For all our friends in Oregon, who observed a total solar eclipse yesterday, this is what we saw in Texas: You can see that direct light of the sun shining through just on the edge of my head, but not when you block just a bit more of the sun: Read more…
The house we’re staying in has a cast iron pot with lid, so I got to bake a chicken, and came up with a lot of juice: chop fronds and hard parts of kale. Separate tender parts of kale leaves, and line the pot with them in multiple layers Cut Read more…
Joel just finished reading the Lord of the Rings, and today he decided to put his love of fantasy into Lego. He had found kits online for $200+, but decided he could do it himself. Anyway, here he is, proud of his creations. For those that don’t remember Quickbeam, Read more…
Throughout most of my career as a linguist, I have enjoyed doing descriptive work. Practically, that means I describe what is found in languages, rather than prescribing what should be in a given language (as a teacher might). But descriptive work can also find itself set against more theoretical work. Read more…
In an earlier post I mentioned work I was doing to show the importance of tone in the Bantu D30 languages. Here I’d like to go through the conjugation of one verb in one language, to show how tone works, in relationship to consonants and vowels. To start with, here Read more…
For those of you that have followed my analysis of sound systems in (so far) unwritten languages, I’m sure you’ve already heard enough about tone and vowels. So today, I thought I’d write about consonants! Language sound systems generally store information in three places. We know consonants (with obstructed airflow) Read more…
As we approached the Christmas season, I’ve asked various groups to pray for the depressed on a number of occasions. I’ve been aware of the general increase in depression around Christmas for some time. But I hadn’t thought seriously recently about my own struggles in feeling left behind in the Read more…
What a rush the last several weeks have been! I was sicker than I’ve been in a long time, and it took me another week or so to get back to 100%. I’m not sure everyone in the family was completely well when we had a record drop in temperature Read more…
I presented a poster earlier this term at the Metroplex Linguistics Conference, a conference for linguists throughout the Dallas/Fort Worth area. This year it was sponsored by the Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics (G.I.A.L.), where a lot of our colleagues either teach or get training before heading to the field. Read more…
Hi all — Kim and I finally got away this weekend to get some rest and find ourselves again. As the dust has settled after this summer’s anxiety, it is clear that we’ve let our communication slip. So I’m writing a note to let you know we’re writing, and soon Read more…