As we have thought through our messaging lately, one thing we saw friends do was develop a personal ministry hashtag. This is not just to try to be trendy (though hashtags are integral to communication these days), but to communicate a particular repetitive theme in a terse manner. I think Read more…
Have you ever wondered how people make their first alphabet? Starting this summer, we are giving people a taste of Bible Translation work in Africa, through small group meetings designed to be interactive and engaging. We introduce people to the language work we do with Wycliffe Bible Translators, in three Read more…
the LORD opens the eyes of the blind. The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down; the LORD loves the righteous. (Ps 146:8 ESV) I took two days off altogether from writing, for Sunday worship and rest, then Christmas day, and yesterday I got back to putting edits into Read more…
I know it’s been a while since I’ve written much about my progress through my degree program, but I hope it has been for good reason. I guess we all hope that we do what we do for good reason, but in any case, I hope a short update will 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…
Joel and I had the pleasure of staying in a house with this doormat greeting us as we first walked in the doorĖ My immediate thought was that it was a relief to be staying with people who were so OK with their frailty that they would greet people with Read more…
I have found myself saying a number of times over the years, “I didn’t get into missions to do ___.” Fill in the blank with supervising other people, managing money, raising money, helping people get along with one another, keep my family in working electricity and water; there are so 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…