Test of the iphone
Test
New Look
I’ve spent a bit of time changing around how things look, to reflect the fact that I’m now in Paris. I have so much to write about, but for now, I leave you with CHEESE. That is all.
bahhh… oui!
I will be moving to Paris this summer, and my excitement about this move can be explained by my belief that my life there will be something along the lines of this:
(hat tip to res.cogitans)
Are names rigid designators?
posted by susan on 2009.03.23, under linguistics
On Mount Desert Island in Maine, people refer to roads with the definite article. So what the street sign says is “Crooked Road” might be mentioned in a sentence as “He lives on the Crooked Road.” This is likely to be how many roads originally got their names, so Birmingham Road in Coventry used to be the primary road to take to get to Birmingham, etc. At some point the reference became the “official” (under whichever authority) name for the road, and this status could remain even if a different road became the preferred thoroughfare (cf., e.g., Kripke on Dartmouth). But does the use of the definite article just reflect a quirky regionalism in the statement of the name? Or is it indicative of a different conception on the part of the locals w.r.t. names and descriptions? I only wish I could get a grant and stay here longer to do more research. Perhaps I could combine this with my planned game-theoretic analysis of the soft-shell/hard-shell demarcation equilibrium…
Pi Day
My method of celebrating Pi Day (March 14) did not involve pizza (“pizza pie” as it is sometimes known in this area), but if it had I could have deployed the Second Pizza Theorem to calculate how much I was eating.
A friend points out that since I’ll be living in Europe this summer, I will also be able to officially celebrate Pi Approximation Day with the correct date format.
Install Pragmatics Module
I think I just realized another reason why I don’t like Facebook — it doesn’t work so well with my pragmatics module. I can’t tell what my speech acts actually mean there, and I don’t know how failure to “friend” everyone I know, or lack of response to “notes” or “wall” or whatever that shit is comes across. I suppose there must be some academic papers I could read on the topic, although I imagine they would have Derrida or someone equally obscurantist in the bibliography. There’s just too much structure there, too many holders for content with not enough content. Maybe I’m worried about this more these days since I’m going to be moving to another country and I’m counting on the internet to keep me in touch with friends. Also I might just be too old.
The man with the golden pen and lighter and cigarette case
Some interesting facts I learned this evening from the program (yes, program!) I got at the Loew’s Jersey theater where I saw The Man with the Golden Gun:
Roger Moore was the oldest starting Bond; his did his first film in the franchise, Live and Let Die, when he was 45 (he’s actually older than Sean Connery).
Moore suffers from hoplophobia, which is the fear of weapons. It would perhaps be overkill to point out that this doesn’t seem like a good feature in someone who plays James Bond regularly.
Moore is the longest serving Bond actor to date; his Fleming franchise films span twelve years.
Am I considered a person of good character?
These are some of the questions I had to consider when applying for a UK visa:
Discourse Anaphora
posted by susan on 2008.11.19, under linguistics
My dashboard tells me that up to now, I’ve written 99 posts (in this incarnation of SS), and the pressure of a round number bore down mightily, intimating that I had to come up with something good at this milestone. That, and other other down-bearing elements of my life, like papers, teaching, grading, etc. But recently, after finishing up a paper (on time!) I realized that I had to just jump back in with both feet if I’m ever going to use this site again. So here goes, with a comment on metafilter as a starting point, and because I’ve been thinking a lot about discourse anaphora recently:
His father, Nick Begich, won an election posthumously, only they didn’t know for sure that it was posthumous because his plane just disappeared. It still hasn’t turned up. It’s why locators are now required in all US planes.
Notice that there are three instances of “it” in the above. The first one, I think it’s clear, refers to the election winning event. But notice the second and third instances of “it” — the second refers to the lost airplane, which is to say it is the “it” that picks out a singular object in the world. But the third “it” refers to the event of the airplane being lost. I think this is fascinating because not only does it refer to a larger entity than what the previous “it” picks out, but it also refers to a proposition that isn’t the closest one, as it bypasses “it still hasn’t turned up,” which is closer, and instead is linked with the event of the airplane disappearing. If you’re confused, I made a little chart:
Resolving this kind of anaphora is something that humans do flawlessly, without thinking, all the time, but I bet it would be rather difficult to automate using a non-human.
