21.1025, Claire: Bowern is our Linguist of the Day

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LINGUIST List: Vol-21-1025. Tue Mar 02 2010. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 21.1025, Claire: Bowern is our Linguist of the Day

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1)
Date: 02-Mar-2010
From:  linguist < linguist at linguistlist.org >
Subject: Claire Bowern is our Linguist of the Day


-------------------------Message 1 ----------------------------------
Date: Tue, 02 Mar 2010 22:20:27
From:  linguist [linguist at linguistlist.org]
Subject: Claire Bowern is our Linguist of the Day

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Dear subscribers,

Today we feature our first Linguist of the Day nominated by the
LINGUIST List crew. Claire Bowern from the Department of Linguistics
at Yale University tells us here how she got into linguistics. Her
story and work has inspired our crew in many ways.

"I have a fairly typical background for an Australianist: my
linguistics training really began in classics. I took Latin and
Greek as an undergraduate at the Australian National University,
but "just in case" I also enrolled in an English major and an
introductory linguistics class. I very quickly found out that I
didn't really like writing the sort of essays that literature
departments wanted. On the other hand, I thought that the sorts
of things I was learning about languages was incredibly cool (for
example, that there were languages that marked tense with tone
changes rather than affixes, and that in addition to common-or-
garden "past", "present" and "future" there were languages that
marked "tomorrow around dawn" or "later today"). I also found it
a little hard to believe (but was pleasantly surprised to learn)
that there were people who were paid to think about languages as
systems, not just as something that people write literature in.

At that point I was still hooked on historical study and classical
languages. Then in my third year, when I was thinking about a
fourth year honours thesis topic, Harold Koch suggested I do
something on historical linguistics related to Australian languages,
and he suggested reconstructing a subgroup of Pama-Nyungan. That was
definitely being thrown in the deep end!"

Read the rest of her story at:
http://linguistlist.org/fund-drive/2010/linguists/index.cfm

Donate to LINGUIST now to support our crew at:
https://linguistlist.org/donation/donate/donate1.cfm

The LINGUIST List crew



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