r/IAmA • u/dusdus • Feb 03 '12
I am a linguistics PhD student preparing to teach his first day of Intro to Linguistics. AMA about language science or linguistics
I have taught courses and given plenty of lectures to people who have knowledge in language science, linguistics, or related disciplines in cognitive science, but tomorrow is my first shot at presenting material to people who have no background (and who probably don't care all that much). So, I figured I'd ask reddit if they had any questions about language, language science, what linguists do, is language-myth-number-254 true or not, etc. If it's interesting, I'll share the discussion with my class
Edit: Proof: My name is Dustin Chacón, you can see my face at http://ling.umd.edu/people/students/ and my professional website is http://ohhai.mn . Whatever I say here does not necessarily reflect the views of my institution or department.
Edit 2: Sorry, making up for lost time...
5
u/sosokes Feb 03 '12
I've always wondered what the study of linguistics actually was. How do you explain it to someone who thinks it's about spelling?
10
u/dusdus Feb 03 '12
We try to investigate language as part of the natural world. We think that when you know a language, you have learned a lot of complex implicit rules about your language. Like, that "Who did you know a man that met?" isn't a possible sentence, or that "blarp" could be a word in English, but "lbarp" couldn't be, or that "Could you close that window?" isn't really a question. The thing is, kids seem to have this all figured out by age 3 if not before, and studies suggest that since we assume babies are idiots, we don't really say anything all that complicated to them. So, we think that at least a big chunk of language is part of an innate cognitive "organ" that tells us what kinds of languages can exist and which kind can't, something Noam Chomsky's called "Universal Grammar". That's the main object of study
4
u/Jentacular Feb 03 '12
This is still a very narrow definition of linguistics and very UG based. Though it would take awhile to get into all the subfields. Sociolinguistics FTW. runs from Chomsky supporters
→ More replies (4)1
u/sosokes Feb 03 '12
Way more interesting than what i knew it wasnt. <-- is that linguistically acceptable? Also, thanks for the reply. A theory? like an innate cognitive organ would have me paying attention. Good luck demain!
→ More replies (5)0
u/bigger_than_my_body Feb 03 '12
And what would you say is the importance of this knowledge? Does it help us learn languages faster or better? I'm genuinely curious.
→ More replies (3)
3
u/GrammarNerd Feb 03 '12 edited Feb 03 '12
What do you think of Noam Chomksy?
Also, have you studied the Pirahã language much?
7
u/dusdus Feb 03 '12
Oh, and, the comment about Pirahã.
So, for those who might not know, there is a bit of a controversy in cognitive science right now. Chomsky has recently been pushing that the core thing in our heads that lets us learn language that other primates don't have is the ability to compute recursive structures -- so like, putting sentences inside of sentences ("I think that she thought that..."), and understanding things like math (10 is the same as 9 + 1 which is the same as 8 + 1 + 1 ...). Dan Everrett, a linguist who has done a lot of work on an obscure language called Pirahã has claimed that that can't be right, since Pirahã doesn't show any evidence of recursion, and people argue a lot since Everrett's data looks fishy (according to some) and not many others have looked at that language (so those of us not in Brazil don't REALLY know what's going on over there).
However, if you don't think that The Magical Difference® between monkeys and humans is the ability to compute recursion, the whole issue is sidestepped...
4
u/dusdus Feb 03 '12
I generally am a fan of Chomsky's work, though I haven't really taken to heart a lot of his most recent writings (pretty much anything after his 1995 book 'The Minimalist Program').
I think he outlined the way we should study language scientifically, the importance of studying language, and is right about his general point -- we need some kind of understanding of what language IS in the mind as a system, abstracting away from the details of particular languages. I think there are many who disagree with a lot of his points, but nobody disagrees with the spirit of his work, going back all the way to 50's..
3
u/gimmieaname Feb 03 '12
What is your favourite language and why?
How many languages do you speak fluently or have an extensive knowledge of?
6
u/dusdus Feb 03 '12
Haha, actually. My favorite language is Bengali -- it's been my favorite language since even before I started studying Linguistics. Really, I just like how it sounds, and I like its writing system -- http://www.omniglot.com/writing/bengali.htm. These days, I have been interested in a weird fact that seems to be unique to it and other languages of India. If you want to put a sentence inside another, there are two ways to do it. You can do it like English, by using a word like "that" -- "John told Mary that Tom would win", or you can do it like Japanese by sticking the second sentence inside the first, and putting the word "that" afterwards -- something like "John Tom would win that told Mary."
2
u/majestic7 Feb 03 '12
If you enjoy that kind of stuff: Turkish also has several ways of constructing subclauses, one like in English (that has apparently been loaned from Persian) and another where the subclause goes in front of the main clause and where both are connected by a participle which is then declined depending on what case the verb in the main clause takes. Weird language is weird!
→ More replies (4)1
2
u/DrinkingWithZhuangzi Feb 03 '12
What are your thoughts on the supposition that children raised to be native speakers of Ithkuil would be able to think in abstract terms much more quickly than native speakers of natural languages?
While I understand it'd be hard to say, I'm just curious whether a professional like you would consider it a strong possibility, pretty unlikely, or just something we can't know.
4
u/dusdus Feb 03 '12
Actually, I think what would happen would be more interesting. These facts have been debated a lot, but received wisdom is that kids actually care quite a bit about the complexity of the language around them. This is part of the reason why natural languages are all more or less the same kind of complexity (which can actually be rigorously and mathematically defined, to the point where we can actually say what kind of computational complexity each PART of grammar can be). The interesting pieces of evidence that show this are cases where you have cultures coming into contact that have no language in common. Instead, they make this like, really simple and unsystematic code, called a "pidgin" in the biz. The thing is, sometimes kids are exposed to these pidgins, and then they extrapolate a really intricate and complex language from the bare bones input. So, it's like kids already have most of what language could look like built up, they just need the words and to figure out a few language-specific facts, and they fill in the rest.
So, my guess? I bet kids would take Ithkuil, and make it as complex as any other natural language, much to the annoyance of Ithkuil's inventors :)
2
u/BoldDog Feb 03 '12
So, my guess? I bet kids would take Ithkuil, and make it as complex as any other natural language, much to the annoyance of Ithkuil's inventors :)
That's really interesting. Thanks for doing this AMA.
2
u/favorite_joke Feb 03 '12
What is your favorite linguistics joke? (Besides the played out cunning linguist....)
3
u/l33t_sas Feb 04 '12
A first year undergrad linguist asks her professor:
"Professor, how do you explain deixis?"
He answers:
"Like this."
2
1
6
u/dusdus Feb 03 '12
I'm astonished to say that I can't really even think of any linguistics jokes, apart from some really esoteric ones that just make fun of terms in linguistics (like "bilabial clitics" which sounds dirty, or "being bound in a domain" or "probing downstairs" which sound even dirtier)
My favorite parlor trick though is to ask people what the sentence "More people have been to Russia than I have" means. It sounds fine, but think about it for a while. There has been some interesting work looking at those kinds of sentences
2
4
Feb 04 '12
Two Oxford dons, Robert and William, are drinking.
William: Would you decline a tequila, Robert?
Robert: Certainly, William. Tequila, tequila, tequilam, tequilae.
2
1
u/chocobloomsful Feb 03 '12
English is my second language. I don't get the Russia sentence :( explain? Thanks
→ More replies (3)2
2
u/majestic7 Feb 03 '12
What languages do you actually speak fluently?
4
u/dusdus Feb 03 '12
Haha, this is a tough question -- I've dabbled in a lot and studied a lot. Most linguists really only know one or two and spend a lot of time doing work with their native language (a lot of people think being a linguist = knowing lots of languages. Not so! I'm just a bad example of that, since I'm also a bit of a language nut)
I speak Spanish since I was a kid, and I've studied Hindi and Bengali for a number of years (even before I started college). I have some knowledge of Japanese `cuz I spent a little bit of time in Japan, and I studied Somali when I lived in Minneapolis (there is a huge Somali population there), but I've never gotten all that good at Somali...
2
u/majestic7 Feb 03 '12
Cool, I'm quite the language nut myself too (but by no means a linguist), hence the question :) I hate it when someone asks HOW MANY languages I speak as it's impossible to answer without going into a huge amount of detail (some you are more fluent in than others etc etc), I'm sure you get that a lot too!
Linguistics question now: how come it is so hard to lose or improve your accent in another language? Are there efficient methods to improve your or someone else's accent?
→ More replies (3)
1
u/TA-Bananas Feb 03 '12
Hi.
-
Why is the plural of foot, feet?
-
How do you learn how to understand idioms
-
Can adults learn languages as easy as children
Thank you
6
u/dusdus Feb 03 '12
Actually, the reason why "foot"'s plural is "feet" (and goose/geese, etc) is a really long and interesting one. So, in Old English, the plural marker was -i. So, we had a word like "foot" and the plural was "footi". Then, there is a common language change where vowels move to the front of the mouth before other vowels that are in the front of the mouth -- think the ö sound in German. So, "foot"'s plural became "fööti", because of a general rule that existed in English at the time. Well, we lost that sound and merged it with e, and at some point we also just dropped the -i plural marker off the end of words. So, "foot" and "feet". Voilà. (The reason why we pronounce them weird -- NOT like o and e -- is due to another sound change that didn't affect our spelling)
Idioms are actually a puzzle. As far as we know, we just memorize them the same way we learn words -- one by one. They end up being an interesting problem though because they seem to have syntactic structure, so they aren't just big words -- but not always. For instance we can say "His leg was pulled" to mean that he was tricked, but it seems weird to say "The bucket was kicked" to mean that somebody died (from the idiom "kick the bucket"). Some people (like Ray Jackendoff at Tufts university, among others) thinks that this means we shouldn't really think that words are different from structure at all -- so idioms would just be complex words in every way!
Unfortunately, adults seem to be very bad. Even if you learn to be very fluent in a language and have a really good command of it, odds are you will still have a bit of an accent, and you'll never really understand really subtle judgements, so you'll probably always say some things in a funny way. The good thing though is that it usually doesn't end up being a big deal -- it's possible to become fluent enough to be able to communicate effectively, you just won't have the same kind of knowledge as native speakers of that language.
1
Feb 03 '12
What are the more obscure concepts of a language that you've seen. For example a native English speaker wouldn't be familiar with the concepts of gender or tone.
4
u/dusdus Feb 03 '12
I've been working on a project looking at a very poorly understood phenomenon that occurs in a few languages. I think the only languages we really know that display it are Navajo, Amharic, Tibetan (arguably), Tamil (in a way) and Zazaki. We call it "shifted indexicals". In English, words like "I" and "now" refer to the act of utterance -- "I" means "the person who is uttering this sentence", and "now" means "the time that this utterance is being made". But in these languages, when you embed sentences inside others, the meaning of these words change. So, the semanticist Philippe Schlenker has spent a lot of time showing that in Amharic, if you say "John that I will win", it can mean the same thing as "John said that he will win", even when it's not a direct quote. Similarly, "John said on Tuesday that he will win tomorrow" can mean the same thing as "John said on Tuesday that he will win Wednesday", even if uttered on Friday.
One that is a very popular topic but is very obscure outside of linguistics is something called "islands". An island is a syntactic environment you can't move a word out of. So, you can move the word "what" to the front of a sentence: "John said that Mary saw something -- What did John say that Mary saw?". But, you can't question the "something" in the sentence "John said that Mary knew a man that saw something", or "John said whether Mary saw something". I bet you'd agree that "What did John say that Mary knew a man that saw?" sounds awful, and "What did John say whether Mary saw?" is barely interpretable. This has been a huge topic in syntax for about 50 years, and we're still learning a lot
1
u/rnandi Feb 03 '12
That's interesting about the languages you mention. Tomorrow seems to mean "the next day", rather than "the day after I am uttering this sentence".
Perhaps if you said, "I am playing football today, going swimming tomorrow and having a party tomorrow."
English: Going swimming and having a party on Saturday (today is Friday).
Navajo/Amharic: Going swimming on Saturday and having a party on Sunday?
On the last topic how about: "What, according to John, did the man that Mary knew see?"
2
u/dusdus Feb 03 '12
Yeah, that could be one hypothesis. I think in those sentences, the two "tomorrow"'s are actually still referring to the time of utterance. The way that this has been analyzed is that every sentence has a "context" parameter in its meaning that tells you the conditions of saying it. So, in Amharic, when you say "John said that Mary won tomorrow", the embedded sentence ("that Mary won tomorrow") has a different context that is specified by the larger sentence it's embedded in. So, it seems to change by what sentences you embed in what.
Though, I can't think anyone's tested what you just proposed! Maybe you're right!
1
u/pdpi Feb 03 '12
The concept of dynamic versus lexical scoping in programming seem to me to map remarkably well to what you're describing.
In this example, in the lexical binding case, x takes the values that was originally assigned to it, much like the Amharic "tomorrow" maintains its implicit date. In the dynamic scoping interpretation, x takes local value, much like we usually assign our current context to the word "tomorrow".
Curiously enough, most programmers would agree that lexical scoping is much simpler, and dynamic scoping is a bitch to keep track of.
2
u/Congenital_Optimist Feb 03 '12
Are you aware of the English Linguist John Rupert Firth? Its just that he's a (decesed) relative of mine and I'd like to know whether he's still known outside the UK. Thanks!
2
Feb 03 '12
Hello, I am a computational linguist. Firth is well known in computational linguistics and natural language processing, the phrase "know a word by the company it keeps" is very often referenced as influencing a lot of the techniques used now.
You can see here, one of his books has been cited 200 times in the last couple of years:
1
3
u/dusdus Feb 03 '12
I'm surprised to say that I hadn't, especially after reading his wiki entry!! The students he influenced are very well known, and the observations he's made are very important. Maybe that just reflects my own lack of knowledge about the history of the field...
2
u/Sagandalf Feb 03 '12
How much crossover is there between neuroscience and linguistics? Do linguists limit themselves to anthropological studies or do they at times delve into Broca's area?
2
u/dusdus Feb 03 '12
Well, in cognitive science there is a tradition of defining different "levels" of a problem -- you can't learn everything about a computer just by looking at the pieces of metal inside of the case, but you have to know what microchips do and how they solve problems, and what the computer is being used for in the first place. So like, a lot of linguistics looks at the "software" that gets run on the brain "hardware".
That being said, there is a subdiscipline called neurolinguistics that looks at stuff like Broca's area, and psycholinguistics (what I spend some time working on) looks at how the software is run, so to speak. A really popular topic right now in neurolinguistics is looking at a particular effect we get in EEG experiments where there is a particular electrical response when a sentence's grammar is fine but it doesn't make sense, and when a sentence makes sense but there's a grammatical mistake. So, there are people doing work looking at the messy wet stuff inside our heads and connecting it to the bigger questions, and it's likely to get more interesting in the future as we learn more about how the software gets implemented in neurons
1
u/Sagandalf Feb 03 '12
Interesting. I'm taking Neuroscience this semester, and we briefly touched on linguistics. You say you've delved into psycholinguistics. Might I ask what your graduate research has centered on? (Also, mad props on getting in to UMD)
→ More replies (1)
0
Feb 03 '12
2
u/dusdus Feb 03 '12
So, "cognate" in linguistics just means "words that are related", without necessarily meaning the same thing or even sounding alike. So, you get some weird and sometimes surprising sets of words that are cognates. But, I know in foreign language instruction a lot of times people say "cognates" to mean "words that kinda sound the same and mean the same thing". I think it's fine since it's a useful mnemonic and since most learners of languages don't really care about what, say, German looked like 1500 years ago. I actually TA'd a course in Historical Linguistics last semester, and I think that was one of the more fun things to do -- look at pairs of surprising cognates, and then look at words that SEEM like cognates but aren't. (For instance, "to have" in English is NOT related to "haben" in German, even though they mean the same thing and look a lot alike.)
0
Feb 03 '12 edited Feb 03 '12
EDIT: Checked http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=have&allowed_in_frame=0 and neither of us are right, sorta. Romantic and Germanic hab- are unrelated, but english have IS related to Germanic haben, and french avoir/latin habere are not cognate with Germanic hab-, and that's where I was wrong/
are you sure haben isn't cognate with haben? Actually, they're definitely cognates, just that they might be cognates from longer ago(germanic hab- and romantic hab- I'm quite sure are cognates(EDIT: Guess I'm wrong, it's cognate with Latin capere)) you're just saying english have came from French(I assume). You may be right, but I think you're wrong(if it's a commonly held linguistic fact, you all are wrong!) because more simple English words that are required for casual conversation are generally of Germanic origin, and have fits that category. This is because serfs spoke Anglo-Saxon and after Duke William of Normandy took the throne of England, the language of nobility became French. As well, monasteries used lots of Latin, and taking words from that and bringing it to English. And so, more sophisticated words are of Romantic origin(either from French or directly from Latin). That's why I think you're wrong. And before you argue b/v, and Germanic generally being b, let's not forget all of the other Germanic English words with that consonant shift(give, geben in German). You're wrong. You're wrong. I'm right. I'm right. Or maybe I'm not. I hope I'm wrong, because my arrogance could take a blow right now :)
→ More replies (1)
1
u/shadoworc01 Feb 03 '12
I have a few questions:
-
How many languages do you speak?
-
Which languages are most widely spoken?
-
Any fun weird facts you would like to impale upon a young and inspired linguist?
4
u/dusdus Feb 03 '12
Conservatively I would say 3, but if I were being rogue and being immodest I'd say maybe 4 or 5.
WIDELY spoken is English and ASL -- ASL is EVERYWHERE. Spanish has probably a lot more native speakers in terms of area though. People always are trying to get numbers on "most widely spoken language", "language with most speakers", "most learned language" and stuff, and I think the rankings are just always changing.
Here's another interesting fact that I haven't mentioned yet -- a lot of languages force you to mark in a sentence how you come about the knowledge you're reporting -- is it first hand, second hand, something you observed, etc. Some languages end up with quite complex systems where you can get very specific about how you came about knowledge, and it's all represented in the grammar!
1
u/chemdog Feb 03 '12
don no bad! What would you say the hardest language to learn is? I was told once this could be hebrew.
4
u/dusdus Feb 03 '12
Haha, you're welcome ;)
That's a super subjective question, and it depends a LOT on what languages you already know. If you speak Arabic, which is related to Hebrew, then Hebrew is a piece of cake :) I've heard people say that for English speakers Chinese is really tough (mostly `cuz of the writing system and the fact that it has tones), but I've also heard people say Arabic is really tough, and Russian too. Personally, as I said somewhere up above, I've tried to study Somali before, and I never got very far. I've always found it super tough -- it has a bunch of weird sounds, it has tone, gender, and tons of declension and inflection classes. Ultimately though, it depends on a lot of factors, so it's pretty relative to each person
2
u/adietofworms Feb 03 '12
Linguistics is so cool! What are some good books (both technical and non-technical) about stuff like historical linguistics and comparative linguistics?
2
u/l33t_sas Feb 04 '12
I'll just drop it and add Larry Trask's Historical Linguistics. It's a textbook, but personally I found it so engaging that I read it cover to cover (or maybe that's just because I love historical linguistics)
1
u/dusdus Feb 10 '12
I second this actually -- Trask's is a good read. It doesn't go beyond "traditional historical linguistics" as much as Campbell's book, but I think it's probably better written
2
u/dusdus Feb 03 '12
I actually can't think of much in the way of non-technical, accessible books that talk about historical linguistics! I'm sure there are some things, but nothing springing to mind. The textbook we used for the Historical Ling class I TA'd last semester was called "Historical Linguistics" by Lyle Campbell. It can be a dry reading in some places, but it's thorough and talks a lot about big questions of Linguistics, and there are lots of examples
2
u/TurboCricket Feb 03 '12
Another recommendation is Mark Hale's book, which is also titled Historical Linguistics. His book steps through different aspects of language change - phonological change, syntactic change - and has a nice section on reconstruction methodology. It's really well written.
2
u/TA-Bananas Feb 03 '12
What is "language-myth-number-254" as quoted in your intro.
And is it true or not?
3
1
Feb 03 '12
I know this is a stupid question, by what exactly do you do as a linguistics officer?
3
u/dusdus Feb 03 '12
Linguistics is really too new to do a whole lot with outside of Academia, unfortunately. I'm aiming to teach at public university once I complete my degree. But, a lot of software companies (like Google) pay linguists that have some technical background to act as consultants when they do things like develop search engines, and a lot of companies that are doing Artificial Intelligence and the like are getting into the game. There's also some upcoming stuff looking at how we can analyze language as a way to diagnose psychological, cognitive, and neurological disorders
1
u/load_more_comets Feb 03 '12
Would you (not you in particular, but linguists as a whole) be able to coalesce all the major languages into one universal language so everybody would have just one language to learn? Or do we have to wait for a digital universal translator?
How long does it take to become a linguist?
Which languages should I study first? Which base languages would you recommend as a jumping point to other languages? e.g. should I study latin to learn Spanish, French, Portuguese or Italian? Should I learn Chinese to learn, Korean, Japanese?
I find the history of words interesting, an example would be the word sinister. Why would the left side be (at least now) equated to something evil? Then I came to find out that it was believed that the devil or demons hang around the left side of humans. What branch of linguistics deals with the study of word root history?
2
u/dusdus Feb 10 '12
The idea is nice, but the problem is kids (the primary consumers of language learning) aren't so community-minded when they learn a language, and a lot of change and variation stems from an evolution-like imperfect transfer of grammatical knowledge. So, even if we managed to do that (at great social cost -- think of what damage that could do to culture, etc), it wouldn't last too long.
Learning Chinese to learn Korean and Japanese is kind of a wishy washy proposition -- Japanese and Chinese share a LOT of words because of borrowing, but often -- unless you know some interesting phonological facts about medieval Japanese and medieval Chinese -- this is only obvious in the writing system. My suggestion would be to take one and stick with it for a while before swapping to the other. But it's your learning stlye :)
That's called etymology, though it's not really a branch in its own right -- it's really more of a tool in historical linguistics (the study of language change) to help understand how words change meaning/part of speech/other categories over time.
1
u/load_more_comets Feb 10 '12
Thank you for taking the time to answer. Hope everything goes well with your chosen field.
1
u/stopscopiesme Feb 03 '12
This is a really great AMA!
What kind of careers are tangentially related to a Linguistics degree?
What's your take on the grammar correctors of Reddit?
Is it possible for some languages to have a greater range of expression than others?
I've noticed the word "to" sometimes doubles up in a sentence (I'm about to go to the store). What's going there? Should that not happen, and if so, how can it be avoided?
2
u/dusdus Feb 03 '12
Most are in language teaching, computational linguistics (think Google, Siri, or anything involving speech synthesis and comprehension, as well as tons of other startups), academic jobs. There are a number of firms, private and governmental, that work on developing language materials and documenting languages too. Also, speech pathology and clinical stuff is always an option.
Generally, linguists try to steer clear of notions like grammatically correct or incorrect, in the sense of "is the punctiation right" or what have you. The idea is that we're more interested in what people intuitively "feels" right, and less about what we're taught. So, mostly ambivalent
I think the received wisdom is that that's not the case, but I think it's a really tough question to address systematically and figure out for sure. The thing is, though, that in any language we always have the ability to create new words, and if there is an expression we want to say but we don't have a word for, we can always circumlocute. That being said, it's another interesting question about what kinds of information we can leave implicit, and what kinds of information we have to make explicit (some languages don't mark tense, for instance).
The word "to" is doing two different things there -- the first is with "about" and the second expresses direction. The first is an infinitive marker and the second is a preposition. I'd just say there are two words "to", and they're just spelled and sound the same :)
1
Feb 03 '12
What kind of methods do linguists use for making objective and scientific research? (except for phonetics and phonology, I don't like either) I'm kind of a bastard concerning scientific fields, i.e. having snooped in various liberal arts without ever getting deep insight. This also means that I was never taught how to do scientific research (and linguistic in general) and what kind of techniques I should be using.
2
u/dusdus Feb 03 '12
It depends on the question of inquiry. So, in syntax -- the study of sentence structure -- we consult native speakers on their intuitions of acceptability, and then figure out whether our explanation of those facts makes right predictions for other constructions. Syntax is probably the most informal in that respect. Semantics, the study of meaning, looks at implications -- we ask ourselves "If X is true, then is Y also necessarily true?". Again, that's pretty informal.
In psycholinguistics there are a lot of experimental paradigms. My favorite is self paced reading, where we have a person read a sentence word by word using a computer, and we measure how long they spend reading each word. Generally things we predict that people will have trouble with, people read at least 100 ms slower. There are also experimental paradigms looking at how long and how often people look at words by measuring tracking their eye gazes, and we can also test people's preferred interpretation of sentences by asking them ambiguous sentences and seeing which version of the question they answer ("John told Mary at the pool he'll find aliens in space. Where did John tell Mary that he'll find aliens?")
1
u/linguist_who_breaks Feb 03 '12 edited Feb 03 '12
What do you think of Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG)? Especially in comparison to other syntactic theories.
(edited for comparison purposes)
2
u/dusdus Feb 10 '12
I think a lot of folks make a big fuss about differences between theoretical frameworks, and other folks try to minimize them. I think there's a missing discussion that could be happening if people tried to be fluent in both.
As an undergrad I took an LFG course, and I always found it really interesting, and once in a while try to read up on what's new and hip in LFG. I like the claims about language architecture it makes, and the formal explicitness is a virtue. I think it's an interesting formal exercise to see what is easy to solve in one framework or another and what's difficult in the other (feature sets in morphology, relations defined at f-structure, handling non configurationality without massive stipulation). At the end of the day though I consider myself a fairly proud Minimalist, if for no other reason than because I think the candidates for interesting facts about universals in syntax -- issues of binding, locality constriants on movement, etc. etc. -- are best captured in a framework like Minimalism.
1
u/linguist_who_breaks Feb 14 '12
Thanks for the reply! i, as well, took a class on LFG and i did find it rather fascinating. it's funny, because movement and configurationality (and how a theory deals with it) are one of the "go-to" characteristics for testing because of all the many different views and explanations that exist for it.
1
Feb 03 '12 edited Feb 03 '12
I love languages and linguistics; I am learning/learned/tried to learn quite a few languages. I also read linguistic theses about Oceanic languages — it's fascinating, it almost makes me regret I didn't study linguistics.
Would you be interested in spending a few months in a Pacific island or a Nepalese or Amazonian village to study and write a grammar of an undescribed language?
Also, what are the "DPs" you mention on your website?
2
u/dusdus Feb 03 '12
Yeah -- I've always wanted to do some work documenting the languages of eastern Bangladesh near the border between Bangladesh and Burma, on the Chittagong Hill Tracts. There are plenty of languages there that haven't been documented, and they have a lot of really interesting facts. I don't know if I'll ever be able to actually do that though unfortunately :(
A DP is a "Determiner Phrase", basically linguistics jargon for a noun and its modifiers -- so "the three cats that live by the sea" is a DP. Not as exciting as you might have thought :P
1
u/TA-Bananas Feb 03 '12
-
What common mistakes do 2nd language learners make?
-
How long does it take to learn a 2nd language?
-
What is the best method to learn a 2nd language?
Thanks
2
u/dusdus Feb 03 '12
The biggest mistakes I know are when people assume something is the same between their 1st and 2nd languages, called language transfer. I know I've found myself assuming in languages I've learned that certain phrases or idioms should be the same, and then finding out that they aren't!
I can't really say about how long -- I think it depends on a lot of factors, like motivation, availability of resources, time spent studying it, language being studied, etc. I don't think I can even make a general statement, but I doubt you could, say, learn to be a perfectly fluent and competent speaker of a second language in less than a year. There are probably some super geniuses that could though.
I think the best method is just to be surrounded by it. Simple as that. Maybe not too practical in a lot of situations though...
1
u/jdeisenberg Feb 03 '12
Do you think there can ever be a "universal language," or do you agree with one of my linguist friends who told me "no, linguistic drift will prevent it."
2
u/dusdus Feb 03 '12
Your linguist friend is more or less right. The thing is, we think one of the biggest things that drive language change is when a child is learning the language of their parents, and slightly change it (like in DNA mutations in evolution). We're kind of seeing this happen in English now -- there are lots of places where people speak English natively and the internet and international commerce makes it so that we're always talking to each other. But, babies aren't (they usually just talk to mom and dad), and babies are the ones responsible for a lot of change. So, yes, I think maybe we could have a "universal language" if we tried really hard, but it wouldn't last for more than a few generations
2
u/PrisonerKnight Feb 03 '12
With globalization making it so easy to communicate across oceans, do you think that over time the world might come to speak one language?
1
u/dusdus Feb 10 '12
I think it'll be hard to tell, honestly. I think the critical factor here is the fact that kids are the primary learners of language, and kids aren't sitting around watching international news and i/mming people in Asia. But, I think it might give us a new naturally occurring experiment in language change. My best guess? Nothing will change that much, except probably a lot more minority languages dying out...
1
u/DreadPirateBrian Feb 03 '12
Why does the english language have unique words for eleven and twelve, but otherwise follows the "additive pattern" (i.e. thirteen = three + ten
→ More replies (2)
1
u/BoldDog Feb 03 '12
Hmmm, I don't know anything about this subject, but it's interesting. How does language relate to the rise and fall of civilizations? In other words; are some languages more conducive to societal growth and prosperity than others due to having a vocabulary that's more conducive to science and engineering or being easier to write, etc?
English has become the language of international commerce. Is there anything inherent in the language to account for that apart from the long preeminence of the UK and USA?
Are any other languages likely to replace English as the language of int'l business?
I believe a lot of languages are becoming extinct. In what ways will the world be negatively effected by this? Are there efforts underway to preserve these languages?
→ More replies (2)
1
u/Cascading Feb 03 '12 edited Feb 03 '12
Linguistics student here! :)
I have quite a few questions if you don't mind;
-
What made you want to get into linguistics?
-
Which language do you feel has the most interesting history?
-
Prescriptivism, yes or no?
-
Are you a nativist or empiricist in regards to Child Language Acquisition?
-
Where do you see the English language in the next few centuries? Lingua Franca? obscured by Chinese? Complete text speak?
-
And lastly, any tips for a budding speech therapist? :)
[edit: formatting]
→ More replies (1)
1
u/Huzakkah Feb 03 '12
Do you think the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis is correct or not? Also, do you think that Indo-European languages are (very distantly) related to any of the families in Africa?
→ More replies (1)
1
Feb 03 '12
Any linguistic pet peeves you have(e.g. people saying Shakespeare wrote in Old English)?
Also, have you done much work with Old or Middle English? I find it really interesting how English has evolved over the centuries; and how quickly the language(or at least the written language) seemed to change in the 150-ish years between Chaucer and Shakespeare.
→ More replies (1)
1
Feb 03 '12
Can you go in detail about how the language we speak can affect the way we think and process thoughts. A simple example is the use of gendered terms in the English language, so when we say nurse we assume it refers to a female occupation. I was wondered how the English language compares to other languages, does English make speakers think in more black and white terms, or in a certain way?
→ More replies (3)
1
u/LeonardoFibonacci Feb 03 '12 edited Feb 03 '12
What's your favorite feature of any (constructed or natural) non-English language?
What's your least favorite thing about English?
Edit: Also, what language do you think is the prettiest when spoken?
→ More replies (1)
1
u/recklesschords Feb 03 '12
What methodology would you suggest for someone interested in learning several different languages? Is it best to study them individually? I, personally, am extremely fascinated with words. The rhythm, how some sounds native to other languages rarely (or never) occur in English, the etymology and origin of words.
If I had it my way, I would delve into Italian, French, and Spanish as soon as possible, and dabble in Russian, Latin, and anything else that catches my eye. I took French in high school (a while ago) and have been independently studying Italian, and even mixing just those two seems to short-circuit my brain (rolling my r's on French words, for instance, or pronouncing Italian phrases in a French accent).
How does someone learn multiple languages?
→ More replies (1)
1
u/XyzzyPop Feb 03 '12
What are your thoughts, in general, on linguistics and cognitive science? I've recently decided to return to school (I do technical computer work, but studied art - and I'm in my 30s) - and get a degree in something interesting. Linguistics and CogSci are both something I've considered.
→ More replies (3)
1
Feb 03 '12
I'm taking Introduction to Linguistics and we're currently studying pragmatics. Between locution, illocution, perlocution, explicit performatives, primary performatives, the maxims of quality, quantity, manner, and relation, and other concepts and terms, I think my head is going to explode! And this is only the first section!
Why does linguistics have so many fucking terms? How do you memorize so many concepts?
If I could recommend anything, explain all of your concepts thoroughly and give plenty of examples. Those of us who aren't familiar with linguistics are lost easily if you're not liberal with examples.
→ More replies (4)
6
u/[deleted] Feb 03 '12
What are your thoughts on feral children aquiring language?