I was intrigued on this trip to see the euphemism “rough air” replace the long used “turbulence.” Probably some focus group somewhere preferred it, but anyway, I thought it was not a bad description of some of the chaos we’re going through these days —whether you see it as turbulent, Read more…
One of the great successes of the trip we took to Cameroon in March was the relationship with the school our children will be attending: Rain Forest International School. This is the compound wall and gate on approach: And the sign just outside the gate: This is a 360º panoramic Read more…
It doesn’t make sense on paper to uproot a teenager for the final year of school. But we were questioned about taking him to France as an infant, or to Congo as a kid; much about our life looks like foolishness to some people. But there are a number of Read more…
Yes, I was somewhat blinded by the projector, but on October 20 I got to present some new directions my research has been taking at the Metroplex Linguistics Conference, hosted this year by UTA. In summary, the comparisons I was hoping to make to analyze what’s going on in languages 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…
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…
At long last (after 70 days, 10 weeks, or 51 work days, as you like) we have our passports back! And they contain valid visas! So now that we have official permission to enter Congo, we need to rebook tickets to Uganda, as well as organize logistics to get into Read more…
It’s been a couple weeks since I’ve written, so I thought I should post something about how things are going. Not because I have something new to say; things are still pretty much where we last left them, with our passports in Washington, D.C., and us unable to do anything Read more…