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i believe i have [insert metaphor here]
cracked the shell/scratched the surface/taken the first all-important step/etc.
so the problem was getting 10-15 pages on the lexicalization of russian participles as ordinary adjectives. i've been sitting here working on other things all week and thinking, in the back of my head, that i don't know if i have 10-15 words on the lexicalization of russian participles as ordinary adjectives. i just. don't. know. that much about russian.
and there's like no literature to help me out, here. hardly anybody is talking about participles these days; when they were (10-20 years ago), they were talking mostly in russian; and those who were talking in english (and french) were talking about the morphology and, occasionally, the syntax of the damn things, which isn't so helpful to me.
(side note: a year ago, hitting a reality like "there's no literature" would have -- did! -- freaked me right out. because i would have assumed that this meant i wasn't looking in the right places. now, my conclusion is that there's no literature because nobody's investigated the issue yet. that, my friends, is the surest sign i've seen that i deserve this damned degree. [g] of course, it could be that nobody's investigated the issue because it's not worth bothering with ...)
so half an hour ago it hit me: use the syntax on the way to the semantics. why are some participles vulnerable to lexicalization while others are not? it can't be because of syntax -- look how the literature says that syntactically (a) all participles are the same and (b) they're just like adjectives (or whatever the literature does say; i'm going to have to take another look at it, obviously). so it's entirely possible, and even likely, that there's a semantic reason for the inconsistency; what do the lexicalized participles have in common (with one another and/or with "real" adjectives) that the non-lexicalized ones don't? and if this works out, can we reasonably predict which participles are likely to become lexicalized in the future?
the semantic part being almost entirely speculative, i'd say i could get ten or fifteen pages out of that. wouldn't you?
the psych paper, by the way, is done. finished it yesterday and it's not due until tomorrow (morning). that may be a record for me, so don't anybody forget it. sixteen pages, plus appendix (!) and references. i was going to hand it in this afternoon and get it the hell off my desk, but by the time i finished the damned russian final it was too late to get over to the psych department before they closed (assuming they were closing at 5:30, and hadn't locked the door at 5, in which case it was way too late). this is a bigger bummer than it may seem, because it's actually due tomorrow morning at 9:00, and if it weren't for that i wouldn't even be out of bed at that hour.
grr.
psych prof was very cool on my comps committee, though. knew what answers he was after on the word-learning questions he'd given me, of course, but said afterwards that on the actual linguistics stuff he'd (not being a linguist himself) kept his mouth shut because he didn't know any of the words i was using, never mind whether i was using them correctly. "i would have died," he says to me. "i was like, allomorph, allophone ... aloe vera?"
so the problem was getting 10-15 pages on the lexicalization of russian participles as ordinary adjectives. i've been sitting here working on other things all week and thinking, in the back of my head, that i don't know if i have 10-15 words on the lexicalization of russian participles as ordinary adjectives. i just. don't. know. that much about russian.
and there's like no literature to help me out, here. hardly anybody is talking about participles these days; when they were (10-20 years ago), they were talking mostly in russian; and those who were talking in english (and french) were talking about the morphology and, occasionally, the syntax of the damn things, which isn't so helpful to me.
(side note: a year ago, hitting a reality like "there's no literature" would have -- did! -- freaked me right out. because i would have assumed that this meant i wasn't looking in the right places. now, my conclusion is that there's no literature because nobody's investigated the issue yet. that, my friends, is the surest sign i've seen that i deserve this damned degree. [g] of course, it could be that nobody's investigated the issue because it's not worth bothering with ...)
so half an hour ago it hit me: use the syntax on the way to the semantics. why are some participles vulnerable to lexicalization while others are not? it can't be because of syntax -- look how the literature says that syntactically (a) all participles are the same and (b) they're just like adjectives (or whatever the literature does say; i'm going to have to take another look at it, obviously). so it's entirely possible, and even likely, that there's a semantic reason for the inconsistency; what do the lexicalized participles have in common (with one another and/or with "real" adjectives) that the non-lexicalized ones don't? and if this works out, can we reasonably predict which participles are likely to become lexicalized in the future?
the semantic part being almost entirely speculative, i'd say i could get ten or fifteen pages out of that. wouldn't you?
the psych paper, by the way, is done. finished it yesterday and it's not due until tomorrow (morning). that may be a record for me, so don't anybody forget it. sixteen pages, plus appendix (!) and references. i was going to hand it in this afternoon and get it the hell off my desk, but by the time i finished the damned russian final it was too late to get over to the psych department before they closed (assuming they were closing at 5:30, and hadn't locked the door at 5, in which case it was way too late). this is a bigger bummer than it may seem, because it's actually due tomorrow morning at 9:00, and if it weren't for that i wouldn't even be out of bed at that hour.
grr.
psych prof was very cool on my comps committee, though. knew what answers he was after on the word-learning questions he'd given me, of course, but said afterwards that on the actual linguistics stuff he'd (not being a linguist himself) kept his mouth shut because he didn't know any of the words i was using, never mind whether i was using them correctly. "i would have died," he says to me. "i was like, allomorph, allophone ... aloe vera?"