|
FAQs |
Myself | Linguistics | Cambridge |
| Myself | |||
| Jiranthara, why do some people call you Mod? | |||
| Because they call me by my nickname. I got the letter M from my dad's nickname and the letter D from my mom's, and in Thai, the sound /o/ doesn't show its form in this word, which means 'ant' in English, and, I've been told, whose pronunciation is similar to the word for 'cat' in Mandarin Chinese. (However, a native speaker of Taiwanese Mandarin recently pointed out to me that to me /mod/ didn't sound like it. Being a linguist, I'll just need to check with more!) It's common for Thai people to have the names of animals, however small (and in some cases, ugly), as their nicknames. For example, my sister is 'bee,' and I have friends that are called 'crab' and 'shrimp' and even 'frog.' It's also common for a Thai person's nickname to have nothing to do with his or her first name. | |||
| What does Jiranthara mean? | |||
| 'Jiran' means forever, and 'thara' means land. 'Jiranthara' thus means the land that lasts forever. This is also related to my parents' first names. My dad's name means 'the sun', and my mom's 'the moon', so it is appropriate their first child is the forever land. It isn't a typical Thai name and is actually of Indian origin. I don't know anybody else who has such a name apart from a junior at my primary school. (I didn't know her personally; I just saw her name on her school uniform.) And if you google search Jiranthara, all that appears will be me. In other words, I'm the only Jiranthara in the cyberspace. | |||
| Linguistics | |||
| Why study semantics? | |||
| In
the Introduction of the first semantics book I read (Leech 1981, my emphasis), "Semantics was popularized in the 1930's and 1940's by a school of thought - that of 'general semantics' - which holds that the study of communicative processes can be a powerful force for good in the resolution of human conflict, whether on an individual, local, or international scale. Although I would hesitate to make such positive claims as this group (which tends, in my view, to take a rather naive view of the causes of conflict), it must be true that the more we understand the cognitive and communicative structures of language, the better we are able to recognize and control the 'pathological' or destruction elements in communication, and the better we are able to appreciate and to foster the forces that make for concord. ... This said, it has to be conceded that the primary appeal of semantics is an intellectual one, similar in some respects to that of mathematics or of any pure science. Only after seeking understanding for understanding's sake can one acquire the wisdom which consists in using that understanding for good ends." Reference: Leech, Geoffrey. (1981) Semantics: The Study of Meaning. Middlesex: Penguin. |
|||
| Why Time Conceptualization? | |||
| From
my research proposal, submitted early 2001 Having taught English to Thai students for several years, I have found that the most troublesome problems the English language poses for my students are in the areas of tense, aspect, and modal auxiliary usage. … English allows fine distinctions between past, present, and future whereas Thai does not differentiate even between past and present. This led me to think that, perhaps because of the hazy temporal frame of reference the Thai language has ingrained in them; Thai people find it extremely difficult to master the tense system in English, with its fixed devices to locate events in relation to the time of speaking and to show the contours of events. In other words, it is likely that Thai native speakers and English native speakers conceptualize time differently, which is why the English tense system is a major problem for Thai learners of English. … The conceptualization of time in Thai and English is undoubtedly worth researching. The study will lead to a clearer understanding of the tense systems in the two languages, thus facilitating the teaching and learning of English by Thais and vice versa. Besides, it will fit in perfectly with current trends as the conceptualization of time and space are now prevailing research topics in semantics, e.g. Slobin (1996) and Pederson (1998). It is also hoped that the study will contribute to knowledge about the relationship between language and conceptualization, the central issue discussed by various linguists and anthropologists in Nuyts and Pederson (1999). References: Nuyts, Jan and Pederson, Eric, Eds. (1999) Language and Conceptualization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pederson, Eric et. al. (1998) Semantic Typology and Spatial Conceptualization. Language, 74, 557-589. Slobin, Dan I. (1996) From "Thought and Language" to "Thinking for Speaking." In: John J. Gumprez and Stephen C. Levinson (eds), Rethinking Linguistic Relativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. |
|||
| Cambridge | |||
| Nobody has actually asked about this, but I must have explained to my non-Cambridge friends/acquantances a thousand times what colleges here are. This is how I usually put it: | |||
|
At Cambridge, apart from belonging to a department, where you study, you also need to be at a college, where your non-academic side of life is taken care of. There are about 30 colleges here, and they are all different in terms of culture, resources they provide for their members, and many other things. Actually, since the world-renowned Harry Potter came along, I've found it a lot easier to describle Cambridge colleges: There are four houses in Hogwarts; there are 30 in Cambridge. |
|||
| Why did I transfer from Clare Hall to Newnham College? | |||
|
From
an email written to a friend who asked this question, written on March
2, 2003 From
another email written to the same friend (a Wolfsonian) who asked what
I like about Clare Hall (a small college behind the UL), written on March
21, 2003 |
|||