Norwescon 33 Links

John Lawler

1. Who I am.
   I am a recently retired linguistics professor from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, with a lifelong interest in F/SF.
   I live now in Bellingham, WA. My regular Web site is linked to my name above, and I'm on Facebook, too, ideally as "John Lawler ... Michigan", but possibly as "Sean Lawler ... Michigan", depending on how soon fb will let me change my first name back (they say they look at every change but they never do anything, so I doubt it).
   Here's some credentials:
   • My business card
   • My Short Bio and Resumé
   • The Chomskybot
     (for my role in creating which, according to my Wikipedia listing,
     I am "perhaps best known to the wider public")

     A list of things I said in a Semantics class one term, posted by a student

     The paper this was part of, on codeswitching and context.

     My Publications, on various topics (all available online)

     U of Michigan Linguistics Department Gone to Join the Emeritooni Page

     Dept Blog depicting an Edible Proof Of Retirement Certificate

     An article from my grammar column for a newsletter for professional editors, about "Singular they".

     My Grammar pages, postings about English Grammar, etc.

     A 15-page list from Haj Ross of The Rules of English Syntax.

     The decoding algorithm should be obvious.

     Two Introductions for college grammar classes.

     1. A 15-page list of what everybody needs to know about logic and why
        (remedial pre-grammar, to be followed by)

        A 15-page introduction to the English Verb Phrase.

2. What I'm doing at the con.
   Now that I'm retired, I'm trying to pick up my fanac where I originally left it at Torcon II in 1973.
   I did a panel on linguistics (as I like to say, the best-kept secret in America) at ValhallaCon last fall
   and now have been asked to be on 4 panels at Norwescon 33.

   Two of the panels I'm on (the ones on Fri 4/2) were in my specialty, and two of them weren't.

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   And, now that the con is over, I can say that both panels on language
       (the ones I did handouts for) were very successful, which to me means:

   • They were well-attended.
     The 9am one, which I'd expected to be sparsely attended, was SRO, with people in the hall outside.
     In fact, the con committee want me to do it again next year in a bigger room.

     There were lots of good questions.

     So people were interested. (see above)

     It was fun.

     Both for me and -- to judge by the compliments -- for the other people too.

   Some other links that may be of interest:
   

   • The handout from my panel at Valhallacon 2009 (linguists give handouts.)
   • Final version (DOC file) of the Handout for Fri 9 am panel Fictional Linguistics.
   • Final version (DOC file) of the Handout for Fri 5 pm panel Language Fossils.
   • A modest proposal on learning phonetic symbols
   • Course Packs (Around 100 pp each, almost all homework problems, which are like semantic sudoku and a lot of fun to solve)
     for my Linguistics 210 class Introduction to Linguistic Analysis, which the kids called "Orgo for Language".
     1. Part 1 pdf --- Morphology, Phonetics and Phonology problems, including Lushootseed (Skagit, with notes)
     2. Part 2 pdf --- Syntax, Semantics, Pragmatics, Etc.
   
   
3. And one final announcement:
   The Language Construction Kit, a much expanded book version
   [Truth in Advertising: Blurbed by me on the cover], by Mark Rosenfelder,
   the author of the popular and eponymous conlang web site,
   is now on sale at Amazon for under $15.

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   Last change 10/10/10.