dropping by
Wow, it's been quite a while since I posted anything here - for a variety of reasons no doubt. Though I can update that an unintended consequence of piloklok is near fruition - the recurring topic of language and sports, that basically got rolling for me here, is now about to emerge as a full-blown undergrad class at UCSB. This quarter it's listed as a special topics course, so enrollment is low, but we'll have it on the books for future years as well. I'll update on its progress whenever I can.
posted by Bob Kennedy @ 12:17 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
The linguistic analysis of sports commentary is really interesting (if that what the seminar is on). I remember discussing, in a syntax course, the high frequency of the otherwise rare "left-dislocation" within sports commentary.
This is something like "She's got a great back-hand winner, Sharapova."
It occurs, we hypothesized, because the commentators have to disambiguate their reference for the TV audience. But why so much left-dislocation instead of just avoiding ambiguous pronouns? Not sure. Interesting topic.
What a cool class. I wish it was offered at WSU when I was getting my MA. Your blog is great. Keep it up. Please feel free to check mine out too. I am new at this so I can use the support.
http://www.walkinthewords.blogspot.com
Thanks,
Laura
P.S. speaking of sports and language, what is your opinion on the following:
If Fred has injured a foot and he is favoring his right foot, which foot is injured? I am going to discuss this on my blog.
The class turned out to be quite a bit of fun, and pretty enlightening too. Chris ... one thing that become apparent is that some syntactic structures may have had functional origins within the confines of live broadcast speech (e.g. inversion, look for Ferguson 1983) but have become conventionalized. Left dislocation may be one such structure.
Laura ... I've seen favor used to indicate, as in your example, that Fred's right foot is injured. So that's my first impression now, but I think the first time I ever saw the structure, I understood favor to mean "use the uninjured leg".
Cool dude!
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