02 ː Iconoclasm, British Columbia, and Costa Rica

Tuesday, August 17, 2021

I caught this whirlwind of a summer by the tail and am just now getting the chance to recuperate and recharge. Even without working this summer, every moment was accounted for, and I'm glad to be able to rest and prepare for the upcoming semester.

Wheaton Interdisciplinary Symposium

A few weeks after returning to the Black Hills in May, I had the privilege of being selected for Wheaton College's Interdisciplinary Symposium, a week-long virtual program of discussion, reading, debate, lectures, and writing prompts hosted by Dr. Jeffry Davis, director of Wheaton's interdisciplinary studies program. I, along with 11 other undergrad students from Christian universities, learned about Christian liberal arts education, the necessity for interdisciplinary outlooks, and how to tackle "wicked problems," those modern, messy questions that evade simple solutions within solely the sciences, the arts, or the humanities.

This week challenged and prodded me in ways I hadn't anticipated. I was pushed to engage in deep, controversial discussion, critically analyze my educational motives, and face some deep-seeded intellectual insecurities of mine. My theme for the week was iconoclasm; with each reading, lecture, and writing prompt, I knew the Holy Spirit was chipping away at my idolatry of perfectionism and letter-based performance, both powerful hindrances in the life of the Christian scholar.

Canada Institute of Linguistics

With just a weekend to rest, I plunged back into more virtual learning. UNW requires that linguistics students take a summer semester through SIL (Summer Institute of Linguistics), a sister organization of Wycliffe Bible Translators, or at CanIL (Canada Institute of Linguistics) SIL's northern cousin, hosted at Trinity Western University in Langley, British Columbia. This summer semester, which I had already delayed a year due to the pandemic, was once again moved online for similar reasons (primarily due to travel restrictions across the border). Despite learning so much, I'm still disappointed and feel as if I missed out on forging relationships with similarly minded and impassioned Christian linguists.

I took three three-credit courses this summer in phonetics, phonology, and morphosyntax. In phonetics, we learned about the components of the vocal apparatus and how different parts of the vocal tract engage to produce language sounds. We learned to produce, recognize, and transcribe the majority of the sounds in all the world's 7,000+ languages using the International Phonetic Alphabet. I enjoyed playing fieldworker and getting to record my friend's dad, a mother-tongue Dutch speaker. I transcribed and mimicked his speech for my term project in this class.

Phonology felt like the most scientific and mathematical of these three courses. We learned how to analyze data of sound systems, identify rules for how sounds were interacting with each other, syllabify data, and determine how a linguist might best develop a spelling system for an under-documented language. Phonology also looks at how mother-tongue speakers understand the sounds in their own language. So, phonology intersects with phonetics, anatomy, psycholinguistics, and sociolinguistics, and makes frequent use of the scientific method for developing and testing hypotheses for rules which describe sound changes.

Phonetics and phonology have physical correlates and generally involve small segments of language, but morphosyntax gets into the nitty-gritty of how languages express meaning and structure their constituents, such as prefixes/suffixes, words, phrases, and clauses. We took a brief survey of morphosyntactic typology, which looks at all the systems and manners of organizing grammatical relations in the worlds languages. Learning about all these systems gives us a glimpse into how human brains categorize and express abstract meaning using (mostly) arbitrary series of sounds. Fascinating! Our term project involved writing a short grammatical description of a "mystery language," of which we were given a four-page set of short phrases and sentences with broad translations.

Summery things

Being in the thick of introductory linguistics studies for nine straight weeks, I was still able to carve out time for summer activities. Coinciding with meditations and readings on the Sabbath, I went camping for six consecutive weekends—mostly in these oh-so-accessible hills, but also once in Minnesota. I did a good bit of hiking, kayaking, tennis, and swimming as well. During the week, I had rehearsed and performed (including a featured solo!) with the Rapid City Municipal Band for nine concerts. It was great getting to play beside my former bassoon teacher, herself playing oboe, and keeping up the band's tradition of our concerts in the park. I had a quick, week-long excursion out to the Twin Cities to catch up with cousins and school friends before leaving for my semester abroad. I joined my family to watch my brother-in-law's weekly softball games and (most importantly) spent lots of snuggle time with my two nieces (Allie, almost three years; Charlie, ten months).

Costa Rica

¡Solo hay dos semanas antes de irme! Preparations are in full swing: Covid tests, airline tickets, packing lists, insurance forms, and more. I recently learned some more details about my trip. My host family will consist of two parents (Abraham & Ruth), and two adult children (Desiree & Lorenzo, who is my age). I've been assigned along with one of my classmates to the Creative Arts Program mission site. Exactly what that entails, I'm not sure, but I've been told it will involve a bit of painting and woodwork. I also learned that our group will be taking a week-long bus trip to Nicaragua in late September to renew our 90-day visas.

Prayer request: The reality of this trip is starting to settle in, and so is a good deal of anxiety. Pray that I will make time for meditation and prayer, and that God's peace and confidence with go before me.

Features of the Fortnight

Books

• Of Mice and Men (John Steinbeck)

• The Rest of God: Restoring Your Soul by Restoring the Sabbath (Mark Buchanan)

Movie

• East of Eden (1995, Elia Kazan)

Podcasts

• The Holy Post (Phil Vischer & Skye Jethani)

• Quick to Listen (Christianity Today)

• Truce – The History of the Christian Church (Chris Staron)

• The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill (Christianity Today)

• Your Other Brothers Podcast

Be well,

jcb