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Linguistics

i have only read some of the posts and do not know much about linguistics, but does creativity, and i guess a "melting pot" of a language have any correlation?
basically im asking if the mixture of american language promotes creativity over than a more stable one because its always changing and doesnt follow a pattern at all.

which im not even sure if theres a such thing as a stable language... just an environmental thought.
 
sssssssssss said:
b
asically im asking if the mixture of american language promotes creativity over than a more stable one because its always changing and doesnt follow a pattern at all.

which im not even sure if theres a such thing as a stable language... just an environmental thought.
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What do you mean by "mixing of American languages"? Do you mean just the mixture of the different US accents, like 'Southeastern' or 'Northeastern' or 'West Coast'? Because in that case, nothing really mixes. Or do you mean the different languages making up the US because we're pretty much a country that was formed on immigration...and as of now, the US still has no OFFICIAL language, which has created quite a bit of controversy, since other countries like India do list English but the US, where it seems it should or would, does not.

Language is also always changing (or decaying, but I have that book sitting a few feet away). Language is always changing, and language change has been documented over the past and all languages evolve...sometimes there are phonological changes (can be major) or morphological changes. For example, Old English (think Beowolf) is not intelligible to a speaker of current US English, and Middle English (think Chaucer) is extremely difficult still, so English itself has evolved over time, as an example, and there's no reason to think it will continue doing so. All languages will change over time, and although some governments try to resist certain changes at times (since language can become a political issue) it's in their nature to change over time.
 
i mean the mixture of immigration.. i guess diversification.
it just seems, from a university perspective, that the foreign students are all about following directions and the rules, where the american born ones are about finding ways to learn it easier and more effectively.. i would guess to gain more liesure time.
i can sense that there are also flaws in that reasoning, but its all i know.

and i think a prime example of this would be the use of adderall.
i feel like americans arent exactly about working hard, but about being creative and was wondering if its derived from understanding our diverse language.
 
Internet/technology's influence on language

So first off I don't at all profess to be an expert in the area of language (though I guess I do fit the standard definition of expert in the sense that I have met the minimum criterion of hours/ years spent exercising...).

Math and Sciences are definitely more my are of interest/expertise, but I wanted to see what the linguistics experts had to say about the current rapid flux of language as precipitated by technology.

--this would include the increase of vocabulary based on the need to encompass new concepts, more abstract ideas or the basic definitions of new machines and tools.

Orwell's 1984 had a huge impact on me in middle school, and I really feel txtng and e-mail, as well as the forum I'm posting on right now are trending heavily towards his notion of 'thinkspeak.'

This post is disorganized as a result of my scatterbrained thought, but maybe also include the assimilation of languages into one another. Globalization is imo most definitely responsible for this, but I frequently mix spanish phrases or words into my english, and even tack on verb endings or gender assignments to my english. I know this is worse for people that did more than goof off in 2 years of high school foreign language...

Anyways, send me back your thoughts.
I'm definitely fascinated by this sort of stuff, (as well as other linguistics topics like: does having one's inner monologue in different languages facilitate faster overall thinking than a person in a different language, etc., etc.)
 
purple_cloud said:
Just curious, what is your specialization exactly?
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I am especially interested in questions within semantics, maybe broadly construed as language and cognition.


purple_cloud said:
When it comes to typological studies however, it seems that most currently spoken languages are still relatively systematic (I can't remember the years, but googling Dryer and Cinque should do it, one was a professor of mine and they seem to be leading typologists, I often wonder if there's anything left to do in the field).
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Dryer is a leader in the field, no doubt. An excellent and respected linguist.
But I would say that all languages are "systematic"; it's just that some systems are more complex than others. (and all the systems have exceptions, but some have more than others)

purple_cloud said:
I agree, it's an interesting issue but there are arguments everywhere, although Chinese speakers also have a better chance at learning fluid-sounding English than those of Japanese or Korean speaking origin, and while I'm not too familiar with the Asian languages, Chinese seems to be the most complex of these to me...this was found through a Master's Project/some other sociolinguistic expertise literally today, but I thought it was a super interesting find.
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The syntax of Mandarin is simpler than that of Japanese or Korean.
In fact, of all the languages I have studied, Mandarin (and Classical Chinese) is (are) the closest to "not having a system", though I would hate to describe it that way.
What I mean is that much of the meaning typically expressed in English, for example, may be left to pragmatic inference, rather than explicitly expressed, and that words can be added or left out based on "feeling" more than in English.
(Having simple syntax doesn't always mean it is easy to understand or produce Mandarin for us non-native speakers! Since things are "left out", we can have a lot of trouble understanding...)
In Japanese and Korean, the syntax surrounding levels of respect is almost overwhelming, but nothing like this exists in Chinese.

If you are interested, this grammar of Mandarin reveals just how much pragmatics play a role:
http://www.amazon.com/Mandarin-Chinese-Functional-Reference-Grammar/dp/0520066103
 
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learned men who use the pen have written your praise highly linguistics!

not having any more than a rudimentary education has never put a crimp in my curiosity regarding the subject. I am a total failure at learning a lingo other than the americanized english that i slaughter on a daily basis .

I failed at immersion learning of the one simple language that needed for teaching in the peace corps. Bahasa Malaysia it was called way back when.

precomputer days i used to read the dictionary's etymology when looking up a word that was strange to me. My wits are such that I have never completed a crossword puzzle nor won a chess match. Analytic thought is not something that I have in spades,

I am so glad to have found this thread. not a little bit of awe for you erudite ppl.
 
perhaps too trite for serious lingo enthusiasts, I would recommend a good and witty read.
Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss.
it is subtitled The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation.

This author is talent - big talent.
 
slimvictor said:
Dryer is a leader in the field, no doubt. An excellent and respected linguist.
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I couldn't not respond to this --- he was the teacher of the first Linguistics class I ever took as an undergraduate, and I also took Intro to Syntax with him as well. As a graduate student I took his Typology course, which was rather interesting to say the least. I don't want to reveal too much on here, but two good friends of mine have been going to Papua New Guinea with him and documenting a couple languages...it's really interesting to hear about.


Anyway, now onto why I bumped this thread:

A few people I know had been working on how "internet speak" is different from live speech. For example, live chat like AIM, or any other instant messenger, is closer to spoken English, and the few people who use formal written English in these contexts usually come off as pretentious. But, what about forum speak? I feel like the way I type on BL is a mixture of my instant messenger style and my formal written English one (not just in terms of grammar, but I notice it in my syntax as well as lexical item choice.) Any other thoughts on this? Ever since a friend of mine did a presentation on World Of Warcraft chat, I've been interested in this topic, and there's not much out there on it yet since it's still relatively new. What about you, SlimVictor?
 
^There's a lot more to your post than a tangent that occurred to me on reading it but are emoticons a part of speech or specialized interjections?
 
Enki said:
^There's a lot more to your post than a tangent that occurred to me on reading it but are emoticons a part of speech or specialized interjections?
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Hmm, well, it's definitely not a discourse marker since it shows emotion, and I don't think it's a part of speech because even if it was an "open" one, I know the syntax and morphology are more important for grouping things into classes. Languages vary on this, but this is how English seems to work anyway (nouns, verbs, etc.) so I don't think it fits in there. So, I'd categorize it as an interjection since it can display emotion on it's own. However, that would then put it in the part of speech class for interjections. So, now that I think about it, emoticons being either of those two things seems to run in circles. Basically, an emoticon blends a few punctuation characters together to convey a message about the mood of the writer, and they are really helpful in internet chatting when you can't necessarily see the face of your responder (and can better detect sarcasm, and other emotions not conveyed easily by internet speak.) So, I'm not sure if they are parts of speech or some sort of specialized interjection, I feel like they are sort of their own thing...which would make up a lexical category, but I don't think it would qualify as a part of speech necessarily. Ah I'm going in circles with this one.
 
wonderful to see the cunning linguists at it again. well some one from the ranks of the unwashed needed to say it*****
 
slimvictor said:
All four of these realizations are grammatically distinct.
Not only that, but they are actually pronounced differently!
Berkenfield (2001) measured people saying these and found that the vowel is both longer and higher (F1) at the top of this list, and progressively shorter and lower as you move to the bottom.
Click to expand...

Awesome. :) I last took a linguistics course before this article was published. :p

ebola
 
i was reading about Bible translations the other day, and thought that was pretty interesting.!

both King James are the most disastrous from what i saw, and reading the things is almost like watching Monty Python they are so off the wall, and clearly "biased"...
 
^ Oh yes. People often worry about what's lost in translation. It's often just as disastrous to the original author what is gained in translation. Whole shades of meaning and word choices that imply things the original writer in the original tongue never would have approved. I'm convinced that mistranslations which have really skewed the original text's implications have probably been to blame for many of history's diplomatic fiascos, including some that have led to war.
 
what??? walking on water, pulling food out of asses on demand, shit weasels flying about the sky, etc., what so hard to believe about that that? it's in a dogmatic text that drunken, sexually repressed clowns endlessly fucked about with for ageso what could be bogus about that??? the nerve of some people!!!
 
^


i dont mean that;-)ive heard and read stranger things, and, i dont believe it was meant to be so literal - some things are hard to explain, or arent as affective with out the reader creating an understanding, or their own ideas/beliefs of a texts, or stories actual meaning.

but reading the same translation, in different books its, hard to not be almost be amused at how loaded it is, fascinating in a morbid way - a massive part of history to see for yourself, the pretense of some the past two-thousand years most shaping words - bastardized over and over, clearly from one book to another!

i saw the King James translations tested at 10% accurate! i should find that information again, it was pretty amazing...


i like to read it though, a bit at a time, there lots of info about the universe, meta physics, all sorts of "mystical" stuff. very interesting, but thats me, w/e...
 
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