godream

So here's what frustrates me about my linguistics class: the prof says with great confidence "so, you see that this is clearly not a valid English sentence, and therefore this rule is plausible". Half the time I disagree: I think it's a slightly awkward but okay sentence; sometimes I can even think of an example of the usage he calls invalid right off the top of my head. For example, today he said that in English you can only "look at" such and such, not "look on" such and such. The clear counterexample in my head is the sentences all over the Bible -- "looked on all the works that my hands had wrought" or whatever. If things like that are all over the most-published work in the English language, then "look on" is probably a valid construction, hmm?

Now, in other classes I'd say "okay, whatever, he picked a bad example -- the principle probably still holds, I'm just being OCD". But the *whole class* seems to be fundamentally founded on these examples -- if the whole basis of what's being taught is these flawed examples, these statements which at this point the class just goes along with when the lecturer says because nobody wants to be singled out to have to defend their opinion, then how can any of it be taken seriously?

I'd say this would be one perfect place to use the PRS systems they have in TEAL classes. (For the non-MIT folks who haven't had to cope with this: PRS stands for public response system, basically they give each student in a class a remote control that you use to vote on questions that are periodically asked during the class; it serves as both a form of taking attendance and an on-the-spot feedback system for instructors about whether the class is getting it.) Whenever he makes one of these statements that "devours without an object is not valid in the English language" or whatever, we should all get to vote (quietly, electronically, and at least semi-anonymously) on whether we agree or not. I think I'd be a lot more comfortable with his blanket statements about the validity or invalidity of particular constructions if I thought that my room full of peers wasn't just agreeing out of peer pressure/respect for the lecturer, rather than actual confidence that what he's stating is correct. And I think I'd be a lot happier about the rules he's setting out if I was happy about the observations he was basing them off of.

In non-class news: seeing Sweeney Todd with my musicals class this evening (hurrah!), vaguely hosed as usual (having failed to get work done over the weekend as usual), still job-hunting away, heading down to CT again this weekend and looking forwards to it. Also, found a total treasure-trove of middle/high school poetry in my inbox from LS, and much to my surprise I actually still kinda like some of it. Sure, there's flaws, but there's also some things that still feel right.