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so, the rest of my week
exams
Friday morning was Phonetics and Phonology. The questions I chose were:
I'd done essays about cyclicity and gemination in my tutorials, and read them over a couple of times when I was preparing, so I wasn't completely at sea with those. But at this point (actually by Friday afternoon, even) I can't remember much of anything I said in those essays on the exam. I know I talked about the Derived-Environment Constraint and the Reaching-Back Constraint (cyclicity), and about how gemination isn't a matter of absolute duration and not even really a matter of relative duration as much as a matter of behavior -- but really, as soon as the exam was over, it all deserted me so I could focus on morphology.
Friday afternoon was Morphology. After about five minutes of blind panic when I turned over the paper and saw that no fewer than five out of the twelve questions were things I was never taught, assigned to read, etc. (which was a mystery to me until the exam was over and I learned that the philologist seated behind me was also doing an option in morphology, and must therefore have had different tutorial topics -- with, one suspects, a different tutor), I chose the following:
For the second essay, I wrote a brave little tract on the analogy between allomorphy and allophony, and showed (or tried to show) that calling suppletion 'nothing more than an extreme form of allomorphy' reduces both 'extreme' and 'allomorphy' to the point almost of meaninglessness -- not that suppletion isn't morphology, but it maybe shouldn't be considered allomorphy as such.
So we'll hope those went well. In any event, I can't do a thing more about that until the 29th; but if I am viva'd, it'll probably be about the thesis anyway, so I'll have to read that again before then.
concert
Saturday evening was the Big Choir's performance of the Rachmaninov All-Night Vigil. It went very well, I thought -- not flawless, but very good. Last Monday at the rehearsal he mixed us up, taking us out of our sections and jumbling everyone around the room, and it improved the piece so much that he went ahead and did it for the concert, and most of us were beyond glad. I had a first alto on my right who, bless her, didn't really have any tone in her voice to speak of and couldn't really get her mouth around the Russian words and was flat a good deal of the time, but, whatever. On my left was a second (and third, in three parts) bass, so it was fun when there were bits where he and I were singing four octaves apart. And the other sopranos around me were all seconds (I know there was a sop2 on the other side of the bass, and one in front of me; there was a bass1 on the other side of the alto, and I think some other altos in the other nearby places), so I was the only sop1 within about a four-voice radius -- so, really on my own, when the firsts go up above the staff, but lucky me, I knew the music, so I didn't feel at sea. Yay.
my grandfather
Thank you all for your kind thoughts on my grandfather's passing. He was 86 and hadn't really been whole for a long time, but hadn't been conspicuously more unwell than usual lately -- until last Saturday, when my aunt let us all know she'd had him taken to the hospital because he'd fallen down and was in unsteady enough shape that she couldn't take care of him. Sunday evening, about 8ish Eastern, we'd had a message from her that he was doing much better at the hospital, feeling better, going for tests, charming the nurses, etc., and not confused or frustrated or asking when he could go home, which all seemed to be good. But then around midnight my aunt called my mother to say the hospital had called her to let her know he was gone. Damnedest thing. But we know, therefore, that it was quick and he was happy and not suffering, so, what can you do. They'd been talking about taking him to a nursing home when he was released from the hospital, which my grandmother had evidently been feeling guilty about; but everyone told her sternly that this guilt was uncalled for, because she just couldn't take care of him at home anymore. In fact apparently when the ambulance came on Saturday (my aunt couldn't have got him to the car by herself) my grandmother said she knew he wasn't ever going to come home. So.
I continue to be sure that staying here and doing my exams was the right decision. But they interred his ashes on Saturday, and from the message I got from my mother this morning, it seems to have been a lovely, very peaceful ceremony. My cousin brought her two little kids to the house after, while everyone was sorting through pictures to put up at the memorial service; my mother wrote, "The girls were playing around about as usual, but both of them explained to me a time or two that Grandpa T had died; E [2 1/2] looked at his chair and asked where he was once, but then later she said to me, 'Pa T died' several times. D [almost 6] said 'Grandpa T died, but we can still remember him. And everybody dies.' So, they seem to have a grasp on it appropriate to their ages." That had me choking up again, a bit. But I sent my mother the picture I posted the other day (without dates, though); it's such a good picture of him -- he was the sweetest man, in his confused old age -- and I don't think anyone else has it. I hope they can print a good copy so they can use it for the memorial service.
And now it's less than two weeks until I leave here for the summer, so I should really get going with the packing-up of stuff. Might oughtta get some boxes for that.
Friday morning was Phonetics and Phonology. The questions I chose were:
Draw a diagram or diagrams showing the movements of the organs of speech in saying the phrase 'perfect in the conditional'. Explain what sort of observations (whether your own or as reported by others) can be drawn upon in making such representations of speaking movements.I did a question very like the first one on the mock exam, and the comments that came back were that it would have got a high Pass mark, but not a Distinction, chiefly because my answer was too segmentalist. So on this one I identified my initial response as coming from a segmentalist viewpoint, and tried to work in some stuff about less-segmental theories as well. Hope it was better than the mock one.
What is cyclicity?
What is gemination, and what theoretical issues does it raise for phonology and phonetics?
I'd done essays about cyclicity and gemination in my tutorials, and read them over a couple of times when I was preparing, so I wasn't completely at sea with those. But at this point (actually by Friday afternoon, even) I can't remember much of anything I said in those essays on the exam. I know I talked about the Derived-Environment Constraint and the Reaching-Back Constraint (cyclicity), and about how gemination isn't a matter of absolute duration and not even really a matter of relative duration as much as a matter of behavior -- but really, as soon as the exam was over, it all deserted me so I could focus on morphology.
Friday afternoon was Morphology. After about five minutes of blind panic when I turned over the paper and saw that no fewer than five out of the twelve questions were things I was never taught, assigned to read, etc. (which was a mystery to me until the exam was over and I learned that the philologist seated behind me was also doing an option in morphology, and must therefore have had different tutorial topics -- with, one suspects, a different tutor), I chose the following:
Give a critical account of the considerations that have led Aronoff and others to proclaim the existence of 'Morphology By Itself'.For the first essay, I was reasonably well prepared; I'd just re-read Aronoff some time in the past week or so, and in fact re-read a short paper of his on Thursday evening, so I was able to quote from that a bit (the stuff about morphology being a disease with which most languages are afflicted). And for the third, it was clear from the tutorials that my professor is sort of hung up on Carstairs-McCarthy, so I knew there'd be a question about his work on the exam, and was thus prepared for that as well. I talked about the Paradigm Economy Principle and the No-Blur Principle, and hope I said some cogent things about how useful they are in terms of showing how language is all about patterns. ('Patterns' is a very big concept here.)
'Suppletion is nothing more than an extreme form of allomorphy'. Discuss.
Assess the importance for morphological theory of A. Carstairs-McCarthy's work on the nature of morphological paradigms.
For the second essay, I wrote a brave little tract on the analogy between allomorphy and allophony, and showed (or tried to show) that calling suppletion 'nothing more than an extreme form of allomorphy' reduces both 'extreme' and 'allomorphy' to the point almost of meaninglessness -- not that suppletion isn't morphology, but it maybe shouldn't be considered allomorphy as such.
So we'll hope those went well. In any event, I can't do a thing more about that until the 29th; but if I am viva'd, it'll probably be about the thesis anyway, so I'll have to read that again before then.
concert
Saturday evening was the Big Choir's performance of the Rachmaninov All-Night Vigil. It went very well, I thought -- not flawless, but very good. Last Monday at the rehearsal he mixed us up, taking us out of our sections and jumbling everyone around the room, and it improved the piece so much that he went ahead and did it for the concert, and most of us were beyond glad. I had a first alto on my right who, bless her, didn't really have any tone in her voice to speak of and couldn't really get her mouth around the Russian words and was flat a good deal of the time, but, whatever. On my left was a second (and third, in three parts) bass, so it was fun when there were bits where he and I were singing four octaves apart. And the other sopranos around me were all seconds (I know there was a sop2 on the other side of the bass, and one in front of me; there was a bass1 on the other side of the alto, and I think some other altos in the other nearby places), so I was the only sop1 within about a four-voice radius -- so, really on my own, when the firsts go up above the staff, but lucky me, I knew the music, so I didn't feel at sea. Yay.
my grandfather
Thank you all for your kind thoughts on my grandfather's passing. He was 86 and hadn't really been whole for a long time, but hadn't been conspicuously more unwell than usual lately -- until last Saturday, when my aunt let us all know she'd had him taken to the hospital because he'd fallen down and was in unsteady enough shape that she couldn't take care of him. Sunday evening, about 8ish Eastern, we'd had a message from her that he was doing much better at the hospital, feeling better, going for tests, charming the nurses, etc., and not confused or frustrated or asking when he could go home, which all seemed to be good. But then around midnight my aunt called my mother to say the hospital had called her to let her know he was gone. Damnedest thing. But we know, therefore, that it was quick and he was happy and not suffering, so, what can you do. They'd been talking about taking him to a nursing home when he was released from the hospital, which my grandmother had evidently been feeling guilty about; but everyone told her sternly that this guilt was uncalled for, because she just couldn't take care of him at home anymore. In fact apparently when the ambulance came on Saturday (my aunt couldn't have got him to the car by herself) my grandmother said she knew he wasn't ever going to come home. So.
I continue to be sure that staying here and doing my exams was the right decision. But they interred his ashes on Saturday, and from the message I got from my mother this morning, it seems to have been a lovely, very peaceful ceremony. My cousin brought her two little kids to the house after, while everyone was sorting through pictures to put up at the memorial service; my mother wrote, "The girls were playing around about as usual, but both of them explained to me a time or two that Grandpa T had died; E [2 1/2] looked at his chair and asked where he was once, but then later she said to me, 'Pa T died' several times. D [almost 6] said 'Grandpa T died, but we can still remember him. And everybody dies.' So, they seem to have a grasp on it appropriate to their ages." That had me choking up again, a bit. But I sent my mother the picture I posted the other day (without dates, though); it's such a good picture of him -- he was the sweetest man, in his confused old age -- and I don't think anyone else has it. I hope they can print a good copy so they can use it for the memorial service.
And now it's less than two weeks until I leave here for the summer, so I should really get going with the packing-up of stuff. Might oughtta get some boxes for that.
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***hugs***