- oh for Eru's sake. The Semantics seminar is so frustrating. I really don't know how half the people in this class ever passed their intermediate exam (probably with better grades than I did). People, please learn the difference between the disciplines. Last week, there was a completely unnecessary, fruitless and unsatisfying discussion because two people simply didn't get that you can't replace terms from semantics with terms from literary criticism (wtf?!) even though some concepts may overlap. This week ---
Look, people, this is linguistics. In a linguistic sense, "hand" and "fingers" - or "hand" and "arm", or whathaveyou - are discreet and can be separated without repercussions. In the English language, anyway. Whether I say "I wriggled the fingers on my hand" or "I wriggled my fingers" is basically the same thing. I don't have to explain that the fingers are a part of the hand because that's in the job description. Therefore, the terms "hand" and "fingers" are clearly divided; "fingers" can be detached from "hand" without harm. Whereas, for example, "tip of the tongue" is not discreet and not clearly divided: You can't just drop the "of the tongue". You can say "He stuck the tip of his tongue out between his teeth", but not "He stuck the tip out between his teeth". What tip? Tip of an arrow? Tip for a bartender?
Yes, we all know that in a biological sense, detaching the fingers from a hand or a hand from an arm would do rather a lot of harm, dammit. That's NOT the fricking point! We're talking about language here, not about Frankenstein's spare body parts storage!
Eru Almighty.
The preparations for the bloody Museum seminar are killing time like nothing good. Now first we'd meant to meet on Friday, then it was Wednesday, now we can't get to any of the people we'd need, so it may have to be postponed. Quite frankly, I do hope we won't manage to reach any of them before tomorrow evening, so I can just work and be done with, but you never know. Alas.
Well, I'd meant to be good and go to the Prejudices and Clichés lecture this evening, but then
eliathanis and
fuchs mentioned that they were going to go to Bonn for watching Marie Antoinette this night, and what can I say? They're hardly showing the movie here, I want to see it, so - well. I went. And that was good, I think, because it's been ages since I went to the movies and even longer since I went to the movies with some friends, and the film was highly enjoyable and good all in all. Also painful for sadness or plain stupidity in places, but in a good way. And oh, the wonderful costumes!
Historical or other accuracy be damned, I liked it. And Count Fersen is HOT, damnit!