Remember that I’ve cancelled our class meeting for Thursday April 8, in order to provide you with an opportunity to attend the following two lectures by Prof. James McCloskey (University of California, Santa Cruz):
“Sex and the Irish Language: The Cultural Politics of Language Attrition”
Thursday April 8 @ 7:30pm, KCB 101
Abstract: A belief frequently expressed about the Irish language is that ‘there are no words for sex in Irish’. This talk considers the veracity of this strange belief, tries to uncover its origins, and uses that exploration as a probe to better understand the mechanisms of language destruction.
“Yes, No, and the Construction of Finite Verbs in a VSO Language”
Friday April 9 @ 3:30pm, KCB 106
Abstract: Irish is one of those languages often said to lack works for ‘Yes’ and ‘No’. Where other languages use such words, Irish instead uses so-called ‘responsive forms of the verb’–single word sentences consisting only of an inflected verb. This talk addresses the following two related questions:
1. How does the grammatical device of the ‘responsive’ relate to the polarity particles (words like ‘Yes’ and ‘No’) found in other languages? Put differently, why is it possible to render with these single word sentences what other languages render by means of words like ‘Yes’ and ‘No’?
2. How does this effect relate to, and interact with, the single most famous fact about Irish, namely that it is a Verb-Subject-Object language?
The Friday afternoon talk is particularly relevant to our course, and I strongly encourage you to attend if at all possible. Â (I might even conjure up an extra credit question about the Friday afternoon talk, if you need any further enticement.)