MIT Linguistics Society

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Future Events

Past Events

• Movie Night! Friday, April 18. 6:30pm in 2-105. "The Gods Must Be Crazy", with an introduction by Claire Halpert. Poster
• Thursday, April 24. 7pm in 26-100. The Esperanto Society showed the documentary, The Linguists, and held a session with David Harrison afterwards.
• First talk in the Mitlings-Munch lecture series! Wednesday, May 7 at 5pm in 32-144. Norvin Richards speaks on Lardil, an Aboriginal language of northern Australia, as well as on fieldwork and endangered languages in general. The title of his talk is "Lessons from Lardil: Tense Concord, Generation Harmony, and the Rainbow Serpent". Food provided. Poster
• Party! Wednesday, May 14th. 5pm in 32-D850 (the Linguistics and Philosophy department lounge). There were leftovers and ice cream.
• Mitlings-Munch Lecture! Thursday, September 25. 5pm in 32-155. Dr. Marc Zender from Harvard University spoke on "Writing and Language in J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth". Poster 1 Poster 2
  • Although readers of many different backgrounds have enjoyed The Lord of the Rings, few are aware of just how fundamentally linguistic JRR Tolkien's great novel is. As a philologist specializing in the history of the Germanic languages (particularly Old English), Tolkien did more than just indulge an interest in strange sounds and symbols. He invented a detailed proto-language, followed its divergence into distinct speech communities, and thereby produced the different but nonetheless related Elvish languages Quenya and Sindarin; he even invented several different alphabets with which to write these languages. Posing as the translator of the Lord of the Rings gave him free reign to employ archaisms, dialectal forms and even Old English itself to reflect the varying speech styles of his characters and their often complex relationships with one another. Understanding the linguistic foundations of Middle Earth greatly increases one's enjoyment of the novel, and also provides insight into Tolkien's view of the relationship between language and literature.

Officers

• President: Edwin Chen
• Vice-President: Anna Goldie
• Treasurer: Karen Chu
• Faculty advisor: David Pesetsky

Want to join?

blanche yourself onto mitlings, or email us at mitlings-request [æt] mit.edu.

Links

MIT Linguistics Department

Whamit! (The weekly newsletter of MIT linguistics)

Language Log

SpecGram (The Onion, for linguists)

Harvard College Linguistics Group

MIT Societo por Esperanto

Boston University Linguistics Association