Back to School

My school got a voucher for a free class at my alma mater, and after asking the rest of the staff if they'd like to use it, jumped at the chance when they said no. I was so excited to be taking a graduate course again, and I knew the professor, though I had never taken a class from her.

The class was entitled, "The Nature of Linguistic Language." I thought it would perfectly coincide with the work I was doing after school, teaching English conversation. We would learn how people learn language, how they acquire second language, and a host of other things.

The class was taught by two professors, and they had taught the course together for many years. They wrote a book, which was our textbook. I ordered that book as well as another book to read if we were interested.

In the first class, we talked about how to make plural nouns in English. We learned how to make plural nouns in Armenian. As always, I was quick to speak in class even if I didn't have the right answer. I figured out the young women to the left and right of me had the answers, and I made a deal with them: if we worked together, they could come up with the answers, and I'd be the spokesperson for the group. They agreed to do it.

The first class was hard, and the second class wasn't any easier. I learned this was a research course, and we'd be making hypotheses. I hypothesized how long I would last. I started making jokes under my breath, much to the delight of my new partners in crime. When one professor was talking about the soft palate in your mouth, I whispered, "I think my soft palate is up here", and I tapped my head.

I spent much of the class with a quizzical look on my face (see photo), and I talked a lot. Here's a sample of what we had to read in our textbook:

"The concept 'plural' is semantically interpreted at the NP level, as a result of the NP and the morpheme {plural} merging. However, the phonological form of the morpheme {plural} can be found on the head of the N of the NP, on the adjectives modifying the N, on the determiners, or on all of the above. Or on none of the above; that is, the morpheme {plural} does not have to be realized phonologically at all within the NP." (copied without permission from Honda and O'Neil, 2008)

Get it? Me neither. When the word "morpheme" came up in class, all I could think about was morphine, which I felt like I was on. I withdrew from the class and will now be watching Oprah on Thursdays instead of making my soft palate even softer with morphine.