Until

I think prepositions are great. Also enjoyable are verbs implying
motion... or the lack thereof.

From Jackendoff, Ray: Précis of Foundations of Language: Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution
BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (2003) 26:6 657-658:

"...in example (8a), the interpretation is that Jill jumped multiple times. This aspect of interpretation does not arise from any single word in the sentence, nor from the syntactic structure. If we change the verb to sleep, as in (8b), we don't interpret the sentence as implying multiple acts of sleeping. If we change until to when, as in (8c), only a single jump is entailed.

(8)
a. Jill jumped until the alarm went off.
b. Jill slept until the alarm went off.
c. Jill jumped when the alarm went off.

The standard account of this contrast (Jackendoff 1997; Pustejovsky 1995; Talmy 2000; Verkuyl 1993) is that the meaning of until sets a temporal bound on an ongoing process. When the verb phrase already denotes an ongoing process, such as sleeping, all is well. But when the verb phrase denotes an action that has a natural temporal ending, such as jumping, then its interpretation is "coerced" into repeated action – a sort of ongoing process – which in turn can have a temporal bound set on it by until. For present purposes, the point is that the sense of repetition arises from semantic combination, without any direct syntactic reflex. (On the other hand, there are languages such as American Sign Language that have a grammatical marker of iteration; this will have to be used in the translation of [8a].)"

posted by Sarah @ 8:39 PM 0 comments

[DAVIES] Variation in English Words and Phrases (VIEW)

A great corpus of English-separated into sources even. You can see concordances and sort it as you wish. A quick click to Mark Davies' homepage brings corpora of Spanish and Portuguese as well.

posted by Sarah @ 7:13 PM 2 comments

Deadline

Has anyone else ever thought about the word deadline? As in the words, 'Dead' and 'Line'?

I hadn't really until this past week when having to turn in my thesis. I mentioned I'd gotten it in before the deadline after much stress on the matter. Then, I thought about what the consequences were for missing the deadline. Then, I looked closely at the word 'dead'. I'm glad that wasn't one of the consequences.

posted by Sarah @ 7:39 PM 2 comments

Hair Wrap (AKA Hair Thingy; Hair Scarf)

My first knitted garment, well my first knitted anything was this hair wrap I designed out of necessity. It's very simple to knit, and the sizing is forgiving as you start at the pointy end.

posted by Sarah @ 4:14 PM 2 comments