Confederacy of a Dunce

Which way am I headed? and which way am I going?

Fri, 21 Aug 2009 13:30:38 GMT

It's been a very quiet time over here, as I decided to give up blog-based time wasting in order to finish my PhD, and then I just stayed in that same habit, doing idle things like more research, writing papers, etc. And more casual things like Facebook which requires very little sustained attention and effort.

In any event, it's high tourist season near my workplace, and I'm frequently approached by people asking for directions. Not only directions to one of the many university buildings scattered around the area, but it's also a tourist-heavy area, with the British Museum as the primary destination. And even people with street maps are not necessarily clear on exactly where they are, and which direction they are pointed. This is largely because of frequently-changing street names, and also a system where the streets forming all sides of a "Square" temporarily take on the name of that square over the name of the street that continues in either direction. Sounds confusing? You bet! Here's a picture to illustrate:

Have a look at the major road that goes from upper left to lower right (the fact that the grid here is not evenly aligned with the cardinal directions is still another matter). It starts out being Eversholt Street, but then upon crossing the Euston Road, it becomes Upper Woburn Place. For the space of a block, until it temporarily becomes Tavistock Square (along with the other one-block stretches surrounding "Tavistock Square" itself [the garden area]). At which point it has become Woburn Place (minus the Upper, however). For only one block, however, thanks to another square: Russell Square. This one is especially good because Russell Square is also the name of the nearest tube station, which is not actually on Russell Square (the street or the square), but on Bernard Street, a couple minutes' walk ENE from the nearest point of "Russell Square" (and to even further complicate matters, the tube station is located on the wrong street by Google Maps in the image above). After Russell Square, the aforementioned road becomes Southampton Row, a name it keeps for nearly 300 yards before becoming Kingsway. And this is a main road (it actually has a highway designation, "A4200", but nobody seems to know this, I guess because few people around here drive). Complicating matters is the extent to which the area around here is littered with squares (for which all four sides have the same street name as mentioned above. Well, except for cases where one square abuts another! In which case only one of the squares gets to claim the attached street [the rules by which these decisions are made are not clear to me]). So there are a lot of little streets in the immediate area whose actual locations are not known most people, even those who have been working in the area for some time (there's a reason we all have London A-Zs, and/or phones with mapping functions).

Q: So how do I get to the British Museum?
A: Practice!

Awkward headlines

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 14:13:33 GMT

Today I came across a very confusing headline:

"Sugababes rubbish split reports"

Although I have the advantage of knowing what "Sugababes" means (London pop band of the past 10 years), my first (and maybe more) readings of the headline offered various kinds of interpretations. The headline (and the confusion it can cause) is a good example of British tabloid style (see this Language Log post for more examples) which can lead to ambiguity due to a pileup of nouns. In this case, all four words in the headline could be nouns; the trick is to find the verbs. The first possibility I considered started with "Sugababes [are] rubbish..." (a commonly held opinion but surely not that newsworthy) but this one breaks down with "split reports". The next thought was that the article had something to do with the group's trash (e.g. "we provide an investigative look at how this pop group is separating out recyclables"; or "there are conflicting reports about the Sugababes' rubbish"). Environmental stories are all the rage, but this is not the theme of the article either. Also unlikely is some kind of story about a food product ("rubbish split", perhaps something like a banana split where you add whatever ingredients are available?).

As it turns out, the trick is that "rubbish" is the verb here, meaning "to criticize". Thus the Sugababes are responding to reports that they are breaking up with a vigorous rebuttal (possibly to be followed by an actual break-up... only time will tell). The original article can be found here if for some inexplicable reason you are interested in finding out more.

dunce, PhD

Fri, 27 Feb 2009 14:58:34 GMT

Well, it's finally finished. I am now officially dunce, PhD.

By "finished", I mean that today I submitted the final, approved copy of my PhD thesis (in the UK, "dissertation" usually refers to undergraduate projects, and "thesis" to PhDs. Makes things confusing since "dissertation" is reserved for PhDs in the US), and my degree has been officially registered as complete by my institution.

It was interesting to see how things are done here, vs. some of my peers who completed and defended elsewhere. In particular, the PhD examination is very different. Most of the people I know defended their PhD before a panel of 4-6 experts. In some cases there is also a formal presentation before a public audience (typically a formality as the real deal is already done behind closed doors). Here, the defense (or as they call it here, viva voce, customarily abbreviated to "viva" except in formal documents) is conducted by only two people: an internal examiner (someone from my institution), and an external examiner. The viva is held behind closed doors and no one else is permitted to be present.

As the day of my viva approached I became more and more worried about it, despite the fact that I was very well prepared for it. After all, I have been working on this stuff for years and years (vs the typical UK 3-year PhD), have presented a lot of it at conferences, and written up parts of it for various papers. So I'm used to defending it as part of the review process, and have also become used to thinking about the research in terms of narrative (how best to tell the story of how it all fits together). I am also quite familiar with the research topics of my two examiners, and tried to anticipate the critical angles they might take (one of my examiners is an expert in bilingualism and cognition; the other in language development and cognitive neuroscience). Nonetheless I worked myself into quite a state - by the day of the viva I was a very pale and nervous imitation of myself.

But actually, the viva was a very pleasant process. My internal examiner started by telling me that they found my thesis very interesting and of high quality, and that I should expect all sorts of difficult and probing questions, but this is the way a viva is meant to be. He then explained the exact sequence of events. First, how I came to the research questions included in the thesis. Second, the most important aspects of the thesis, in my eyes, and the most important aims. Third, walking through the thesis in detail, chapter by chapter, addressing specific concerns. And last, broader issues, problems, and the general question of where we go from here. I should try and elaborate rather than answering briefly (um, perhaps they should not have made this suggestion). So I just started going from the beginning.

The story of how the thesis came to be is a rather convoluted one, as (like a lot of PhD research) it started with an entirely different purpose and gradually morphed into a very different animal. So it took me a while to tell that particular tale, mentioning some of the further tangents along the way. I was more concise when it came to explaining the main aims and questions of the thesis, and then we turned to the examiners' specific questions. After the first three or four (maybe a dozen pages into the introduction), they suggested that I not elaborate on every single question, or we'd never finish the viva. So instead of answering each question, and then justifying my answers, I just answered the questions. It was not hardball at all, mainly clarifications and the like. By the time we got to the end, the "big questions" were a bit of an anticlimax. I felt like I stumbled on a couple of them (at least as I started to answer), but they didn't notice. All in all, this took about three hours. At the end, they decided that my thesis was accepted without changes.

Actually there were a few little bits of touch-up I had to do, mainly dropping in a couple of footnotes to address minor theoretical points, and providing more statistical details in some cases where I'd glossed over them. This latter part actually turned out to be a lot more work than I wanted to do at this stage, but I managed to get it done just in time for verification and approval (it is the internal examiner's responsiblity to ensure that the final version is, indeed, acceptable).

Once this was done, I had to get the thesis printed and bound according to university regulations. After quite a lot of fiddling about (font selection, working to make sure the layout and design of my figures and tables were acceptable, double-checking and triple-checking), I created the final PDF and emailed it off to our local binder (Collis, Bird & Withey, N5. I was very happy with their service & would enthusiastically recommend it to others). And today I went to hand it in. Many of my colleagues remember this step fondly; many institutions have a "Thesis Person" (usually Thesis Lady) who checks the printed thesis with an extremely close eye for details (caliper measurements of margins, page overlay templates, measuring individual characters, and so on), and who is very likely to reject it on the basis of some tiny detail. Here, instead, there appears to be no such person. UCL does have a funny kind of format (European style: text running up the spine, so the spine lettering is upside down compared to my other [English] books on the shelf when the thesis is right side up) but a fairly limited set of requirements. So then it was just a matter of collecting the bound copies when they were ready, filling out a few forms, and delivering the thesis (plus a PDF on CD-ROM in an envelope pasted in the back cover) to Student Records.

And that's what I did today. No eagle-eyed Thesis Person inspecting the margins and other details, just a quick check that all the forms were completed, and now I have a form confirming that I have submitted the final copies of my thesis. I suppose there may be a Thesis Person behind the scenes who will complain about my font selection, and make me do the whole thing over again from scratch. But I like to think there is not. I have been told I will receive a confirmation letter in the next week or two.

And then all that is left is the graduation in September; apparently I am now a graduand (a term that is new to me. OED: "One about to be graduated or to receive a university degree".). A handy term to fill in the gap between completion and the official ceremony, but it leaves me wondering when exactly I actually earn the right to call myself PhD. Upon confirmation that I am on the "pass list"? Or does the actual moment only occur at that moment I go through graduation? Surely not the latter - attending graduation ceremony is optional. In which case there is little use for the term "graduand" save in referring to anticipation of the Graduation Ceremony Experience itself.

Speaking of which, I can hardly finish without referring to the graduation costume. Here are the details of the regulations concerning my graduation outfit (I will save photos for Saptember):

Hood: Of the slim shape (no, I don't know what this means) in silver grey cloth fully lined with red silk.

Gown: Of the same shape as that worn by Cambridge Doctors (I assume this means that we are the same shapes underneath as well!) in silver grey cloth with facings of red and sleeve linings of grey, a red cord and button on sleeves.

Cap: A round cap of black velvet with silver grey cord and tassels.

Doesn't that sound pretty?

On the latch

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 11:50:43 GMT

This morning we had a couple of workmen around to do some electrical work (also including some major rock breaking possibly more suited to a chain gang). They arrived bright and early -- early enough that they had to wait around a bit until 8am when they can make their noise. In my sleepy haze, I was not exactly prepared to untangle an unfamiliar British expression, but they threw it at me anyway:

One of them asked, "Can you put the door on the latch?"

It should have been obvious to me from the context (I blame the early hour), but I had trouble figuring out what he was talking about. After all, our front door is set up to lock from the outside. So if I left it latched, they would not be able to get in or out (the latch is disengaged with the key, not with the handle. Maybe there's a way to change this but why bother? I've only been locked out once - just after we moved in - and Mrs Dunce is too clever for that). I tried to explain that the door locks when it's closed, so putting it "on the latch" wouldn't work if they need to get in and out without my intervention. Actually my response turned out to be useful despite my confusion - the worker pulled the handle upwards, engaging the additional locks, so that the door was blocked from fully closing by the locks.

But it was definitely not "on the latch" according to my own US English interpretation ("on the latch" = "latched" in contrast to "open"). But as usual, I was wrong. Instead, "on the latch" seems to be more appropriately contrasted with "locked", as in this quote about east London from a travel guide (describing the stereotypical view of the East End)

Colourful local characters never stop arguing with each other, yet there's a sense of neighbourliness and community, where you can leave your door on the latch and everyone is a member of the pub darts league !

Or a University of Bristol warning:
Please never allow others to tail-gate you into the Units
NEVER leave unit doors on the latch
If on a Ground Floor then ensure your room windows are secured before you go out
Do not leave your room door ajar or unlocked - if found it will be shut
CONTACT HALL STAFF AT ONCE IF YOU THINK YOU HAVE FOUND AN INTRUDER.

So leaving something on the latch just means "shut but not locked". Not to be confused with "going for a slash" (see previous post) or "going on the lash" (a night out, including excessive alcohol consumption).

Going for a slash

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 16:42:38 GMT

There's no shortage of terms or phrases to refer to urination, and one of my favorites (if not really in my vocabulary) is the UK English term "slash", as in "going for a slash". Although I have not done any formal research on the use of this term, or even informal research beyond a bit of web searching (not even consulted any informants!), I consider myself an expert on the topic. The OED straightforwardly defines it as "an act of urination", with the earliest example from 1950. Although I have only heard this particular sense of "slash" used as a noun (the first time I heard the term was in an Attila the Stockbroker poem, which contained plenty more nearly incomprehensible British informal expressions), the OED also has a verb listing (as derived from the noun), with one classy example from Martin Amis (IF YOU ARE MY MOTHER, PLEASE SKIP TO THE NEXT PARAGRAPH NOW!): (If you can slash in my bed (I thought) don't tell me you can't suck my cock.)

Like many other slang terms, the OED doesn't have a clear etymology of this sense of "slash": Of obscure origin, cf. Scots "slash" a large splash of liquid. To me this term has further connotations, of urination in a particularly informal manner (if urination can ever be said to be a formal act) and perhaps occurring in nonstandard venues - maybe referring to the temporary creation of visual art on, perhaps, the wall of a school, a snowbank, or the Bank of England. Often resembling a slash, at least when a male is doing it (I am not certain whether "slash" also refers to female urination - I have only heard it used to refer to the male act, but of course this may simply be for the sake of propriety ["powdering one's nose" etc]).

My own personal vocabulary in this domain has evolved over the years. The earliest I can remember, my own preferred terminology was "potty" (like so many other midwestern American children), although I am sure I used plenty of other terms earlier on. However, upon starting elementary school, social pressure quickly led to a few alterations. First of all, I was informed by a slightly older child that the semantic domain was divided into two primary terms, and I should adjust my behavior suitably. The term "potty" is fine, but refers to a clear liquid. For anything yellow, the term "pee" is more correct. Now I was convinced of the correctness of this so I mentally adjusted my term appropriately. However, I was also keenly aware that the Dunce home was not a place where one could freely experiment with terminology referring to taboo subjects (see the warning above). Fortunately, the phrase "going to the bathroom" served as a reasonable alternative (particularly appropriate if (a) one was unsure whether the term "pee" was worthy of having one's mouth washed out with soap, (b) one was not sure whether one's output would be transparent or colored, or (c) one might be intending to perform other activities not limited to urination).

At a certain point, however, "going to the bathroom" was deemed inappropriate, as a babyish term, and anyway inappropriate in a school context where in fact there were no opportunities for bathing ("Swirlies" do not count, nor do those unfortunate occasions where one enters a school restroom and finds oneself in the firing line [as it were] where young gentlemen are stepping backwards to see how far they can get before their urinal targeting abilities are exhausted). So "(going to/using) the restroom" became the more appropriate replacement, suitable for so many occasions. This same time also saw a massive boom in the popularity of swearing (outside the home only! Mmmmmmm soap) among a certain young gentleman's peer group, so of course the term "piss" also came into play (OED goes crazy with details of "piss". Although Now chiefly coarse slang lest I be tempted to call on the authority of the OED to justify my own usage). And about the same time I became very fond of (supposedly) comedic expressions ("bleed the lizard" and so on). Carefully restricting these uses to interactions with my peers (and occasionally teachers, with unpleasant consequences), and using more socially appropriate terms elsewhere.

I suppose the same is true today (with the exception that I no longer fear corporal punishment from teachers, and that I have discovered that most circumstances allow one to excuse oneself without announcing one's destination). But on those occasions where the specific destination must be mentioned (for example, asking where the appropriate facilities are located), I have been forced once again to adjust my terminology. "Restroom" just doesn't fly in the UK, and "bathroom" is the place where a bath is. Most appropriate terms appear to be "toilet" (hopelessly coarse in my brand of US English, at least to my ear) and "loo", although supposedly "WC" is also a contender. I usually find myself asking for the toilet - perhaps because my US pronunciation makes the word "loo" sound wrong (I only tried it a few times, but a few quizzical expressions led me to pick another term. Although really, what else could I have been asking for?). But if I'm going for a slash, I don't ask anyone where I ought to do it.

Milestone!

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 14:28:29 GMT

It's been very quiet here, because I've actually been working. And today....

I submitted my PhD thesis!!!!

Now it will sit around for a while before going to my examiners.
Then at some future date (probably a couple or few months) I'll have my viva (oral exam).
After that I will (presumably) have to make some revisions and then submit the final version for approval.

But for now I am done working on it!
Done!

now everything else can resume.
Anyone for tennis?

Cat invasion

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 12:54:55 GMT

Stop the presses! Two small cats have adopted the Dunces.

Several months have now passed since Zosi's untimely death in January, and we finally decided that we were ready to admit someone else into our household. Somehow we decided that this time around, we would see if we could adopt a pair of cats (I know, it's a slippery slope towards us becoming "crazy cat ladies"). Possibly even kittens. So we made a journey to North London Cats Protection, the same place we adopted from before, to see who was looking for a home.

When we arrived, there were no kittens around (apparently kitten season = total frenzy), but we were taken straight to a pair of sisters just about a year old. It was pretty clear from the start that they would be moving into our house - one of them was extremely friendly and sociable (although this could always just be "GET ME OUT OF HERE" behavior), and the other one was much more hesitant but too curious to hide away. We couldn't just take them home right away - Cats Protection has a home visit policy. So we had to wait a couple of days for one of their volunteers to come by the house and make sure it was ready for cats, and also make sure that we were aware of the various important things about cat care, introducing the cats to a new place, and so on. Of course this went fine.

On Wednesday we went to collect them (in pouring rain), and brought them back to the living room, which would be their home until they became comfortable there. One of the cats (the sociable one, of course) was ready to be let out right away - totally confident in exploring the room and its various shelves and surfaces, even begging for attention, nudging us and purring. The other was much more nervous - going straight under the recliner and cowering there for quite a while. Although eventually she made it out, carefully exploring the room and even more carefully approaching us.

We had a few people over in the next couple of days, and neither cat seemed particularly bothered. So we let them into the rest of the house on Saturday. Again the same kind of behavior, fitting their personalities. {explore, jump, meow, purr} vs {carefully explore, scurry, hide, peek out}. There is also a lot of cat-on-cat chasing and play-fighting, and it actually seems like the cautious one is slightly dominant (although they clearly like each other best of all).

We have also been agonizing over their names! Not easy at all, and we couldn't really do the same thing we did with Zosi whose name was derived from an interesting saint whose saint's day was the same as the day we adopted her. Well, we could have - after all, we could have chosen from any of the 120 Martyrs of China who are collectively celebrated on that day. But we weren't really keen on any of their adopted western names (mostly biblical) nor did we want to try for Chinese names given our lack of knowledge of Chinese phonology. So we headed in a very different direction. First of all, the little, slightly timid gray one also has incredibly soft fur, so we called her Goya. This is actually not based on the name of the Spanish painter, but is Mrs. Dunce's childhood word for extremely soft things one might like to stroke (Dunce family equivalent might be spelled something like "hih"). The more outgoing one, vaguely Siamese in appearance (and also somewhat resembling a ring-tailed monkey), was much harder. Eventually she chose a Japanese girl's name, Kumi. At least to us it has some sound-symbolism related to her personality, and also some non-coincidental resemblance to the phonology of "monkey". And according to some of the "name meaning" websites (which might just be junk), the name Kumiko (from which Kumi is derived) means "companion child"/"drawing together" - a nice link with her sociable nature - and also derives from (ku) "long time", (mi) "beautiful" and (ko) "child". Anyway all this rambling and no pictures yet! So without further delay:

Kumi on the bookshelf

Goya on the bookshelf

Together on the bookshelf

Are British children more neuter than US children?

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 12:26:33 GMT

Over the past few days I've noticed a number of instances in which a British person has referred to a child (whose sex is unknown) with the pronoun "it", as in the following:

The smaller child has its eyes closed, and the bigger one its eyes open. (celebrity "news" story, LINK. Actually referring to one boy and one girl, but the writer does not appear to know which is which)

each child has its moment of glory as it goes up to collect a certificate proving its status as a "Young Egyptologist" (Swansea University, LINK).

To me the singular pronoun "it" sounds very strange when used to refer to a human, especially in the latter case where "it" is used multiple times; my initial feeling is that the use of "it" implies nonhuman characteristics (the only regular use I can think of hearing is offensive disparaging reference to someone of ambiguous gender). Oddly I don't have any such problem with singular "they" which seems like perhaps a more common (US English) way to avoid the "he/she" dilemma. Indeed, google search for this use (e.g. ..."child has its"...) seems to give an abundance of UK sites once other kinds of cases are discarded (like "Parenting any exceptional child has its challenges", or reference to "child" that is not human, such as node/hierarchical structures).

So it's probably just that "it" is more acceptable to refer to a child in UK English. A quick scan of some other options suggests that this may not be true of adults. For example, "person has its" doesn't seem to give the same kind of results (most of the "neutral references" tend to be from non-English-speaking countries, or referring to a legal "person" which may or may not be human). Nor does "human", and interestingly "teenager" doesn't seem to do it either. So maybe this use of "it" is only OK before a child hits puberty. But it's OK to use "it" to refer to it before then.

Police cull half their crime prevention team

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 11:59:41 GMT

I'm a huge fan of local newspapers, and in my part of London I have a good half dozen or more weekly papers to choose from. But they do not always present their news in the clearest and most sensible manner. For example, check out the following from Ham & High (i.e. Hampstead and Highgate) March 20, 2008 exactly as it appeared in the paper:

I don't care how incompetent the donkey was at preventing crime, surely it doesn't deserve to be crucified! And as usual for London it appears that a large mob has turned out for the public execution.

Of course this is actually just a classic example of silly layout, as you can see by the wider angle: