Word: personal
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...says. "But we know what the rules of gravity are very well. It's very easy to calculate... the tidal effect of the obstetrician on a newborn baby is larger--because it's proportional to the cube of the distance and twice the mass--and nobody asks where that person was standing at the time of their birth...
...Knocking only seven down, he jokes self-deprecatingly: "What you see up there right now as awkwardness, is actually just an unbelievably skilled and agile person just trying to be awkward...
ASSOCIATE Professor Bert Vaux, best known on campus as professor of Linguistics 80, "Dialects of English," teaches teaches phonology and field methods. But his real interest, he says, is endangered languages, such as Abxaz, Tigrinya, and Homshetsma, some of which are spoken by only one tribe or even one person and are in danger of dying out. But even with all of the classes he teaches, he says his work with endangered languages has to be done on the side, cautioning, "Once you choose a profession, you'll probably have to confine what you enjoy to the weekends...
...Bostonian might not say "cah" any more - for car - but they will say potato puff for tater tot. Sprinkles will be jimmies. And they'll use terms like "triple-decker" and "grinder," which don't really appear outside of the region. Vaux says he could probably identify where a person is from, by asking under ten questions regarding such idiosyncracies in language. He explains that one of the main reasons the world's languages vary so widely involves the way in which children learn language. "They construct their language based on what they hear from...
...legislate the way people use language," he says. "Yes it's true that many languages are disappearing, but it will never happen that every person will speak exactly the same way. It's impossible. We may all speak English, but there will be an incredible variety...