I remember when I first took a course in linguistics, everyone assumed that I’d be getting involved in the computational side, or at least the sophisticated formal details of syntactic theories. I had to explain that I was trying to get away from all that. Not the whole truth, but they wouldn’t have appreciated hearing that ‘set theory for simpletons’ wasn’t the chief goal of my research interests.
Anyway, now that aspect of my past has found me out, and they’ve gotten me involved in some kind of linguistically-oriented project. Bit of a surprise – I assumed all their work here was high-level cognition stuff. It’s a fascinating project at first sight, though I can’t readily imagine any practical application. Quite reassuring in a way to know that venture capital funding is available to just the same bizarre leftfield projects that attract such a striking proportion of research council grant money…
thewhalebytes 