audrey

We had Christmas lunch with my Grandma. Her care center has a duck pond on the grounds, and as my family and I were getting ready to leave, my niece spotted about fifteen ducks waddling around. Her whole face lit up and she shrieked, "Du! Du! Du!" I took her over the ducks and started chasing them with her. She was elated and even gleeful. No matter how long she stared at them, she was still completely fascinated and still kept pointing and saying, "Du! Du! Du!" as if she wanted to make sure I understood how exciting this moment was. I pass by a duck pond everyday on my way to school, but I only realized then that I have been frequently missing out on the extreme joy of chasing ducks.

Happy Thanksgiving

Have a good break everyone.

GRE

Acronyms stress me out.

What do you mean by that?

One of my favorite classes this semester? ELANG 325: English Grammar.

Why, you may ask, would grammar be among my favorite classes? Well, apart from the fact that I am simply weird and also a nerd, who could resist a class where cheesy, grammarians-only jokes such as the following are made?:

In reply to how confident she was about her answer for a question about appositives, one student said in class, "I am appositive that this answer is correct."

Another discussion revolved around animate versus inanimate nouns.

Student 1: "That rule applies here because the noun is inanimate. After all, you can't eat a country."

Student 2: "You can eat Turkey."

All semester long there have been some very good debates surrounding adverbials, but my current favorite discussion is about clauses introduced by the word "that." Here is a sentence we analyzed in class:

"That that that is the right that is something that I know." We talked about what each of those thats is operating as, but before we came to agreement, there were quite a few arguments. At one point, a student said, "Well, what do you mean by that? You have to explain what that you are using." Indeed, what do you mean by that? A relative pronoun, a demonstrative pronoun, a complementizer? 

My professor, who does his very best to bring the gospel into everything he can, including the study of grammar, brought a quote from President Monson involving that clauses for us to analyze. He happened to bring the quote that is along my sidebar (look to your right). The sentence in question? "I believe that among the greatest lessons we are to learn in this short sojourn upon the earth are lessons that help us distinguish between what is important and what is not."  Our task? As my professor put it, "Let's distinguish between what is important and what is not at least with the thats." What is the function of the that clause "that help us distinguish . . ."? Our professor insisted it was an nominal appositive clause renaming lessons, but we all knew it was an adjectival relative clause. For the first time this semester, there was strong opposition to what the teacher said was right. But Professor Anderson was so convinced he was right, that he committed to bring us treats if he was wrong.

I headed eagerly to my grammar class last Thursday afternoon, still in full confidence that my classmates and I had been correct. Sure enough, the first thing we went over was that tricky that clause from President Monson, and our professor admitted his mistake, and brought out mint nut brownies. He then proceeded to apologize in a way that only a BYU grammar professor could: "I get excited and have an emotional response and allow that to hijack the amygdala. I didn't stop to think it through and allow the Holy Ghost to tell me what the right answer was. If you had asked me how confident are you that the "that" in that clause is a nominal appositive, I would have said 137.6925% sure, but that was based on my emotional response."

Who knew grammar could be so emotional? I, however, am not complaining as long as grammar's hijacking of the amygdala continues to get me mint brownies.

P. S. Extra credit if you can identify and categorize each of the that clauses in this post.

Thai food and family dinners

I went to SpicyThai on Saturday with my four sisters, one of my brothers, and my adorable niece, Audrey. Audrey pretty much threw a fit the whole time we were in the restaurant, but it wasn't an angry fit. It was more of a "I think I am talking and communicating with all y'all, but I am actually screaming" kind of fit. She likes to shriek loudly in order to make her wishes known. The noise level was not all, however. She did a pretty good job of making a mess of her dinner. The amount of food she managed to get all over the table and floor was impressive, particularly consdiering her rather miniscule size. After take big mouthfuls of food, she spit out what she didn't want, or shook it on the floor. She soon began to refuse water from her little bottle and insisted on drinking from her mother's huge cup of ice water. Finally, she was given a tootsie pop to calm her down. She sucked on the wrapper for a little while before insisting that it be opened for her, but actually soon discarded the tootsie pop (throwing it unceremoniously on the ground) as soon as something more interesting (i.e., fortune cookies) appeared. In the middle of dinner, a glass of water was spilt as well (this however was not the baby's fault). It is pretty much a family tradition that a glass of water will be spilt each time we eat together. Family dinner wouldn't be family dinner without it. When we left, there was food all over the ground, a wet floor, but very clean dishes. Every scrap of Thai food was eaten and enjoyed. I am not sure that the waiter enjoyed our presence as much as we enjoyed our stay though.

The interesting thing about all of this is that everything Audrey did was cooed over by her four aunts and one uncle who were present. It's amazing how absolutely everything a one year old does is cute--that is, when you are related to her.

Joining the craze

This is the obligatory "I'm joining the blogging craze" post to announce what is already obvious: I have created a blog. Whether or not I maintain this blog will be another story, but I am starting to feel left out of the family. Out of my eight brothers and sisters and two in-laws, seven have blogs. Not to mention roommates and friends. It seemed appropriate to cave into the peer pressure. So here it is: my blog.

I would like to start this first post by being positive, hence I will begin by enumerating the many good things about my life. First on the list, only one month left of Fall semester. This is happy. This means the end of my Spanish class. Second good thing: I get to read Emma for homework this week. Third: my roommate made mint brownies and I've been chowing down on them. Fourth: I had a conversation with Ananda tonight about proper Black English grammar and the habitual be. I can only have conversations like this with Ananda, and it makes me happy.

Yes, life is good.

ORCA

It's not a whale, but it is almost as big as one. Possibly bigger.