Hallowe'en
Hallowe'en
The pagans who lived in Britain toe thousand years ago celebrated their New Year in 1 November . Then the Christians came and people celebrated Hallowe'en, a three-day festival between 31 October and 2 November.31 October was called All Hallow's Eve, and slowly the name changed to Hallowe'en.
In November, winter is near, and hundreds of years ago people people believed that bad spirits, like ghosts, came in the winter. They wanted the bad spirits to go away, so they made fires outside and used big autumn fruit or vegetabeles to make jack o'lanterns. The name ' jack o'lantern ' means ' Jack of the lantern'. A lantern is a kind of light, and some people think Jack was a nightwatchman who had one of these lights.
To make a jack o'lantern, people cut a hole in large fruit - usually a pumpkin. Then they put a candel in the hole, and cut a face in the side so the light was easy to see. Another thing people did, to make the bad spirits to go away, was to dress like witches and ghosts.
Children still do this if they go to Hollowe'en parties. people often put up decorations for Hallowe'en parties , and play games. The decorations are usually black ( for dark nights and death ) and orange ( for the autumn vegetables ).
One Hallowe'en party game is called ' bobbing for apples'. Many apples fall of the trees in October so they are easy to find.
Someone puts water and apples in a big bowl. The apples stay on top of the water. Often someone puts something round the first player's head so they cannot see. The player must keep their hands behind their back and take an apple out of the water with their teeth. Then the next player tries. The game is sometimes very difficult and players usually get very wet!
In Canada and the USA, and sometimes in Britain, children go ' trick or treating'. They dress like witches and ghosts, and go to the houses around where they live, often in a small group. When someone answers the door, the children say : ' trick or treat?' This means that the person in the house must decide. Either they give the children a treat ( like fruit or chocolate ) or the children will play a trick on them. For a trck the children sometimes throw something like an egg at the house.
source: Seasons and Celebrations by Jackie Maguire
Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
Compiled by Elizabeth Crabtree (May 1999)
Noam Chomsky was born in 1928 in Philadelphia, PA. He can be classified as, but not limited to, a linguist and political activist. He has composed and published many literary works that have been dispersed throughout the world and have touched all four corners. He has worked to further the study and understanding of linguistics from both the biological and psychological perspective. Despite his linguistical endeavors, Chomsky has made the time to work for furthering peace, justice and fighting oppression and ignorance throughout the world. He has spoken against political intellectuals who have physically or even psychologically forced other countries to adopt their doctrines, even when it meant speaking up against his nature country. Such was the case during the Vietnam War, when Chomsky opposed US military involvement within the Vietnam boarders.
Chomsky's interest in linguistics can be traced back to his undergraduate days at the University of Pennsylvania. The professor that oversaw this blooming interest was Zellig S. Harris. It was through this professor's suggestion that Chomsky should try to diagram a systematic structure of some language. So Chomsky turned his attention to doing just that with the Hebrew language and the initial creation of his undergraduate thesis in 1949. Which he then went on to rewrite and finish in 1951 as Morphophonemics of Modern Hebrew. In this paper, he tried to explain the dispersal of phonetic forms in Hebrew. Chomsky kept reworking this idea until its final publication as The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory. At first, his book was denied publication time and time again. It was finally accepted and started many linguist down the path that Chomsky had started to carve.
Despite his work as a linguist, Chomsky is also a renowned intellectual, author, political activists, civil libertarian, and anarchist. After his undergraduate studies, Chomsky moved on to Harvard University as a Junior Fellow in the Harvard University Society of fellows. This was during the early fifties and the young Chomsky had created a structural theory of linguistics that caused quite a stir. After Harvard, Chomsky went on to teach linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
NOTE: Noam Chomsky does not like the idea of biographies, in fact he despises them completely. He has held the belief that his literature and the points made within all his public manifestations, whether they be literary or political in nature, should speak for itself and need not the story or history of his life to support it or inspire it to others. This is a point well taken. Along with his disregard for biographical sketches, Chomsky also looks down on ceremonial gratification, surprises and humility has rendered him disenchanted with any type of public glorification. For example, for his birthday a collection of letters were collected from various people to Chomsky, thanking him for his work in linguistics, politics, and for effecting others educational endeavors. It was then placed without ceremony, nor much commotion, but quickly and discreetly on the man's desk. It was, no doubt, a birthday present to remember, but remembered in a quiet, discrete, manner. So with the nature of Chomsky's opinions about such manners in mind, I apologize to the great linguistic for my biographical effort.
Theory
Chomsky's research and influence on linguistics changed and modernized the discipline. For many years there has been a battle between linguistics as to whether language acquisition is innate or learned. Chomsky argues that language acquisition is an innate structure, or function, of the human brain.
Although known that there are structures of the brain that control the interpretation and production of speech, it was not clear as to how humans acquired language ability, both in its interpretive sense and its production. This is where Noam Chomsky made his contribution.
There are a few factors that Chomsky has used to support his theory of language acquisition. First is that there is an optimal learning age. Between the ages 3 to 10 a child is the most likely to learn a language in its entirety and grasp fluency. After this age, it is hard and even considered impossible for the child to completely grasp the language. This is why school systems are criticized for teaching foreign languages in high school and not in elementary.
The second factor is that the child does not need a trigger to begin language acquisition, it happens on its own. The parent does not need to coax the child to speak, if it around language production, the child will work to produce that language on its own. Several things may help the child develop faster, such as the parent producing baby talk, or being read to on a consistent basis. But these things only have a small effect, and if they are not done, the child will still eventually learn to speak without them.
Another factor found was that it does not matter if a child is corrected, they still grasp the language in the same manner and speak the same way. During one stage, a child will make things plural that are already plural. For example, a child will say geeses instead of geese. It does not matter how many times a child is corrected, the child still says geeses. In one documented case, a child, after being corrected several times by the mother to say feet instead of feets, looked at the mother, said "ohh," as if she understood and then proceeded to say feets.
Another fact is that children go through stages of language acquisition in which they learn certain parts of the language. They all go through these stages at the same time, around the same age. A child in China, will follow the same linguistic patterns of language acquisition as a child in the United States. It is with these observations, along with knowledge about neurological structures that control linguistic communication and interpretation, that Chomsky argues that language is innately organized
1928 ~ Birth in Philadelphia, PA
1949 ~ Creation of undergraduate thesis
1951 ~ Completion of thesis, Morphophonemics of Modern Hebrew
1957 ~ Published the novel Syntactic Structures
1957 ~ Made associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1960 ~ Given title of full professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1975 ~ Became institute professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
1990 ~ Published On Nature, Use and Acquisition of Language
Chomsky, Noam. Current Issues in Linguistic Theory. New York, the Hague Mouton: 1964.
Chomsky, Noam. Language and the Mind. New York, Harcourt, Brace and World: 1986.
WEB SITES:
http://cc.k200.edu/~k96je04/chomskyb.html
http://web.mit.edu/afs/athena.mit/1/linguistics/www/chomsky.home.html
http://www.homeusers.prestel.couk/littleton/nc_menu.htm
http://www.philol.msu.ru/linguist/issues/46-1032.html
http://www.public.iastate.edu/~carolc/ling511/chomsky.html