so much from the 60's to the 80's that I'd have missed some great things. And life, of course, going its own way.