We had a really awesome (for me) and hilarious (to me) conversation in class yesterday wherein every one of the students was completely taken aback by my claim that nouns are NOT people, places, or things, but just words that have particular qualities. There was like a 20 minute tangential discussion/vocabulary review that wound up with everyone being sort of angry and confused by my claim that the chair I kept using for an example was not a noun, but the English word "chair" and the ASL sign for "chair" are nouns.
"BUT THAT IS A CHAIR."
"Yes."
"THAT'S WHAT IT'S CALLED."
"Yes."
"'CHAIR' IS A NOUN."
"Yes."
"SO THAT CHAIR IS A NOUN."
Eventually the discussion resulted in me writing lists on the board of "characteristics of the chair" and "characteristics of the ASL sign "chair"
chair: black, plastic, has wheels, has padding, can sit on it.
sign: made with 2 hands, both hands in "U" handshapes, one hand stays still, the other hand moves, noun.
Then for the next 5 minutes everyone kept zoning out and talking to themselves. When I would pause my lecture to ask what was going on, they would each (at different moments) be all "oh I was just thinking about if that cup was a noun, or if the sign "cup" was a noun" or "so the close-vision interpreter is not a noun, but if I sign "interpreter", that's a noun".
Mindblowing, for them, and incredibly entertaining, for me. Now I just need to get this shirt and wear it to class. Hilarious linguistics humor for everyone!
use your words!
