Thursday, August 26th, 2004

Time	Event
7:54a	Bootvisor This is just an excuse to experiment with whether I can put a stylesheet in an entry. Since losing my settings I'm back to the browser's defaults, which is a whopping 12pt for everything and a bizarre hideous bold rendition of the IPA font. Well I can't impose that on you or myself, and also I can't afford to adjust my settings and forget that it's still being imposed on you. Hence <span class=ipa> naʊ prə'ʤu:səz ðɪs ɪ'fekt, whereas the old-style <font face="Lucida Sans Unicode"> prə'ʤu:səz ðɪs ɪ'fekt. Am going into the library today. Must get more than half a dozen references for the bottom of the Thing, or it won't look good. Am going to cobble together some lunatic introduction from the forced hybrid of MP and Culicover & Nowak, and pretend that's my intention. Then later today will add and discuss some quotes and see where that brings the word count. I've been trying to do it all in my own words so far. Turbulent night, partly sleepless, partly full of wild and whirling dreams. Classic result of alcohol deprivation. Had nothing but two bottles of Budweiser ['bu:tvaɪzə], one the normal 5,0% one, the other a new one in the shops, gold label, subtitled Premier Select, at 7,6%. Quite nice. I'm not a lager drinker but I think I could have more than one of those with pleasure. Now the reason for the phonetics is that this premier bottle is prominently labelled just Bud, and I was wondering whether that's [bʊt] or [bu:t] or, heav'n forfend, [bad]. (In ill-advised competition with that other muck, or do the Czechs actually say this too?) And then I noticed that when I say [bu:t] as a German name I give it a cardinal rounded, back vowel, not like the centred de-rounded one of English 'boot'. In fact calling Bud Boot sounds ridiculous. But it's palliated in the full Bootvisor. Edited. Drattit, it don't work! So I've got to put all my specifications in-line each time, so <font face="Lucida Sans Unicode" color=blue size=-1> prə'ʤu:səz ðɪs ɪ'fekt, not to mention ['bu:tvaɪzə 'bʊdva:]. Current Mood: depressed Current Music: Duparc, Aux Etoiles (2 Comments | Comment on this)
7:01p	Went to library. Did some reading and note-taking. I think the only interesting quote I got was someone echoing Einstein, that grammar was subtle but not malicious. Got distracted reading about Tagalog infixation. Spent the last couple of hours reading in Huddleston and Pullum's CGEL, more interested in something I could at least partly understand. It's so good to see English grammar described freshly and impartially, with terminology appropriate to it. And they spend only a few paragraphs on such hard nuts as used to and had better. This much needs to be done on every language in the world, starting with Pirahã and Eyak and all the ones that are rich and strange or that we might be about to lose. Am still nowhere nearer understanding anything of what I'm trying to write about. I want to give up. I don't know how I can hand in anything. Am now about to get more maudlin over some Old Peculier. Current Mood: depressed (9 Comments | Comment on this)

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