Re: my grammar

Chris Bates wrote:
> Just out of interest, can I ask what languages you've learned?
Depends on what you mean by "learned". In my time (I'm 26), I've studied
some languages in depth, a lot of languages at a fairly superficial level,
and there are even more languages that one picks up bits and pieces of
just by reading technical theoretical literature.  (I mean, really, how
many people know much about Hixkaryana? Not me, but IIRC it has weird
word-order and stress-assignment system that Kager talks a lot about in
his OT book)

But speaking only of languages I've actually had some coursework in,
I'd include: German (8y), Ancient Greek (3y), Latin (2y), Modern Georgian
(2y), Meskwaki (1y), Akkadian (2 quarters), Old Georgian (1q), Russian (1q),
French (1q), Lak (1q), Nahuatl (1q) (though the federal government is
paying me to take this last, so I'll be taking 2 more quarters of Nahuatl).
That is, if you sit me down with a dictionary and a text, I can actually
begin to read in those languages, to varying degrees. (Only really in
German can I speak with anything approaching fluency.) I can also speak
not totally incompetently about Atkan Aleut, Svan, Mingrelian, Mam,
Abkhaz, Luiseño, Shoshoni, Hurrian-Urartian, and Hattic. In some cases,
that means I've actually studied these languages in some detail (e.g.
Mingrelian); in other cases, it means I've merely read a grammar
(Shoshoni and Abkhaz).  With these languages, I can't read, only know
structural facts about them. I am not, in other words, the most amazing
linguist you've ever met.  My former girlfriend could speak seven or
eight languages fluently, and could read in a few others;  a good
friend of mine in Chicago is fluent in about five languages, and can
read more or less fluently in 15-20 others.

> Any field linguistics?
If by this you are asking whether I've actually gone out into the
field to do research, the answer is no.  Last September, I went to
Frankfurt for a language documentation summerschool paid for by the
Volkwagen Stiftung, where I learned a good deal about Mingrelian in
a kind of hands-on environment.  But I wouldn't call that a field-
situation, really.  This upcoming quarter, I'll be auditing a field-
methods course whose informant will be a Zulu speaker.

> Any specific areas of linguistics you specialize in?
Theoretically, I'm most interested in the morphosyntax of grammatical
relations, which should probably not strike members of this list as
strange. In terms of languages families, I'm most interested in Kartvelian
and Algonquian families; although they have little or nothing to do with
one another, they're both great for gratuitously complex morphosyntax and
for typological weirdness.

> I take it from your sig that you're a 100% paid up linguist instead
> of a hobby linguist like most of us. :)
Well, yes and no.  I'm a gradstudent, which means I rarely get
paid for anything linguistic whatsoever. :)

> *hums* I'd love to try naturalizing in a
> foreign language for a while... learning from books just doesn't give
> you as much of a feel from the language it seems. :(
Yes, I'd like to do that too.  I'm greatly looking forward to
my talk in Leipzig next May at the Split-S conference, in part
because it'll give me a rare chance actually to use my German.

 =========================================================================
Thomas Wier	       "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
University of Chicago   half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
1010 E. 59th Street     Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter.
Chicago, IL 60637

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