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Linguistics

Z Y G G Y

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This thread is for everyone who wants to discuss topics related to linguistics.

I'm currently working on a Master's in linguistics cuz I have always been fascinated by it. Plus I'm naturally better at language related stuff than I am at math/science. This is not to say that I don't find math/science interesting. I got a BS in Biological Sciences and even completed higher level math classes in order to improve my weaknesses.

So if anyone has any linguistics related topic they wanna discuss please post it.

I always found it fascinating that children are born with a brain ready for language. It's all wired already, all they gotta do it be around any language and they pick it up. Does anyone think that our brains are more wired for a specific kind of language, like a prototype language?
 
Great topic, Ziggy! I love languages and linguistics. I almost studied linguistics, and considered a career as an interpreter at one point. It's more of just a pet interest of mine at this point.

Steven Pinker has done a lot of writing on the so-called 'Universal Grammar', which he believes is decidedly instinctive. There are definitely some elements, such as parts of speech, that are common to all languages. I'll never read his book 'The Language Instinct', I don't think, because language, like love, is just one of those things I enjoy a lot better mystified than demystified.

One idea I've read that I find fascinating, is the theory that all words evolved from onomatopoeia (imitations of natural sounds with our voices). According to this theory, just as limestone is formed slowly from the accumulated and compacted shells of dead marine mollusks, language is formed slowly from accumulations of former onomatopoeia, whose meanings have shifted countless times. Although we think of them as trifling words, or barely even words at all, onomatopoeia are among any language's oldest words, and often survive, relatively unchanged in pronunciation and meaning, for many centuries. The ones found in Shakespeare and Chaucer are instantly recognizable to modern English speakers, and 'ah!' is listed in Cassell's Latin Dictionary as an expression of pain, even in Roman times.

A good example of this onomatopoetic fossilization are the many English verbs that begin with 'fl', that involve some kind of light brushing motion: fly, flip, flirt, flap, flow.

I love etymology. Having taken Latin, dabbled in Ancient Greek, and paid attention to the Indo-European roots listed in dictionaries, I often notice the etymological connections between words right away. I could never understand why people would write me off as a geeky know-it-all when I'd point out, for example, that 'jot and tittle' once literally meant the dot on the letter I and the bar on the letter T. I've shocked people by telling them the origin and meaning of their surnames, which sometimes even they didn't know (French and Italian names are particularly easy).

I'll give you a good example of the machinations my mind goes through, with regards to etymology. I was once on the phone at work with someone whose name I needed to write down. I misspelled it the way I heard it: Tedeski. It was correctly spelled Tedeschi. I had assumed it was Polish. It was actually Italian, and means 'Germans'. It might have been spelled the way I thought, if not for the fact that Italian doesn't use the letter k. It dawned on me that Mr. Tedeschi probably gets his name mispronounced a lot too -- we associate 'sch' with words and names of German origin, where it's the phonetic equivalent of English 'sh'. But in Italian it has no such orthographic significance; the 'h' is a silent letter that's simply there to keep the hard 'c' sound in front of the vowel 'i'.

Now here's the interesting part. I somehow knew instinctively that the similarity between the 'schi' on the end of Mr. Tedeschi's name, and the 'ski' on the end of many Polish names, was not a coincidence. And indeed I was right. A little research told me that pretty much any European words that end with the sound 'sk', or something like it, come from an ancient Indo-European ending for forming adjectives out of nouns. The English suffix '-ish', and the suffix '-ese' used for some nationalities, both come from this same root. It occurred to me that speakers of Western languages really have no idea how similar and closely related all of their languages are.

FWIW, Mr. Medeski, of the band Medeski Martin and Wood, is of Polish descent, and there are no people surnamed 'Medeschi' in US phone books. I inquired about this, just out of curiosity. :)
 
I've heard that the language areas have a distinct architecture from the rest of the brain, like missing a cortical layer. SO cool.

I've always thought that language is pretty central to how we think and who we are. I mean, our internal monologue is in a spoken language, right? That's gotta mean something.

I don't know what else to say. It's just kewl is all.
 
Ah yes, one of my favourite topics (as long as we keep syntax out of it! ;)).

I am quite fond of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, btw.

I actually studied some Linguistics at universirty, and, being bilingual, it is still my ambition to eventually make a career as a translator.

My favourite areas of linguistics are Historical Ethnolinguistics (studying people's identities over time through language evolution), and Etymology (like MDAO). I seriously suck at syntax which, to me, is pretty much Algebra.

MDAO: I think you mentioned you had interest in studying Arabic. I say go for it after having read your post. Or, if you find it to be too much work for too little benefit, try the slightly easier Biblical Hebrew (modern hebrew, much like colloquial arabic, is not too useful for this purpose). I say this because speakers of Semitic languages are naturally talented in Etymology. I'll tell you why.

Semitic languages have a unique feature that, as far as I am aware, is not present as prominently in other languages as it is in Semitic languages: the root system. In a semitic language, every word traces back to a root (generally trilateral). By adding vowels and consonants between the letters of said roots, different tenses, inflections...etc are applied to the idea which the root represents. If you're interested, I'd be more than happy to provide a brief but comprehensive example.

Thus, etymology is actually a matter of every-day talk for speakers of Semitic languages.

Other languages may rely on radicals (ex. affixes on words to change meaning), but not really roots in the same sense that Semitic languages employ them.
 
I came within a year of getting my bachelor's in Linguistics. Once I started studying Morphology, deep vs. shallow structure, etc., it got so baffling and dry I changed my major to general English and Philosophy.

I still love to learn new languages, though, and am naturally drawn to anything to do with words. :)
 
Hello, introducing myself here --- I just received my BA in Linguistics and am currently beginning a Masters program. I enjoy historical linguistics as a hobby, and am a fan of maps and geography as well. Linguistics has become my life in the last few years, I'll get more into it at a later time.


Yay for a place that Linguistics nerds can unite!
 
^ We seem to have several things in common. I, too, am obsessed with maps in general, and especially historical maps. I have regional maps from a 1921 Atlas framed on my wall showing places like "the French Sudan" (southwestern Africa, roughly). I love it! I also love ethnolinguistic maps, obviously :).

---

MDAO, I just reviewed my post and realized that I forgot to get to the point, haha. The point is that etymological cross-reference is not a pastime, but a necessary skill to effectively communicate. New words (or rather, grammatical expressions) can be created, and their meanings inferred, by growing new branches from that primal root, and their meaning inferred by reverting back to said root and comparing the grammatical construction to others whose meanings one already knows.

And yet, for all that's worth, it is well-known that Semitic Languages (I can speak especially for Arabic) are "Technologically Challenged", meaning that the very mechanism that can be employed to create countless layers of meaning is itself limiting when it comes to integrating new things in the world that have no original roots in semitic languages... (such as the word "Computer").
 
I used to be an ESL teacher but was let go cuz I was an addict and would nod out (very very sad day for me, quit drugs very shortly after that). It was the most fulfilling job I had and pretty much had perfect evaluation scores from student. The first and only job where I actually didn't want to leave early, but was sad that the day ended.

But I'm very glad this thread brought together lots of interesting people. I gotta go to bed now but will be back shortly.

Oh and I'm bilingual Polish so that post by MDAO touched very close to base.
 
^ great thread idea.

perhaps you could outline, for the layperson, what linguistics is and why it interests you? are you considering a speciality or is your interest more general. why is linguistics important and what kinds of careers do linguistics graduates go on to have?

alasdair
 
Zyggy, I have some questions about teaching ESL. I'm assuming you're in the US --- what kind of certification did you need to do it? After I get my Masters I was thinking about doing it for a few years just for stability and money...oh, and I also like kids, and enjoy teaching (I've done TA type things).

alasdairm, and anyone else --- Linguistics is the study of language. All of us get annoyed when we say we're linguists and someone asks how many languages we can speak. We study languages --- their syntax (sentence structure), morphology (how different 'pieces' of words that have meaning are put together to mean other things), phonology (sounds in a language, and sound change), phonetics (the different sounds one can make), and semantics (meaning). This is a bit of a rough explanation, those are the general areas of linguistics though. I'm sure someone who isn't laying in bed hungover wanting to talk Linguistics will elaborate for me.

Jamshyd --- very awesome! I'm very into maps as well...recently getting into my GPS and geocaching. I also like old maps, its interesting to compare how the world has changed. My favorite crowd-pleasing Linguistics map is the one with different terms for the carbonated beverage that I happen to call soda...where I'm at for school, it's "pop", and it opened a semantic bag of worms for sure. Historical linguistics, I doubt I'll ever use academically, its more of a hobby --- it really got me into German, which is where lots of the historical research had begun anyway. I think Reconstruction is a whole lot of fun...then again, I have debated more than once writing a local newspaper to put some sort of problem in at least once a week --- wouldn't you LOVE to Reconstruct a Proto- Papua New Guinea language, or break down the morphemes of a polymorphemic Native American language, over your morning cup of coffee as well? It would sure as hell beat a crossword puzzle anyday, haha.
 
Question:
what type of part of speech is "what"? How about "how"? "That", etc.?

In intro linguistics, my prof claimed that this was a zone of on-going controversy.

Ziggy said:
Does anyone think that our brains are more wired for a specific kind of language, like a prototype language?

mmmm...I'd say 'mostly not'. I'm pretty taken with Chomsky's LAD...it seems that we're 'wired' to interpret spoken phonemes in terms of a framework that lays out the structure that all languages share...but I don't think that this innate structure could produce language without some social learning.

papa said:
I mean, our internal monologue is in a spoken language, right?

Some people claim that theirs isn't.

I've heard that the language areas have a distinct architecture from the rest of the brain, like missing a cortical layer. SO cool.

Yup. There is even an area specific to reading and writing (forgetting where...angular gyrus?
I forget what else it tends to be involved in...keeping in mind that most human cultures throughout history lacked written word.

jamshyd said:
I am quite fond of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, btw.

Me too (my cog. linguistics course was taught by someone who did research on it, and I opted to do my term-paper on his work (a very risky way to kiss ass:))). However, I'm not sure of how true it is. In non-linguistic functional tasks, people seem to categorize colors similarly, regardless of how their native language does. On the other hand, the type of linguistic conceptualization of spatial relationships appears to shape how people think of spatial relationships non-linguistically (Eric Pederson....forgot the year).

And yet, for all that's worth, it is well-known that Semitic Languages (I can speak especially for Arabic) are "Technologically Challenged", meaning that the very mechanism that can be employed to create countless layers of meaning is itself limiting when it comes to integrating new things

Please explain (I'm intrigued (or I'd like to hear your beginning explanation elaborated))

ebola
 
Zyggy, I have some questions about teaching ESL. I'm assuming you're in the US --- what kind of certification did you need to do it? After I get my Masters I was thinking about doing it for a few years just for stability and money...oh, and I also like kids, and enjoy teaching (I've done TA type things).

alasdairm, and anyone else --- Linguistics is the study of language. All of us get annoyed when we say we're linguists and someone asks how many languages we can speak. We study languages --- their syntax (sentence structure), morphology (how different 'pieces' of words that have meaning are put together to mean other things), phonology (sounds in a language, and sound change), phonetics (the different sounds one can make), and semantics (meaning). This is a bit of a rough explanation, those are the general areas of linguistics though. I'm sure someone who isn't laying in bed hungover wanting to talk Linguistics will elaborate for me.

Jamshyd --- very awesome! I'm very into maps as well...recently getting into my GPS and geocaching. I also like old maps, its interesting to compare how the world has changed. My favorite crowd-pleasing Linguistics map is the one with different terms for the carbonated beverage that I happen to call soda...where I'm at for school, it's "pop", and it opened a semantic bag of worms for sure. Historical linguistics, I doubt I'll ever use academically, its more of a hobby --- it really got me into German, which is where lots of the historical research had begun anyway. I think Reconstruction is a whole lot of fun...then again, I have debated more than once writing a local newspaper to put some sort of problem in at least once a week --- wouldn't you LOVE to Reconstruct a Proto- Papua New Guinea language, or break down the morphemes of a polymorphemic Native American language, over your morning cup of coffee as well? It would sure as hell beat a crossword puzzle anyday, haha.

I'd rather reconstruct an obsolete branch of Indo-European, but I guess it's a matter of taste :).

Re: ESL, I can actually answer some of your questions since I'm an ESL teacher too.

If you're planning on travelling and teaching, your university degree should alone suffice. At this time, the general requirement is a university degree + TESOL certification; or a university degree in English, Education, or Linguistics. That said, taking a TESOL certificate never hurts as it puts you in front of the class rather than in it, for once.
 
Please explain (I'm intrigued (or I'd like to hear your beginning explanation elaborated))

ebola

For sure.

Since (a potentially infinite amount of) new words are created by manipulating already-established roots, if something absolutely cannot be represented by an already-existing root, it would be very difficult to include it in the language in such a way that it obeys the grammatical rules of words formed by roots.

A popular example in Arabic is the word "Computer". There are no semitic roots to express the whole concept of a computer since, understandably. Therefore, the word strictly used to describe "computer" in Arabic (ħasib) actually means "Calculator" and in fact there is no way to differentiate between the two.

As such, for the most part, these words are incorporated as loan words (so an "Arabized" word "computer" is instead used). But because of their rootless nature, they are frozen and are not very flexible for grammatical manipulation.

In a way, one can say that Semitic languages (Arabic in particular) are ossified and incapable of integrating paradigm shifts. That said, I do not know what the trouble is in creating an entirely new trilateral root to express new concepts, but then again I am hardly an expert on Arabic Grammar - a subject so deep that "Grammarian" is actually still a scholarly title under which Ph.D. theses are still produced. Basically, one requires hardly a high-school proficiency in Classical Arabic to read a newspaper, and therefore almost all (even the educated) of Arabic speakers are only at that level at best, since the colloquial Arabic of a given area (generally mutually-unintelligible with the Classical and therefore strictly-speaking another language altogether) usually suffices for daily communication.

p.s. Re: your question about "what", "how", and "that" - the answer will differ depending on whether you're looking for a prescriptive or a descriptive answer - the former the realm of grammarians, the latter of linguists.
 
I'd rather reconstruct an obsolete branch of Indo-European, but I guess it's a matter of taste :).

Re: ESL, I can actually answer some of your questions since I'm an ESL teacher too.

If you're planning on travelling and teaching, your university degree should alone suffice. At this time, the general requirement is a university degree + TESOL certification; or a university degree in English, Education, or Linguistics. That said, taking a TESOL certificate never hurts as it puts you in front of the class rather than in it, for once.


The obsolete branches of Indo European are fun as well --- sometimes I like venturing off into other language families I know less about though. Regardless, I see someone else who would enjoy a Reconstruction problem in their morning paper =P

I will have a Masters in Linguistics after the next year and a half...I think I need to look more into TESOL certification. I'm not sure what my masters focus will be, lately I've been leaning more towards psycholinguistics and something that will allow me to do research. The teaching thing is more of something that's always been in the back of my head...ah, I don't know, I'm 22, have a Bachelor's degree, and really like linguistics...I'm at such a confusing place in my life right now 8)
 
^ Well, I believe you're in the US. I don't know if it is the same there, but here in Canada, many who take linguistics do so to go on to... whatchamacallit. I forgot. Teaching people how to speak, basically. lol. There is a lot of money to be that way, and only a select few are privileged enough to be accepted into the program.
 
Hmm, speaking of Canada, many of my teachers are Canadian as well... I'm in the US, but I'm in Buffalo, NY where Canada is about 15 minutes away. Linguists do all kinds of things, maybe a government job or something might be interesting too. I want to make money, and be happy, and I need to figure out how exactly to go about doing that...prolonging school is just a distraction, really.
 
One idea I've read that I find fascinating, is the theory that all words evolved from onomatopoeia (imitations of natural sounds with our voices). According to this theory, just as limestone is formed slowly from the accumulated and compacted shells of dead marine mollusks, language is formed slowly from accumulations of former onomatopoeia, whose meanings have shifted countless times.

That reminds me of something I realized very recently: that the words for "mother" and "father" are similar in many, completely unrelated languages. Typically, they are short, with simple phonologies that a baby's immature vocal apparatus would have no trouble with....

My big interest in linguistics is extinct languages--especially as-yet undeciphered isolate scripts (Rongorongo, Indus Valley scripts, and especially Linear A (Minoan)). I really hope I live long enough to see some genius decipher Linear A (the maven of Linear B himself, Ventris, was supposed to make it his next project, before he was tragically killed in an accident), even though the scripts are probably the boring Bronze Age equivalents of stock tickers (incidentally, like Linear B tablets). ;)
 
That reminds me of something I realized very recently: that the words for "mother" and "father" are similar in many, completely unrelated languages. Typically, they are short, with simple phonologies that a baby's immature vocal apparatus would have no trouble with....

Sure. 'Mama' and 'papa' are simply the physically easiest way to stop air from escaping the mouth (the bilabial consonants m and p), with the vocalization that's heard when the rest of the pharynx is held relaxed (the vowel 'ah'), repeated, as many baby sounds are. :)

There's a number of very interesting proto-words that seem to be common to most human language families. 'Tik' for finger or the number one, is one I've read about.

My big interest in linguistics is extinct languages--especially as-yet undeciphered isolate scripts (Rongorongo, Indus Valley scripts, and especially Linear A (Minoan)). I really hope I live long enough to see some genius decipher Linear A (the maven of Linear B himself, Ventris, was supposed to make it his next project, before he was tragically killed in an accident), even though the scripts are probably the boring Bronze Age equivalents of stock tickers (incidentally, like Linear B tablets). ;)

Forgive me if I've asked you this before, but what are your thoughts on the Voynich Manuscript?
 
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