The new desk-space is working out pretty well - I am finding the chair slightly uncomfortable height-wise (after 5 or so hours my neck is feeling tense), but nevertheless I am managing to get some words down whilst the children amuse themselves downstairs. The husband has decided that he's going to decorate the hall and landing, so occasionally I am interrupted by sanding-down noises and general scuffling. Having been taxed by my supervisor to write about 'the big ideas' associated with my thesis, I have spent a lot of time scratching my head. Obviously, I 'know' intuitively what my thesis is about (Aspect and Discourse in the Pauline Epistles), but analysing exactly what I want to achieve and exactly how I'm going to do it has thus far existed as only a nebulous cloud (tautology?) in my head. As I tend to work in a somewhat centripetal way, I sat down at the computer yesterday and started to write, only to find out that I am putting down information that is tangential to the target. How many times can I contrast Porter's view on aspect with Fanning's? Quite a few, it would seem! However, this does have the benefit of fixing the various arguments in my head more firmly, I suppose. Getting slightly annoyed, I decided to tackle it head-on in a simple question and answer dialogue.
Q. What am I doing?
A. Looking for prominence readings and discourse contouring in the Pauline Epistles.
Q. How am I going to do that?
A.1) by examining, with reference to current scholarly thinking, the aspectual nature of certain verb-forms,
2) by deciding what the default interpretation would be for that verb in the Pauline Epistles
et cetera et cetera....
This very, very basic format has helped me to clarify the steps that I have to take to produce a reasonably coherent theoretical model which I can elaborate on and polish into a reasonable piece of writing before September.