Summary of my Prospectus Hearing

Yesterday must have been the most stressful and overwhelming day I've had as a graduate student. I didn't know that I was stressed out until after my hearing, when Indiana spent two hours debriefing the morning's events and giving me a pep talk. I think I have talked to him more in the last two days than I have in the last 3 years. For the first 30 minutes or so following the hearing, I realized that I was about to cry and tried not to. Then I started crying, said, I didn't know why I was crying and cried for about an hour (there were no dogs in the conference room for me to burry my face in like in my dream, but that would have been nice).

In brief, my committee likes my work, but Geraldine had major surgery yesterday. Remember the scene in the Wizard of Oz in which the 4 main characters are in the Emerald City receiving makeovers? Geraldine was the Scare Crow yesterday: she was gutted and restuffed and now looks shiny and new. And the only chapter of Geraldine's make up that stayed the same is the introduction, which I am not writing until December.

Below is Indiana's summary of the morning:

Dear Kelsie,

Thank you for presenting your dissertation prospectus to the committee today (Tentative title:  Cross-linguistic Generalizations in the Nomenclature of Human Limbs).  Congratulations! The committee accepted your prospectus and the necessary signed warrant was given to you to take to the graduate school.

The committee discussed a number of changes that we would like to see incorporated into the dissertation.  Here is a summary.  Other members of the committee may also wish to add their specific comments on these and other points:

General:

1)  the committee feels that the hypothesis of the dissertation needs some focusing.  Our suggestion is that you first look closely at the Indo-European data in your database and see what generalizations can be made based just on these data. Once these generalizations are established, you could craft a hypothesis stating that you expect the same generalizations to hold for other (non-IE) languages in your database of some 150 languages.  You could then confirm or refute the original hypothesis by testing it against your database. You can work with me as needed on the IE data.

2) the committee feels that the generalizations arrived at in 1) above could be best explained within the frame work of a current theory of methaphorization.  (Sweetser 1990 and Traugott and Dasher 2001  may provide something of a starting point.)  Please work with Prof. Jolly Green Giant on this.

3) The committee also feels that the background chapter should be focused more specifically on background that pertains to your hypothesis rather than to a general overview of the literature.  These and other changes are reflected in the tentative chapters for the dissertation suggested below.

1.  Introduction
2. Methods and Hypothesis
3.  Background (as per 3. above)
4,  Theoretical Framework of Metaphorization
5.  Generalizations based on the IE data in your database
6.  Analysis of your database based on the results of ch. 5
7.  Conclusions
8.  Directions for Further Research


Further points:  the committee wonders whether there may be a data base program available that would be better suited to the tasks required in your research.  Please look into this and explore options.  Also, please explore with the graduate school as to whether it would be acceptable to submit your database to the grad school in CD format (rather than as a hardcopy).  This could help with some of the formatting problems you are having currently.

Please work closely with the committee over the course of the summer on these issues so that you are ready for heavy-duty writing by the fall.

With congratulations and every good wish,

Indiana Jones

That's the jist of it. Now I am going to the doctor and will write more later.