Latest essays
Learning Japanese Prose from the First Sentence of Sōseki's Kokoro
"I always called that person Sensei." — twenty-three morae, one clause, one predicate. The craft of withholding a name, the focus slot before the verb, the triple work of -te ita, and the de aru register. Learning from the masters, part two.
Langage, Langue, Parole — Why Saussure Split "Language" in Three
The most famous distinction in the Course, quoting the French original: the speaking-circuit, "1 + 1 + … = 1", and the symphony.
Basic Japanese Grammar in Three Sentences from Mishima's The Sound of Waves
The same three sentences, this time from the ground up: the predicate comes last, particles are tags stuck onto words, description goes before the noun — all set against English.
Reading Japanese Narration in the Opening of Mishima's The Sound of Waves
Dissect the three sentences that open the novel — not with a person but with a place — and the skeleton of Japanese narration shows through: head-final order, the wa/ga alternation, the nominal predicate.
Saussure's Course in General Linguistics, Explained — Part 2: How the System Works, and How It Changes
A word's meaning is fixed by its difference from its neighbours. Synchrony and diachrony, value as difference, syntagmatic and associative relations, then sound change, analogy and waves — with everyday examples.
Saussure's Course in General Linguistics, Explained — Part 1: What Language Is, and What a Sign Is
Language is not a list of names for things. A slower walk through the line Saussure drew between langue and parole, and the idea that a sign is a concept joined to a sound.
Saussure's Course in General Linguistics: An Overview
Langue and parole, the arbitrary sign, synchrony and diachrony, value as difference — an overview of the lectures that reshaped how the twentieth century thought about language.
Saussure and the Birth of Linguistics
Reading the background of Course in General Linguistics and its opening survey of linguistic history.
What Are Words?
Language lives within us, yet comes from others. An inquiry into the mysterious network connecting self and other.