I have been vocal about expressing my thorough annoyance with the fact that my summer class not only has quizzes, there's an *in-class* midterm. Closed book. No notes. In other words, we have to actually *memorize* the nitpicky details of historical language reconstruction. Now, seriously, folks...do we really need this information on automatic recall? Is a sudden historical linguistics emergency going to arise where it is vitally important to have the vowel set of ancient Proto-Mayan on tap? ... read more
