Dinali

Facetious? Me? I resemble that comment! In any case, I'm going back to tone curves and that'll be that. All the best to all of you.

I hate the economy because I'm on waitlists at three different places that have made a point to say they'd have admitted me in a better year. Also, I really love learning things. I think everyone who considers a graduate program does. But I hit my limit, and have made a mental note to NEVER find out any more about the words "menstrual cup." That's one big gap in my knowledge I hope to carry til I die. Also: This is my 150th post. I want to see if I get a new title Edit: Yay! Latte!

Haha!! See, I would have thought you'd put cog on the formal side of the fence! Them lines are blurry. This clears it up for me. I think the problem is the use of the word "possible." When I said possible sentence, I meant "actually possible, as in, someone might say it tomorrow but no one's around with a notebook or DAT recorder to add it to the corpus;" not theoretically possible, but realistically possible. You have to admit that there's no such thing as a complete corpus, which means that there are things people have said that are not attested to in data. Hypothetically, here's a corpus: 1. I see a ship. 2. I saw a ship. 3. I see a dog 4. I saw a dog. 5. I see a cat. Is "I saw a cat" an allowed sentence? It's not attested to in the corpus. A formalist is going to take the existing data, construct a paradigm, and hypothesize that "I saw a cat" is possible. If there are native speakers alive and available, one can make an experiment. The experiment is as simple as asking "Hey, can you say 'I saw a cat?'" The native speaker renders his or her, yes, intution on the grammaticality of the phrase. And really, what is a corpus but a large collection of sentences that native speakers have intuitively judged grammatical (by saying them aloud)?

Dude, a decision like this had better be decided for a place you're wildly, not mildly, excited about. Can you swing UCSD for a year and get funding after that? Eventually, California will have money again (it's remarkably good - through practice - at bouncing back from recessions) and the UC system always has first dibs at education dollars.

With that you're objecting to the underlying premise of formalism, not its methods. The premise is that there is an underlying universal grammar that, once it's fully understood, will predict all possible utterances in all possible languages. Give the title of this topic, you probably think that's a foolish premise. But engage in an intellectual game for a moment -- support the other side. Given some corpus for language X, how would you develop an idea of what's NOT possible in that language, and what IS possible, but NOT REPRESENTED in the corpus?

Please give an example or description that shows how your methods differ from the ones described by Chomsky. And please don't go on the defensive; I'm not trying to attack your point, just understand it. I just read the "Cheating" thread and I'm not going to join something like that.

I've always thought of functional vs. formal being merely different frameworks or models under which to study, and the minutia of each, such as data gathering and research methodology, remain the same. To use an analogy, one would be the geocentric model of the solar system, and one the heliocentric (I'm making no claim as to which is which! ). How the data fit into the model varies by which one (and which version of each) you labor under, but the basic methods, ie looking up at the sky, don't change. That's why I was so astronished to see you (or rather your source) attack the field methods of formalism, because I had never known they had a special set of techniques different from everyone else. (Point #10, especially, just blew me away. Blew my head clean off!)

I'm sorry but . . . what? Anyone who behaves as you've just described is not a linguist of any kind, because linguistics is a science, and that's not science at all. Where are you getting this?

That looks almost like a mail merge error, especially if a lot of people got the same message. It seems like if that were the real reason, you'd have been weeded out far earlier in the process.

Wealthy is not in the cards for me. I've accepted that I do, however, someday want to be on the top side of my debt, which doesn't seem possible given the limited hard cash earning potential of a linguistics PhD. The costs of these programs without funding is too high for me to consider.

Not me. No funding=no go. The earning potential of a ling grad is too low to risk a debt load that will haunt your heirs.

Poor Rutgers. It's the UC Davis of the East Coast.

Something like this? http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-10/ff_walker?currentPage=all

Why flinch? This is a frustrating, stressful process, and people have to vent somewhere. Railing harmlessly on an anonymous bulletin board is as good a way to do that as any. I've complained plenty about people that I hold no actual enmity towards, even against people that I thoroughly respect. It's just blowing off steam.

What a coincidence, I was about to start a Rutgers thread. What is going on with their notification? The DB shows three acceptances, and TlingIt posts a waitlist, but no reported rejections so far. No one listed rejections last year either. Do they just not notify if they don't want you? Or do they keep options open until the last minute, essentially putting everyone on a de facto waitlist until they fill slots? I know their deadline was months after everyone else, so for them it's probably too soon to go bothering the department, but they're the only school I haven't heard something from so far. I'd like to wrap this up, one way or another.

Heh, no worries. I have reached a point of relaxation about it all. I had a poor round of applications, but I know the reasons and they aren't faults in my qualifications, just my preparation and unfamiliarity with this process. I almost hope I don't get into somewhere off a last-minute waitlist*, because I have a better idea now how to properly market myself as a linguist, and I don't want to be somewhere thinking "Man, if I'd just had another shot, I totally could have gotten into MIT" (or wherever). *does not apply if this is the UCLA waitlist

Congratulations Phonologist! I'm thrilled for you. And I totally think you should take JHU :wink:

Well, a werewolf is a person that sometimes turns into a wolf at night. So a weresingle is a person, persumably involved, who sometimes turns into a single person at night? Believe me, I know PLENTY of dudes that fit that description! Ladies too. God bless 'em.

Hi danil, I think we've already talked a bit about living in Hawaii. If I had that choice, I'd go with UHM, but that's because I have lived there before and know I'm suited to it. I guess, without actually going over there for a month or two to try it out, the second best thing would be to think over your last five years (have your SO do the same). How often did you drive somewhere more than 30 miles away? How often did you visit friends or family from another city, or have them visit you? How often did you buy stuff online? (Most places won't ship to Hawaii, or if so it's at an increased cost.) Can you acclimate your diet away from milk, beef, temperate-climate produce and focus on fish and tropical fruits? If you can't wean yourself of mainland food, your grocery bills will be exhorbinant, but if you adapt, it's quite reasonable. Can you handle sunbathing on a pristine beach when the rest of the world is covered with snow? (okay, so that one's easy!) Are you an early riser? (I don't know about school life, but in the work world, most offices start very early, 6-7am, so that more of the day overlaps with the mainland, and everyone quits at 3 and goes to the beach). Do you like to dress up? My first job interview in Honolulu I wore a shirt and tie, and my interviewer actually told me it was the first time he'd ever seen anyone wear a tie in Hawaii (got the job though!). How do you handle traffic? That one goes for both places you're considering. Honolulu's traffic is probably worse than LA's during the rush hour peaks, but LA's is worse at any other time of day. That's about all I can think of at the moment. On its face, Hono is a pretty typical big city (not with the population of a place like LA, but the density makes up for it). The differences really show in the long term.

Count me in on that crew. I can man an oar or stand a spearwall with the best of them!

Dear Dinali, We regret to inform you that we are not able to make you an offer of admission to our program at this time. We carefully considered your impressive application and found you highly qualified in every way. We had every intention of accepting and funding you, but then one of our more elderly adcoms accidently dropped your packet behind the Keurig machine while preparing his daily Dark Mountain Magic cum Caramel Hazelnut Bliss concoction. It wasn't until three weeks later that our janitor, Manuel, found it, and by then we had exhausted all available positions. So in short -- PhD-NOT YOURS! Sincerely,

If nothing works out this year I'll definitely be applying there next year. This winter has convinced me to apply in Mediterranean climates only

Your ideal rejection ends with your untimely demise? I think you've been at this too long!

How . . . I guess "linguisticky" is a BCS program like that at JHU? I admit I never really considered non-pure-ling programs and I don't know much about them. However, I see all of you that applied at JHU and I look at the faculty and see several top linguists, especially Colin Wilson whom I remember from UCLA, and I wonder if these are programs that I should reconsider. So in what ways does a BCS program differ and, more importantly, what ways are they similar to a Ling department?

It's a positive. It's definitely and absolutely a positive. I say that with no empirical evidence whatsoever; it's only that I have a nearly identical letter from a school I really want to get in to and if I don't consider it a positive I'll spin into a depressive nose dive. Mine ended with "I hope to have some good news for you in the next few weeks." That sentence is all that's keeping me going right now.