Archive for the 'School' Category

My last final was today. My linguistics teacher threw us a bit of a curve ball. He told us that half of the final would deal with morphology. What he didn’t tell us was that all of the questions would be in reference to a sample of African American Vernacular English. In answering one of the questions I wrote the following in response to the question: Does Katrina use only the uninflected form of the verb be? I answered with the following sentence:

No, she say “I’m,” “it’s,” and others.

Just before I turned it in I noticed and added an s at the end of say. Reading and writing sentences in AAVE for an hour started to influence my writing. That’s something that I never would have expected.

While walking from my logic class to the parking lot I heard a mighty roar and the thunk of warriors engaged in padded weapon combat. It was like a live action deathmatch set in a medieval universe.

It was a pretty geeky display, but they seemed like they were having fun. They would attack one another for about a minute then take a five minute break. During the breaks they were inviting onlookers to participate. There weren’t many spectators and none of them decided to take part.

I tried to get some good pictures, but the action all happened so fast that it was difficult to get what I was looking for. It was entertaining to watch, though.

In my logic class today the professor was illustrating the point that the final conclusion in a mapped argument may not be the main point of the argument. As an illustrative example he related the following scenario.

Imagine that I am building a wall out of LEGO^® bricks. I want to make the wall as tall as possible, but it’s still on its side on the ground. I want to add more LEGO^® bricks to it, so I ask my friend if she’s done with her LEGO^® bricks yet. She says she is done with her LEGO^® bricks and that I may use them. Where do I put the LEGO^® bricks in order to make the wall taller? You can put the LEGO^® bricks at the top or the bottom of the wall. It doesn’t matter, it still makes the wall taller.

I was impressed that he followed the instruction on the back page of the LEGO Company Profile. The 2004 and 2005 versions, and possibly other oversions, include the following recommendations:

Using the LEGO brand name

Help us to protect our brand name:
• The LEGO brand name should always be written in capital letters.
• LEGO must never be used as a generic term or in the plural or as a possessive pronoun, e.g. “LEGO’s”.
• When the LEGO brand name is used as part of a noun, it must never appear on its own. It should always be accompanied by a noun. For example, LEGO set, LEGO products, LEGO Group, LEGO play materials, LEGO bricks, LEGO universe, etc.
• The first time the LEGO trademark appears in a headline and in the following text it should be accompanied by the registration symbol ®.

Thank you for helping us!

As it turns out, he had no idea that there were any such recommendations and seemed quite amused that he was “being a good guy and didn’t even know it.” Speaking like that seems so unnatural to me that I was relatively certain that he was doing it on purpose as a result of something he had been taught. LEGO^® would have been pleased to know that such brand name usage advocacy is being demonstated in an academic setting.