In Hawaii week, I listened to Dr. Saft’s lectures. I was happy to listen to his lectures at Nanzan because I listened to his lectures in Hilo University and I really wanted to listen to them again! Dr. Saft gave two lectures for us. One of his lectures was about the relation of syntax and our brain. The main point of the lecture was that studying syntax means learning about the system of language and learning about how our brains work. My major is generative grammar, so I was really excited to listen to the lecture. I could learn about interesting idioms, Hawaiian language, and pidgin. Through this lecture, I became more interested in linguistics, especially syntax and pragmatics. The other lecture was about the differences between English and Japanese discourse. In this lecture, I learned about Japanese and English stereotypes and the specific character of Japanese and English. These differences are related to linguistics. The most remarkable point was the differences between Japanese “aizuchi” or filler words and English ones. It was not until I take this lecture that I thought about these filler words, so it surprised me a lot. I had not been interested in pragmatics before the lecture, but I wanted to know about pragmatics more, in addition to syntax. Dr. Saft smiled all the time when he was doing his lecture. “Linguistics is the bomb baby!” I liked these words he said in the lectures. He communicated with students interactively. I didn’t notice I listened to a 90 minute lecture. I really enjoyed his lectures and got many opportunities to think about what an interesting subject linguistics is. I want to continue studying linguistics and know how the system of our brains works!!

By Shizuka K.