Ain’t No Party Like a Usage-Based Party

A few days ago, as I was sipping my tea, I had the thought that tonal oral languages tend to cluster, which was immediately followed by the question of how tonal signed languages might cluster. I was so excited that I happily flapped my arms about and texted Kailee, who gently rerouted me to an explanatory state. The thing is, I had never spent much time thinking about signed language typology — I don’t know a word of ASL, not even the alphabet — but now I find myself perusing a dissertation from the UNM Department of Linguistics on typology and kinship terms. When I was an undergraduate, phonology was the bane of my existence. Now I am profoundly interested in phonological typology. It is incredible, the way things change.

One of the big changes was my understanding of how incredible the linguistics research at UNM is. As a nineteen-year-old, when I committed to the major (having briefly flirted with physics), I took courses with the likes of Melissa Axelrod and didn’t fully comprehend at that time how lucky I was to interact with this faculty. I also thought that Noam Chomsky was the researcher for me and that ASL was “English, but on your hands” and that the sky was a rollicking purple.

So here we are. I start graduate school on August 18. I’ve compiled a list of all that I want to do in preparation for this work, and already I am feeling the pinch. The great review is commencing with Usage Based Models of Language, edited by Michael Barlow and Suzanne Kemmer. The thing is, there is so much I don’t know, and I am stalked by imposter syndrome, that somehow I will be found out as a big fat fraud and kicked out of the graduate program. I know that that is irrational, but I do want so badly to do well in this pursuit. I think, how can I be a linguist if I don’t speak Classical Nahuatl and I have to remember my IPA?

I want to be a linguist and work in academia. And that sounds like a party to me, to spend one’s days reading and writing and researching and teaching. I want to get up in the mornings and read my journal articles (something I do now) and gently stir the cream in my tea with a teaspoon. I want to know everything there is to know about construction grammar. I want to educate with the same beauty and skill that my mother did. I willingly spend my Friday evenings curled up between Fable and Bijou, reading dissertations and surfing Science Direct. This is what I want to do, what I want to be. Ain’t no party like a party for the mind.

UNM is noted for its stance as a functional-cognitive institution in this field. I know I am biased because I was raised in this tradition after I realized that I didn’t agree with Chomsky after all (sorry, Noam). But it is truly an honor to be able to work with people who have pioneered this approach to the study of language. In usage-based linguistics, we posit that there is a relationship between structure and usage. Indeed, one of the chapters was written by a hero of mine, Joan Bybee. It is an unsurpassed loveliness that I have encountered the linguists I have through this school. It is like every day is confetti day.

I want to understand the mind. That is what a cognitive scientist aspires to do. I just didn’t realize how fortunate I was when I started this journey.

And that is how I want to look at these months of preparation leading into a full blown semester: A journey, a quest. There is more to it than just sitting down with my grammar of Akkadian and my highlighter sashaying over printed journal articles, some spackled with tea stains. Really, it is a quest to become one with language, both as a writer and as a researcher. It is like being sewn into a new body, one that can do anything — that is what it is akin to when studying a grammar or a construction.

Before I applied to this program, I listed (as you can see, I am prone to crafting lists) all my research interests within linguistics, and it was two pages long. It spanned computation to spatial and semantic typology to contact and creolization. I will never be done learning. That is what I want. I am so grateful that I get to do it here.

Now, let’s get back to work. It’s annotation time.