Dr. G. Devi

English 405

Report on Koko: A Talking Gorilla (Dir. Barbet Schroeder, 1978)

I hope you found Schroeder’s Koko: A Talking Gorilla thoughtful, informative and enjoyable. Here is your report prompt: please respond to this prompt in your own words in no less than a page. Handwritten is fine.  There are no wrong answers.

Prompt

Dr. Patterson’s work with the gorilla Koko–teaching Koko American Sign Language so that now Koko can sign 1000 unique ASL symbols as well as respond to 2000 English words–is perhaps the most celebrated experiment in inter-species communication. Schroeder’s empathetic and more or less uneditorialized documentary raises important questions about what makes human beings uniquely human. Is it language? If so, does Koko deserve membership in the human species? What aspects of Koko’s behaviors strike you as human? You might have noticed that Koko generates and responds to language several times in the documentary without the operant conditioning of a reward. Does this constitute consciousness?   Does it constitute a sense of self, of thought, of behavior beyond instincts?  Think back on the extraordinary scenes with Koko seeing herself in the mirror. Do animals ”see” themselves in mirrors? Do they say, hey it is me? Or think about Dr. Patterson’s comments about “compound signs” that Koko made–putting two signs together to signify a totally new entity.

Think on these things. What makes us human? Is it language? What does Koko’s ability to communicate with us in our language tell us about us, about nature, about language? Are we animals? Is Koko human?

Here is the Nature website on Koko. You might know that Koko even had an America Online chat a few years ago in ASL. Must be available somewhere online; I haven’t searched for it. Also some of the primate handlers who work with Koko at the Gorilla foundation filed a sexual harassment suit against Koko a few years ago; apparently Koko liked women’s breasts and would often ask the handlers to show her their breasts, particularly their nipples. Koko was not interested in any other body parts nor was she interested in male workers. Only female handlers and their breasts. Dr. Patterson didn’t intervene because she wanted to understand what Koko was thinking and doing.  Only in America would a gorilla be sued for sexual harassment.  Think of every dog that tried to rub against your leg!  Easy way to make a quick buck!

Dr. G. Devi
Sample Unit Test-Syntax and Semantics
Available points: 40 points
Available time: 50 minutes

Please bring one blue book for your answers.

Here is a sample test. Please review all slides and class notes and ask me if you have any questions.

1.    Identify the syntactic category of each word in the following sentences. Choose from N, V, A, Adv, P, S, C, Det, Prn (pronoun—relative and interrogative).(5 sentences – 10 points)

Down fills the best duvets.
The framers of the Constitution met in Philadelphia.
On Thursday night you will find him where you want him; far from the crowds in the Garden of Gethsemane.

2.    Identify the following phrases by their type and build phrase tree diagrams showing the XP and X’ levels. Label specifiers, modifiers and complements.  (5 phrases 10 points)

Walk across my swimming pool
Undeniably manic
The man in the high tower
Your straw hat

3.    Here is a list of words. Put them in the right syntactic order to create a grammatically correct sentence in English. Explain (to the best of your ability) the syntactic rules you followed to create your structure. In other words, what is the syntactic reason for arranging the words the way you did? Can they be arranged in a different way and still be grammatical? Explain your answer in no less than 4-5 fully formed sentences. [Please remember that I am not asking you about meaning; meaning does not dictate the structure. The structure manifests the meaning.  It is possible to be grammatically correct and meaningless. But the converse is not true: it is not possible to be meaningful and be grammatically incorrect.] Tell me the structural reason why you arranged the words the way you did. (5 points)

class, continually, that, in, student, sleeps

4.    Build the trees for the following sentences showing the S, XP and X’ levels. Proper names are single NPs. (2 sentences, 5 points)

Nancy Reagan observed the recession by redecorating the White House.

I love Scrabble.

5. Here is a slip of the tongue with actual and intended utterances. Using the theory of semantic properties briefly explain why the slip was made the way it was made (3 points):

Joe, did you remember to put the milk back in the oven? (Actual utterance)
Joe, did you remember to put the milk back in the refrigerator? (Intended utterance)

6. Study the following list of words and identify the meaning relation they share. Choose from polysemy, homonymy, homophony, synonymy, antonymy. (5 points)

pedigree-lineage
to-two-too
decent-indecent
ground-1. Surface of the earth 2. To pound into a fine powder
euphoric-despondent

7. For each group of words given below state (1) what the A and B words have in common with each other and ( 2) what semantic property is unique to A and what is unique to B. (2 points)

A: book, road, tractor, temple, mountain
B. idea, charity, sincerity, bravery, fear

A. walk, skip, run, jump, hop, swim
B: fly, ski, cycle, canoe, ride, hang-glide

All classes more or less empty today–second day of hunting. Boys and girls gone with grandpas and dads and uncles hunting, or huntin’ as they say in central Pennsylvania. It is startling–even when you drive along the river you hear the muffled shots away in the woods at a distance. Every semester I get at least three four essays about deer hunting. My favorite one was a spiny essay by a serious deer hunter who wrote about breaking up with his girlfriend who insisted on going deer hunting with him. The girlfriend wanted to have sex with him in the woods. It was sacrilegious to him–you don’t have sex in the woods and go out and shoot a deer. He was so annoyed with the girlfriend, it was like an anthropology lesson to me. If I remember correctly, there were all these things that he wrote about very beautifully–all these ritualistic relations deer hunters have with the deer that they hunt and kill; how clean and pure in mind and body they should be when they hunt and apparently this girlfriend just wasn’t getting it. It was very interesting. Everyday you learn something.

To me, the definitive poem for the season is Pennsylvania’s own Harry Humes and this poem “Deer.” Very very beautiful. I have seen these thirteen deer.

Deer

For nearly an hour in the early April dusk

I watched thirteen deer slowly feed

across winter wheat. You’d  have thought

them part of the sky, so buoyant

they seemed, so delicately attached to earth,

black hooves hardly bending the wheat.

Every once in a while one would look

to where I knelt in a corner

of the L-shaped field, and stamp its foot,

ears nervous over the dark eyes

and the delicate lines of nose and neck,

or twitch its brilliant white tail.

Though I’d neither moved nor coughed

something had drifted across the evening,

that took them, unhurried, toward the field’s edge

and over its border of dry pennyroyal

and briars, and into the woods, where one by one,

in that place, their shyness vanished

into the shyness among the trees.

Our oldest friends in Dallas visited us for Thanksgiving and went back yesterday and so today is a sad day for Dayani. S and K have a five year old daughter who just adores Dayani and followed her around for a whole week. Normally since Dayani is an only child she doesn’t get to boss around anyone and this sudden appearance of an adoring five year old is a windfall. The other child, also a D., did everything Dayani did–run maniacally through the corridor and slam into couches, slam into the bed with a warcry–S’s bloodpressure and my blood pressure were going through the roof. At night they were so sleepy but they were propping their eyes open with a compass it seemed and walking around like zombies. Please go to bed, you are not missing anything, go to bed, kids. I am so glad I am an adult. It was so sweet to see S and K–in 2004 we had gone to San Antonio to my brother’s house for Thanksgiving–Appu was working for Sony Semiconductors then–when K called us and told us that S was in the hospital and ready to give birth. So thanksgiving day we all drove back to Dallas with the whole Thanksgiving dinner packed up. We reached Dallas just as S gave birth to D and we dropped off the food at my house and went straight to Baylor to see the new baby. Thanksgiving baby. We took the thanksgiving dinner to Baylor in small containers and ate there with S and K who were exhausted. Very sweet and smart child. Very playful too. It was so wonderful to see them all again. We left Dallas for PA when D was less than a year old. Now she has grown so much and at five even wears glasses! We celebrated her birthday here this time along with Thanksgiving. Krish, K, Dayani and D ate Cornish Hen. S and I are both vegetarians–she more so than I am–and we made a wonderful white potato stew to eat with chapathi, stuffing, broccoli and tofu and for birthday cake we got a beautiful and delicious fruit tart.  Blueberries, strawberries, raspberries, pineapple, kiwi, grapes on a delicious custard on top of a soft tart pastry. Those were the best times in Dallas–they have a nice pool in their house and we all used to go there and swim for hours, slip inside go get snacks come out and swim again. But the news from Dallas is kind of disturbing. Three of our other friends–both husbands and wives are telecom engineers in all three cases–got laid off. Right before Thanksgiving and right before Christmas. How cruel is that? And they are all senior scientific staff and systems engineers and it is hard for systems engineers to find something at their rank. Why would you want to hire a senior systems engineer when you can hire a junior programmer and pay him or her a miniscule of what you would need to pay a senior enginner? And all telecom corporations are cutting R & D anyway. How do these CEOs sleep at night, I wonder? Anyway, a good visit. We took them to Hyner view–2000 ft above sea level and on friday we took them to see Clyde Peeling’s Reptile Land. The two girls loved it. A good thanksgiving. Thanks S and K and D for visiting us!

Dayani follows me around the house and narrates all these stories to me–things she sees on television, the movies she likes to watch etc. Most of the time they make absolutely no sense to me–the species all get crossed, most statements are non-sequitors but I don’t want to break the thread of her story so I listen without interruption. This morning I was making breakfast for her and she told me a story — it is the story of some monster-alien thing. Very interesting story. This is what Dayani told me–I am writing it down exactly as she told me–it is a bizarre story but I didn’t stop to clarify anything–it overdetermines itself in a very interesting way:

“So Susan is getting married to Derrick and a meteor hits her with a quantonium in it and she also becomes a giant and in the jail she meets a scientist called cockroach and a 2020 year old fisher-MAN called the Missing Link and a blob named BOB. It is in capital letters. BOB is a blob because he started out as a tomato and scientist injected ranch dressing in it and he turned into BOB. BOB has no brain and he said I guess I’ll be a giant lady and the cockroach said that’ll be Susan BOB so BOB said so I guess I’ll go live in Modesto with Derrick and the cockroach said that’ll be Susan and BOB shouted don’t I deserve a chance with Derrick?”

Dayani is in spasms of laughter by now. I look appropriately appreciative of the humor of it all though I am not getting it at all. But one thing is clear–even among monsters and aliens BOBs and Derricks have no future together, even in Modesto. Only Susans and Derricks get to make it in Modesto.

 

Dr. G. Devi

Unit Test 3 Practice Test

Here is your practice test. Study topics: subordinate clauses, main clauses, finite clauses, non-finite clauses, subjectless clauses, partial clauses, catenative chains–simple and complex, get passives.

I have tried to honor the season and make sentences with the dear old turkey as the subject. Personally, the only Turkey that interests me would be the country Turkey which I hope to visit some day before we decimate the Middle East. (Krish and Dayani will be eating Cornish hen this thanksgiving.) That lovely little bird turkey came to Europe through Turkey–Turkey being at the cusp of Europe and Asia–the Bosphorus Straits. Study well for the test. And Happy Thanksgiving.

Classify the following underlined clauses as finite (F) or non-finite (NF). For non-finite clauses, identify the type. [10 points]

 Eg. Gossiping about freed turkeys is her favorite past time. NF-gerund participle.

1.  He says that you like your turkeys alive.
2. She had often asked him the same question.
3. I heard that you were leaving the turkeys alone.
4. It is easy for me to free syntactic turkeys.
5. I am relieved the turkeys ran away from the grocery store.
6. Freeing turkeys is easy if you are vegetarian.
7. She could not think of the turkeys losing a single feather, or suffering a single cut to their necks.
8. I heard that she found her turkey hiding under the kitchen sink.
9. The aim of this course is to understand some of the complexities of English grammar, to identify and use syntactic structures effectively, and to learn grammatical rules from an usage perspective.
10. Discussing the lifestyle of freed turkeys and applying grammatical concepts at the same time is a special skill of our class.

Classify the following catenative constructions as simple [S] or complex [C] [5 points]

1. I don’t know turkeys to give up a fight so easily.
2. I encourage liberating the old turkeys first to save time.
3. She helped to free that turkey last week.
4. They expected the turkey to dance, but he did not.
5. He appeared to want to start kickboxing in front of all of us.

Study the use of the verb “get” in the following sentences and say whether the verb is used as a “get-passive” [P] or as a lexical verb [V].    (5 points)

1. The problem got resolved by his lawyers.
2. Steve got a letter from his uncle.
3. I got you, babe.
4. They got admitted for free. 
5. Harry got freed by the Army at last.

Identify the non-finite clauses in the following sentences. Briefly explain why the sentence is ungrammatical, repair the error and write down the grammatically correct version.  [10 points]

1. Lying in a heap on the floor, she found the clothes.
2. Although spoken in Shakespeare’s First Folio, we do not speak that way today.
3. Reading your essays last night, there were many good examples of dangling modifiers.
4. Referring to your letter of 5 September, you do not state that you were allowed to make that transaction.
5. Having eaten dinner, the turkey carcass was stored in the refrigerator for next year’s soup.

Construct grammatically correct sentences with the following features. Underline finite clause and mark [F], nonfinite clause [NF]: [10 points]

1. A sentence with three clauses, one finite and two non-finite clauses.
2. A sentence with a finite main clause and a non-finite subordinate clause.
3. A sentence with a non-finite main clause and an open interrogative subordinate clause.
4. A sentence with one main clause and one closed interrogative subordinate clause.
5. A sentence with one finite main clause one declarative subordinate clause.

All sentences are built of constituents called phrases. Phrases have a nucleus, specifiers, modifiers and complements. Nucleus determines what type of phrase it is: noun phrase (NP), verb phrases (VP), adjectival phrases (AP), prepositional phrases (PP)–we are looking at how these four phrases are formed for now. Specifiers mark the boundary of the phrase. Modifiers supply additional information about the nucleus or head word of the phrase. Complements are obligatory or optional binds to the nucleus. Grammatically correct sentences in any language conform to the phrase structure rules of its grammar. There are only a finite set of rules with which we can create infinite number of sentences never spoken or written before. Isn’t that wonderful? See how economical grammar is? One of the most beautiful things in life is language–what makes us uniquely human. Use it wisely, correctly, and carefully.

Build trees for the following phrases that comply with the X’ theory. Write down the PS rule for each tree. If you have trouble with any of these, please ask me. These are just for practice; not grades. Please pay attention to how you merge the words to create the phrases; always identify the head word or the nucleus first, then identify the specifiers, modifiers and complements.

1. a day in the life  2.  a child of nature  3. carry that weight 4. fixing a hole 5. glass onion 6. golden slumbers 7. Lucy in the sky 8. sea of monsters 9. the sheik of araby 10. carefully assembled

Unbelievable interview with Sarah Palin. Palin’s greatest influences in life are Ronald Reagan and God. What a combination. Palin would like to thank Reagan, Todd and God. In her television interviews, Palin ends every sentence with “and God.” Reminded me of that old joke in grad school where you try and end every sentence with “in bed.” Remember? Works well with the fortune cookies in Chinese restaurants. Example: “There is true friendship between you and your friends (in bed).” ” You appreciate art and music (in bed).” “Your greatest fortune is the number of friends you have (in bed).” “Your heart is pure, your mind clear and your soul devout (in bed).”  “Good things are being said about you (in bed).” “You will inherit a windfall this weekend (in bed).” “You will be invited to an exciting event (in bed).” You get the idea — we used to have endless hours of cacophony over this when we were in grad school! But it was totally weird to hear Sarah Palin end sentences using “and God” along the same lines. “I want to thank my father, Ronald Reagan and God.” “I want to thank the people of Wasila and God.” “I want to thank my husband Todd and God.” “I want to thank the people of America and God for giving me this opportunity to serve them.” “I want to thank you (Oprah Winfrey) and God for letting me tell my story.” How can anyone utter Ronald Reagan and God in the same breath?

Dayani and Krish both like mutton in any form. Mutton is the meat of goat and is a popular meat in India. In fact, it is more popular than beef. Beef is considered a cheap meat in India. Chicken is expensive since they are still free-ranging for the most part in India. Hindus and Muslims do not eat pork; Muslims never, and Hindus rarely.  Mutton is a good, middle of the road meat for meat-eaters in the Indian cuisine.  Apparently pound for pound it has the best protein even though it is a red meat. When we lived in Dallas, there were wonderful halal butchers in town because of the large Indian and Pakistani immigrant population in the city. You could go to these butcher shops–mostly run by Pakistani butchers–and they would give you the best cut of mutton while you waited. We don’t get mutton in Lock Haven. But we do get very good New Zealand lamb in the local grocery store. So we have been using lamb in dishes we would traditionally make with mutton. I  don’t eat meat at all but I like cooking it for Dayani and Krish. And the doglings like the bones too. And Dayani is my taster!

Here is a recipe for a lamb sauce that you can eat with any kind of small pasta–like rotini or farfaelle. Dayani and Krish like it. Dayani wants me to talk about her tooth as well here–okay, honey, your tooth is hurting. We’ll go see a dentist, okay? Now go brush your teeth! Scram!

1/2 pound of lamb cut in small pieces

4-6 cloves garlic, minced

2 red onions, minced

2 bay leaves

1/4 cup capers, drained

2 carrots, diced

1 stick of celery, diced

4-5 green beans, diced into 1′ pieces

1/4 cup sun-dried tomato

1/4 cup olive oil

1/2 cup red cooking wine

rosemary, oregano, sage, parsley — all chopped–about a cup altogether

salt to taste

pepper to taste

paprika or some kind of chili pepper to taste

Method: Pour the olive oil in a deep, heavy sauce pan and on medium heat brown the lamb pieces. You should lightly rub salt and pepper on the lamb pieces before you brown them. When both sides have been browned, add the minced garlic to the lamb and stir. Do everything on low heat. Add minced onions to the mix and stir well. Add salt, pepper, chili powder, and the capers,  chopped oregano, sage, parsley and rosemary to the mixture. Stir everything well and fry for 2-3 minutes on low heat taking care not  to burn anything. Add the diced carrots and celery to the mixture and stir. Add the sun-dried tomatoes. Add the red wine to the mixture and if you can find some kind of organic broth–vegetable or meat–add a full up of that as well.  Alternately you can add just enough hot water to submerge everything. The wine-liquid mixture will cook the meat and vegetables. Cover the pan tightly and cook on low heat for about an hour–lamb takes time to cook. So you should start ahead of time.

Boil about 4-5 quarts of water, add salt and cook the pasta according to directions till al dente. Drain the pasta and immediately mix the lamb sauce over the pasta and mix well.

It is official. We are definitely not in the sixties. Our young men and women absolutely love the Patriot Act.  They would love for the government to completely monitor our internet use, telephone calls, everything. We were reading an essay about cyberspace issues as it pertains to the young generation; with the exception of two students, every single student believed that a government agency monitoring internet use is a good thing for our security. It was amazing how thoroughly the Bush-Cheney rhetoric of fear has fossilized itself in the minds of our younger generation. I asked them if particular communities could come together to govern themselves–like the concept of commons– create their own code of conduct  instead of an overarching monitoring agency. Too risky; better let the police do the work, they said. Amazing.  What do I think, they asked. I think we should be able to govern ourselves, I suggested. People will not freak out if nobody watches over them. People will govern themselves. A critical mass will come together always and set things right. They thought I was a dinosaur of some sort; first of all they couldn’t believe that I don’t have a cellphone. No, I don’t like talking on phones unless there is some real need, I said. How about if your car breaks down, they asked in horror. Krish asks me the same thing.  I don’t know, I said. I hope the car does not break down. Good German engineering. Volkswagen. Always buy cars from the Axis powers. What did people do when cars broke down before they invented cellphones? I tried carrying a cellphone once and it annoyed me so much that I had to cancel it immediately. I use a calling card when I travel to call home and it works just fine. (It was one of those days and they were quizzing me.) I am not a luddite–I said–I like technology as much as you do– but I just don’t want anything connected to me all the time.  I like to write and read and I use the internet only for that. I feel so absolutely frustrated when I get these facebook things that says that somebody has “friended” me. (When did “friend” become a verb?”) My students thought my ideas were hopelessly antiquated. So I told them this little thing I have noticed about their cellphone use. Whenever I walk back to my third floor office in Raub I have students in front of me and behind me and all around me and this is no exaggeration–as soon as they get out of class, they are either texting or talking on the phone. And this is how the conversation goes: (I modeled this for them; they thought it was a hoot! And they all agreed that is indeed how they talk. So there.):

Haiii . . .

(pause)

Nothing . . .

(pause)

Yeah . . .

(pause)

Nothing . . .

(pause)

Yeah. . .

Okay . . .

(pause)

Nothing . . .

(pause)

Okay . . .

Bye.

What kind of conversation is this? I don’t get it. I say this to Krish and he has a totally different take on it. Since he actually worked on these wireless switches for Nortel, each instance of a wireless call thrills him! It is one more call on that switching tower! It is engineering! I don’t get it. Anyway, my point is that, our young kids like to be ruled, they like to be monitored, they like Homeland Security and the Patriot Act. Just amazing!