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So, Friday March the Second, the Reach tournament was cancelled because of inclement weather, and I rejoiced, because that meant that I can go to the Ontario Dialogues on the Acquisition of Spanish, and/or the Montreal-Ottawa-Toronto Phonology Conference (MOT) (yes, I rejoice over things like that; bear with me and you will discover why.) However, I discovered the day before that MOT had a $15 admission fee for students - which is insane: how can you expect students to be inspired to do research and think critically about research if they cannot attend conferences and seminars for free? So MOT was out (besides, my relationship with generative phonology looks likely to go the way of my relationship with generative syntax) and the darling and beloved Spanish Acquisitioneers who have worked with me and loved me mutually for two years, were in.
Oh the Acquisitioneers, they work for years
Through snow and fog and words and tears,
They find what talks, they find what hears
And then they write a paper.
They rise at dawn and they plow on
With calls to put the coffee on;
The coffee free, it makes them see
For to present their paper.
The forecast said that roads are dead,
For snow hath rent God's feather bed.
By ten AM I cleared my head
Enough to go watch papers.
The coffee free, 'tis all for me!
A fine grad student I shall be:
In Spanish, English, French and Cree*
(*possibly not yet in Cree, but I will master that requisite sentence no matter what)
I know to find the coffee.
They smiled fast, that I came at last
And friends from syntax classes past
Told, over coffee-break repast,
"There's a seminar on semantics."
They spoke of verb aspect up and down,
Of diminutive endings on the noun;
In Spanish discussion they came round
To critique each other's findings.
Some things I even understood.
I questioned some, so it's all good,
Then came the news of lunchtime food
(For free, unlike the MOTies.)
O'er many yummy little bites
Grad students spoke of days and nights,
Of Semantics lambda-term delights
(I met those in Logic painful well -
They had hang-glided over hell
To cope with things that lambda spell
Unwarned by Logic's peal and knell...)
"Don't do a Master's here."
"Why not?" "You'll break your youthful heart:
Enter and leave twelve months apart.
There is no thesis, for a start,
But a memoir ain't much easier.
"Besides, without the defence,
You'll find yourself in deep suspense
At PhD's experi-ence
Being your firstest thesis."
From Acquisition I defect
To see the seminar correct
Where syntacticians ne'er trekked:
'Twas Hungarian semantics.
Hungarian is cool about its scope:
About semantics I have hope.
Then I came back to Spanish trope
(I met someone I knew, too.)
The talks we heard, they made us think
Then we went off to have a drink
And dinner - joy for all, I think:
Department's tab was buying*.
*(except for alcoholic beverages, which do not concern me).
Linguists got fish and chips and roast
"To Acquisition! Cheers!" I boast.
Consuelo's shock: "Why did you toast
The Spanish Inquisition?!"
It was acquisition, not inquisition. This became a running joke.
Oh the Acquisitioneers, they work for years
Through snow and fog and words and tears,
They find what talks, they find what hears
And then they write a paper.
They rise at dawn and they plow on
With calls to put the coffee on;
The coffee free, it makes them see
For to present their paper.
The forecast said that roads are dead,
For snow hath rent God's feather bed.
By ten AM I cleared my head
Enough to go watch papers.
The coffee free, 'tis all for me!
A fine grad student I shall be:
In Spanish, English, French and Cree*
(*possibly not yet in Cree, but I will master that requisite sentence no matter what)
I know to find the coffee.
They smiled fast, that I came at last
And friends from syntax classes past
Told, over coffee-break repast,
"There's a seminar on semantics."
They spoke of verb aspect up and down,
Of diminutive endings on the noun;
In Spanish discussion they came round
To critique each other's findings.
Some things I even understood.
I questioned some, so it's all good,
Then came the news of lunchtime food
(For free, unlike the MOTies.)
O'er many yummy little bites
Grad students spoke of days and nights,
Of Semantics lambda-term delights
(I met those in Logic painful well -
They had hang-glided over hell
To cope with things that lambda spell
Unwarned by Logic's peal and knell...)
"Don't do a Master's here."
"Why not?" "You'll break your youthful heart:
Enter and leave twelve months apart.
There is no thesis, for a start,
But a memoir ain't much easier.
"Besides, without the defence,
You'll find yourself in deep suspense
At PhD's experi-ence
Being your firstest thesis."
From Acquisition I defect
To see the seminar correct
Where syntacticians ne'er trekked:
'Twas Hungarian semantics.
Hungarian is cool about its scope:
About semantics I have hope.
Then I came back to Spanish trope
(I met someone I knew, too.)
The talks we heard, they made us think
Then we went off to have a drink
And dinner - joy for all, I think:
Department's tab was buying*.
*(except for alcoholic beverages, which do not concern me).
Linguists got fish and chips and roast
"To Acquisition! Cheers!" I boast.
Consuelo's shock: "Why did you toast
The Spanish Inquisition?!"
It was acquisition, not inquisition. This became a running joke.
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