Repetita iuvant - Academic Writing Skills

One of the problems we have since the late 20th century is that everything has been said, just not by everyone. That is, gaining new insights is getting harder and harder - too hard for people with an average IQ. So how do we deal with this?
Option A would be to realise we have nothing to add to the already existing information and, as a consequence, to shut up. But this is something we don't want, as we like talking, right?  (Besides we'd have to admit we have but an average IQ, which we don't want either).
Option B - just repeating already existing information - is more convenient, and that's why we constantly do it (for instance, consider this text). But as we repeat existing information, we realise we have nothing to add and maybe should have chosen option A. And for the reason(s) stated above, we don't even want to think of option A. 
Option C - repeating already existing information and selling it as something new - is therefore even more convenient than option B. And how do we sell the information we repeat as something new?
1) We could just choose a different mode of presentation and adapt the information to that mode by either complicating or simplifying it. What has first been published as an article can be republished as a book, written in a more wordy manner, or as a - more concise - poster. And why not make it into a film, or translate it into another language (including statement logic, predicate logic, lambda calculus, or Haskell?)
2) We could also go on the meta level. This is something the Humanities departments at universities like to do.
Catalan writers like the meta level pretty much as well, consider L'Aniversari by Imma Monsó, or Quim Monzó's famous discurs-conte at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2007. Also, note how similar both writers' last names are 😀 By the way, if you don't know anything about Catalan literature and are slightly confused  now because I'm throwing names at you that you haven't heard of and are not sure whether you should have heard of them or not - name-dropping is a bluffing technique widely accepted in Humanities, especially literature studies. Last year in my Catalan literature class I handed in a paper that had nearly nothing but names and common places in it, and they gave me 99/100 points for it. - Oh, and did you notice this text obeys the Iconicity Principle (Wiese 1996, 1999)?* What, you don't know what the Iconicity Principle is? Well, I do.  Shame on you, good on me!
a) First someone writes a book about, let's say, Nietzsche. Then someone else writes another book about him. And then comes someone who have nothing to say about Nietzsche himself, and writes a book about these two books about Nietzsche instead, which is what people call reception history, or Rezeptionsgeschichte. Oh, and as in *almost* all natural languages (looking at you, Pirahã), recursion may be applied, e.g. someone might write a reception history of the reception history of Nietzsche's works, or a reception history of the reception history of the reception history of Nietzsche's works, and so on.
b) Another meta-level thing is fighting about terminology, i.e. redefining terms and declaring any use that deviate from the redefined use as offensive. Now we have a tool for analysing the offensiveness of any text.
3) Yet another way of presenting information differently is "reorganising" the pieces of information. There is so much information available for any topic that we cannot include all pieces of information in one text (be it a street sign, a poster, a power-point or LaTeX presentation, an article or a 100-page book). But as we have many pieces of information, there are even more ways of combining them, so why not choose a combination that has not been chosen before (which is not  half as difficult as gaining new information)? Then you can say "Yes, I'm repeating already existing information, but I'm presenting it from a different point of view" (note that you're being really honest with yourself, admitting you are repeating stuff. Good on you!). And if all possible combinations have already been chosen, you can still pick a combination and change the order in which the pieces are combined. 
Fun fact: reorganising information is a performance officially taught and expected in exams at German Gymnasien (secondary schools). Also, in  functionalist translatology  any text is an 'information offer' (Informationsangebot) and translators can freely pick information from the source text and leave other information out according to the wishes of the client.
4) Point 3 might have been summarised under point 1 and point 4 might have been summarised under point 1 as well, but I added them as separate points to complicate the information. 

*Iconicity Principle (Summary): Identity of form implies identity of function; morphological and/or syntactic elements look like what they mean / what their semantic function is. 

Sprachperformanz unter C-Kommando

Heute Morgen habe ich versucht, Baskisch zu reden und versehentlich anstelle eines baskischen Wortes ein russisches Wort gesagt. "Oh", habe ich mir gedacht, "Russisch interveniert". Der Ausdruck "intervenieren" hat mich dann auf die Syntax gebracht und ich habe den Gedanken weitergesponnen:
Wenn Russisch interveniert, dann C-kommandiert mich Baskisch nicht mehr.

C-Kommando
Ein Knoten α c-kommandiert einen  Knoten β gdw [genau dann, wenn] (a) oder (b) gilt:
a. β ist die Schwester von α
b. β wird von der Schwester von α dominiert.

Also C-kommandiert mich Baskisch sehr wohl:

Valuierung von Merkmalen (z.B. Tempus von T auf klein v) erfolgt unter C-Kommando:

Abgleich (Agree)
In einer Konfiguration X[F:val]...Y[uF:[]], bei der "..." für C-Kommando steht, überprüft und valuiert [F:val] [uF:[]]. Dies resultiert in X[F:val]...Y[uF:val].

Allerdings gibt es eine Lokalitätsbeschränkung  für Agree, die besagt, dass ein Kopf seine Merkmale nur auf dem Kopf seiner Schwester valuieren darf.

Jetzt brauche ich nur noch anzunehmen, dass ich ein Merkmal [ulanguage:[]] trage und der Baskisch-Kopf sein Merkmal [language:Basque] auf mir valuieren möchte, das aber nicht ganz hinbekommt, weil ich nicht der Kopf der Schwester von Baskisch bin, sondern der Kopf der Schwester des Russisch-Kopfes, der das Merkmal [ulanguage:Russian] auf mir valuiert.

Basque Intensive Course

Finally I managed to do the Basque Intensive Course offered by the Institute of Applied Linguistics and Translatology (IALT) at the University of Leipzig. The course is intensive, you need to work hard, but in return you get lots and loads of fun. Here are a few impressions:


Step 1 (2019/03/04)

Get a Basque Identity.

Ba...nire euskal izena Alaia Etxeberria da eta ni Eltziegokoa naiz. Eltziego Araban dago.

Nire erdal izena Felicity da eta ni Hintersteinaukoa naiz. Hintersteinau Hessenen dago.  Connewitzen bizi naiz eta orain Neues Augusteumen nago. Connewitz eta Neues Augusteum Leipzigen daude.

Erdal, known in Germany as a brand for stuff you clean shoes with, is Basque for foreign or in a foreign language. It comes from erdi, which translates into middle but also half.  The idea behind this is that any foreign language, i.e. any language other than Basque,  is not a 'full' language in its own right but a 'half-language', erdara.

Usually the names a language L has for a nation or a people derive from the tribes within that nation that the speakers of language L had to do with. In Spanish, for example, my native land  is named after the Alemannic tribe (Alemania), while the Finnish name, Saksa, obviously derives from the Saxons.

The Basques, however, name  nations and people after their languages. Let's see an example. The Basque name for Basque language is euskara or euskera, and the corresponding adjective is euskal (see above: nire euskal izena - 'my Basque name'). Now the Basque word for 'Basque person' is euskaldun. You get this by taking the adjective euskal and adding the suffix -dun, which translates into 'bearer of something' or 'someone who has something'. Bizar, for instance, means beard, and a  bizardun is someone who has a beard. Following this pattern, an euskaldun is someone who has Basque, i.e. a Basque speaker.

Now with erdara meaning 'foreign language' and erdal being the corresponding adjective, guess what the Basque for 'foreigner' is...



Step 2 (2019/03/05)

Learn the difference between Emakumeak ez dira Adela eta Rebeka and Adela eta Rebeka ez dira emakumeak.


Step 3 (2019/03/07)

Think about a way of analysing luzea eta garbia in Hondartza luzea eta garbia da as attributive and luze eta garbia in [Hondartza luze eta garbia] ederra da as predicative adjectives. Might take you years. I haven't got a clue myself. Yet.

Unai - the lecturer - wrote these two phrases on the blackboard (the poor glossing attempt is mine): 

(1) Zarautz-ko hondartza luze-a eta garbi-a da

     Zarautz -GEN beach long-AGR and clean-AGR is

    'The beach of Zarautz is long and clean'.

(2) [Zarautz-ko hondartza luze eta garbi-a] eder-r-a da.

     [Zarautz-GEN beach long and clean-AGR] beautiful-AGR is

     'The long and clean beach of Zarautz is beautiful'.

He also said that "luzea eta garbia" in (1) and "ederra" in (2) were attributive (!) adjectives. When I asked him what "luze eta garbia" in (2) would be, he said two things:

- ' "Zarautzko hondartza" and "luze eta garbia" belong together' (from which I infer they form a constituent excluding "ederra da", that's why I put that part in brackets).

- ' "Luze eta garbia", that's the predicate, no, wait, that's also an attribute, no, I don't remember it correctly, but "ederra" is attributive'.

Now  in (1) both 'luze' and 'garbi' bear the affix -a which has the same form as the determiner clitic.

So what if we assume the -a attached to 'luze' and 'garbi' is not some agreement suffix that is accideeentally homophonic to the determiner clitic but the determiner clitic itself, as shown in (1') and (2') ?

(1') Zarautz-ko hondartza luze-a eta garbi-a da

     Zarautz -GEN beach long-DET and clean-DET is

    'The beach of Zarautz is long and clean'.

(2') [Zarautz-ko hondartza luze eta garbi-a] eder-r-a da.

     [Zarautz-GEN beach long and clean-DET] beautiful-DET is

Then an analysis of "luzea eta garbia" in (1') and "ederra" in (2') as attributive adjectives could make sense, with a structure as  in (3a-b), i.e. with "luze eta garbia da" still being a nominal predicate but the adjectives themselves being attributive: 

(3)

a. "The beach of Zarautz is the long one and the clean one"

b. "The long and clean beach of Zarautz is the beautiful one"

 But what do we do with "luze eta garbia" in (2')?

Step 4 (2019/03/07-11)

Learn your declensions.

Ablative: -tik (-etik after consonants, -dik after nasals and laterals)
Allative: -ra (-era after consonants)

Don't Ero and Carbona sound like names of places in Spain?

Step 5 (2019/03/14) - Oral Exam

Have a basic conversation with another student in front of the examinators using the grammatical structures and vocabulary learnt in class:

Egun on, zer moduz zaude? Zu oso ederra zara, niri oso gustatzen zatzaizkit. Ni hiri zentroan bakarrik bizi naiz. Nik putetxe bat eta asko kokain dauzkat. Begira, gizona hau alarguna dago, bere emaztea hil duelako!

Also, find out Italian Google Translate renders putetxe as pentola ('pot'). Is pentola a slang expression for brothel or is Google Translate just doing localization for the Catholic target text addressees?

 Step 6 (2019/03/15) - Written Exam

Write a post card using the grammar structures and vocabulary learnt in class:

Kaixo, nire lagunak!

Zer moduz zaudete?

Gaur oso nekatuta nago. Oso lodia nago, herenegun eta atzo oso asko jan dudalako. Alkohol asko edan dut ere. Eguraldi oso gaizki da. Orain unibertsitatean nago, eta unibertsitatea ez daukat itsasorik, baina komun asko badaukat eta komunak garbiak dira. Hemen dituzue argazki bat. Argazkian liburutegian ikusi dudan mutil dago. Mutil hori lo egiten ari da ala hilda dago? Ez dakit eta ez interesatzen zait: Mutila ez da oso ederra. Nire eskerrean zuzenbideko liburuak daude. Oso handiak dira, baina ez dira interesgarriak. Liburu hauek ez irakurriko dut. Ez naiz inozoa.

Besarkada bat,

Felicity

Mila esker to Unai Lauzirika Amias and Iratxe Burgos Sánchez!