It is commonly accepted that men and women communicate very differently. This is, after all, the basic premise of bestseller books like John Gray’s Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus and Deborah Tannen’s You Just Don’t Understand. We’ve all heard the stereotypical claims, for example, that women are more talkative, or that men are less prone to gossip. The idea that men and women speak different languages has become almost a dogma, backed up with countless examples of studies. Yet to what extent—if at all—are these stereotypes accurate? In a closer look at the pseudo-science behind the arguments, we find conclusions that are biased by presuppositions about men and women and their use of language. We must deconstruct and examine these past theorizations, then, in order to recognize the prejudices and biases of our society and reach an accurate understanding of the gender differences in language use. A critical examination of the research reveals that it is primarily the cultural and societal constructions of gender—the contemporary ideas on masculinity and femininity—that create these differences in linguistic usage.
Regarding terminology, the discussion will focus on the word “gender” rather than “sex”; the latter refers to a strictly biological and generally binary distinction, while the difference in language use is a result of the socially constructed categories of male and female. The word “gender,” then, is more appropriate as it refers to the social behaviors, expectations, and attitudes associated with being male or female. In terms of cultural distinctions, the discussion will center around Western society and English-speaking countries.
There is a long history of society’s finding differences in the speech of men and women; from the Middle Ages on, there are records of these beliefs about the differences in the areas of vocabulary, swearing, grammar, and verbosity. In terms of vocabulary, it was believed that women used a much smaller variety of words, instead relying more heavily on adverbial forms. In 1756, Lord Chesterfield observed, “[Women] take a word and change it…to be employed in several occasional purposes of the day. For instance, a fine woman is vastly obliged or vastly offended, vastly glad or vastly sorry. Large objects are vastly great, small ones are vastly little…” (Coates 11). Centuries later, linguist Otto Jespersen reaffirmed this assertion, agreeing that men’s vocabulary was more varied than women’s. He included a chapter called “The Woman” in his book Language: Its Nature, Development, and Origin; in it, he generalizes that “the vocabulary of a woman as a rule in much less extensive than that of a man” (Coates 12). In terms of swearing, it was believed that women’s language was more polite and refined; the idea of the ladylike gentlewoman was pervasive in the courtly tradition of the Middle Ages and persisted through the centuries. An article in a journal in 1754 asserts, “D--n [sic] my blood is of Male extraction, and Pshaw, Fiddlestick I take to be female” (Coates 15); the more taboo swear words (the author does not dare even write out the full word!) are associated with men’s language, while the gentler expressions are associated with women’s language. 200 years later, linguist Robin Lakoff made the same observation, claiming, “women don’t use off-color or indelicate expressions” (Coates 15). There were also distinctions made between women’s grammar as opposed to men’s; observations on language claimed that women were more prone to grammatical incorrectness. In 1713, for example, Richard Steele noted women’s “negligence in grammar” and Lord Chesterfield remarked in 1741, “most women…speak in open defiance of all grammar” (Coates 17). Jespersen specifically claimed that women were fond of the more “primitive” parataxis form (a sequence of juxtaposed clauses with no links), while men constructed sentences based on the hypotaxis form (composed of sequences of clauses joined by subordinating conjunctions), which he considered more intricate and complex. Finally, the perception of women’s volubility has persisted throughout time. Even in Shakespeare’s As You Like It from the early 17th century, the character of Rosalind declares, “Do you not know I am a woman? When I think, I must speak.” This idea was restated and reaffirmed over the years; in the 20th century, Jespersen again noted women’s “common fluency of speech” (Coates 25).
There are a variety of problems with accepting such claims, even as accurate portrayals of the observers’ contemporary societies. For one thing, the majority of the recorded commentaries on differences were written by men in an androcentric society; the comments, then, reflect more clearly the ideas of their times in terms of gender roles. Jennifer Coates goes so far as to suggest that in their views on women and swearing, for example, “these writers claim to describe women’s more polite use of language, but we should ask whether what they are actually doing is attempting to prescribe how women ought to talk” (Coates 15). In 1980, scholar Dale Spender took this idea further; having conducted research that indicated men’s greater verbosity, Spender suggested, “The talkativeness of women has been gauged in comparison not with men, but with silence” (Spender 42) as an explanation of the gap between the myth and reality of women’s talk. Her radical assertion proposed that when silence was the desired state for women, “then any talk in which a woman engages can be too much” (Spender 42). In support of her argument are all the images of the silent woman as a virtuous woman: an old English proverb stating “Silence is the best ornament of a woman”; the Latin proverb, “A silent woman is always more admired than a noisy one”; the rhyme, “Maidens should be mild and meek/ Swift to hear and slow to speak”…The list of such adages is long; the model of the silent woman is a pervasive one. Furthermore, dialectologists, who did carry out scientific studies and could have contributed more objective observations on gender differences in language, often failed to fairly represent women in their surveys. Looking at data surveys reveals an uneven pattern of sampling; in a survey of English dialects in the 1900’s, women were only interviewed in a few of the counties, and even then, only a small percentage of them were included. The prejudices of androcentricity are evident; we must then look skeptically at old theories of language differences.
And yet stereotypes today, although perhaps less androcentric, continue to tinge our perceptions of men and women’s speech. A study conducted in 1990 investigated the influence of speaker gender on a listener’s judgment of speaker verbosity. In the study, a dialogue from a play where each person contributed equal amounts of speech was recorded, and then replayed with the gender of the speakers being switched. It turned out that “when the dialogue was between a man and a woman, the woman was judged to be talking more than her conversation partner who was a man. When members of the same gender performed the dialogue, then each speaker was judged as contributing to the conversation equally” (Weatherall 125). A similar study conducted the same years asked participants to rate written scenarios describing communicative behaviors attributed to “Michael” or “Valerie.” Ultimately, the communicative behavior was judged as more competent when the speaker was male. In both cases, the studies reveal the extent to which people’s perceptions are prejudiced by their stereotypical and cultural beliefs about gender and speech.
In fact, these preconceptions have directed much of how researchers have even approached the question of language differences in the field of sociolinguistics. In 1975, Lakoff first generated interest with her publication of Language and Women’s Place, galvanizing linguists into research, and since then, research has generally taken four different forms: the deficit approach, the dominance approach, the difference approach, and the social constructionist approach. The first makes claims about female language as being an inferior version of male language, implying that there is something intrinsically wrong with it. Jespersen’s writing is an example of the deficit approach (although the term had not yet been coined); in “The Woman,” he wrote that women’s deficiency in language stemmed from their “incoherent sentences,” “inferior command of syntax,” and “less extensive vocabulary” (Litosesseliti 28). The dominance approach interprets linguistic differences in speech in terms of man’s dominance and women’s subordination. Lakoff pioneered this dominance approach through her explanation that “women are socialized into using linguistic features that connote tentativeness, deference, and a lack of authority, because women occupy a marginal and powerless social position” (Weatherall 65). In contrast, the difference approach does not inherently suggest inferiority or superiority in men and women’s language, but only emphasizes the idea that they belong to different and separate subcultures. Linguist Jennifer Coates suggests that this approach became more popular in the 1980’s as a “direct result of women’s growing resistance to being treated as a subordinate group” (Coates 6). The fourth approach is the most recent, and sees gender identity as a social construct rather than a given social category; this dynamic approach focuses on what is being done with language, rather than its quality and style.
Yet conducting research with the deficit, dominance, or difference approach results in biased results. All three presuppose the conclusion, as data is analyzed though the lens of preset social expectations. In fact, Jespersen’s argument was based solely on intuition, rather than empirical research; he recognized in women’s speech that which he wanted to recognize. In following these approaches, social scientists interpret data by focusing on those elements which match their expectations of women’s language, whether these expectations focus on inferiority or simply difference. Furthermore, this scientific methodology closely observed speakers’ conversational pattern and strategies, but was generally blind to specific social and economic patterns. As a result, the deficit and dominance approach often confused gender and power; Lakoff, for example, contended that interruptions, a conversational strategy understood to signal power, were more often found in men’s speech than in women’s. One of her studies related that men interrupted more than women in an office meeting. Yet in 1978, a closer examination of this study by Barbara and Gene Eakins revealed that the pattern of interruptions was “almost perfectly correlated with a hierarchy of status based on rank and length of time in that department” (Weatherall 65). It was status, rather than gender, which accounted for the quantity of interruptions. And several years later, researchers William O’Barr and Bowman Atkins suggested that even the idea of “women’s language” itself was a misnomer; the correct term should be “powerless language,” as the features described by Jespersen and Lakoff were not functions of gender but functions of power found in the speech of men and women. In contrast, the difference approach has the advantage of allowing women’s speech to be examined outside this framework of deficiency or powerlessness; however, the analysis remains mired in preconceived notions. Because so much of raw data is ambiguous or unclear, approaching it with the expectation that there will be a difference in the speech of men and women can result in inaccurate conclusions, however subconsciously or subtly these expectations influence the analysis.
Finding flaws in studies that find language differences, however, does not exclude the possibility that the differences may exist. And in fact, modern sociolinguist research has shown variation in the speech of men and women—and has also shown that the variation is inexorably tied up with gender identity. These differences are revealed in studies that aim to examine the correlation between linguistic variation and other variables; gender then becomes a stratified variable within the study and is thus less biased by expectations of difference. These studies allow for a more complex look at gender as just one factor in linguistic variation, and provide a more accurate—if less clear-cut—idea of the differences.
The clearest and most consistent results in terms of differences relate to men and women’s use of standard versus non-standard forms of speech. (The standard form is the one designated as the language of formal written English, and is also known as the prestige form, associated as it is with social group of the highest social standing; the non-standard is often referred to as the vernacular.) The principle, as stated by linguist Richard Hudson, posits that, “In any society where males and females have equal access to the standard form, females use standard variants of any stable variable which is socially stratified for both sexes more often than males do” (Gregoire). The qualification is significant; women’s access to the standard forms through education and the professional world was limited in earlier times. This gender/prestige correlation is thus strictly contemporary.
Jenny Cheshire’s 1982 study, in Reading, England attests to this correlation in her examination of the relationship between use of grammatical variables and adherence to peer group culture by adolescent boys and girls. She distinguished eleven various non-standard morphological and syntactic features in their speech. These included using ain’t instead of the auxiliary have or to be and the non-standard use of has (“you has to do it”) and was (“you was with me”). In terms of frequency, she found that although there was large variation among the individuals, the non-standard forms were all used less often by the girls than by the boys (Cheshire).
Yet there have also been studies which directly contradict this theory (and these results); research conducted in other communities in Britain (notably in Belfast and Wales) revealed that it was the women who were closer to the vernacular. What, then, are we to conclude? Examining the studies more closely reveals the importance of other variables in accounting for this linguistic variation. For Cheshire found that those who conformed the most to a group were most loyal to the vernacular of the group—and the boys who were most tightly linked to a group conformed linguistically most of all. The greater prominence of the vernacular in the tight-knit groups can be explained by the idea that the vernacular—as a non-standard and different way of speech—both creates and reflects the closeness of a group as it establishes the group as a separate subculture. Cheshire also found that within the more formal school context, girls’ use of non-standard forms decreased more sharply than the boys. As Coates theorizes, the girls’ less cohesive groups in this circumstance meant that “they are less under pressure from the group to use vernacular form, and consequently more exposed to the prestige norms of Standard English valued by institutions such as school” (Coates 81). This suggests that it was the tight-knit social network of the boys which served to maintain the vernacular speech norms. The counter-examples of Belfast and Wales reinforce this idea. Researcher Lesley Milroy developed a system of giving each person, male and female, a Network Strength Score (based on individuals in the community’s knowledge of other people in the community, the workplace and at leisure activities) and investigated the correlation between the integration of individuals in the community and the way those individuals speak. What she found was that a high Network Strength Score correlated with a greater use of the vernacular; the women in these communities had stronger network ties, which were related in the homogeneity of their (non-standard) linguistic forms. Studying this added variable—the social networks—reveals the extent to which gender identity can be manipulated; the linguistic differences here are shown to be contingent on social factors, rather than a reflection of biological differences in men and women.
The same idea applies to another claim of linguistic differences between men and women: the use of hedges in women’s speech. Hedges are linguistic forms (such as “I think,” “you know,” or “like”) expressing a speaker’s uncertainty or used as a mitigating device to lessen an utterance’s impact; various studies have shown that women use significantly more hedges than do men (Coates 90). A 1986 study conducted by Bent Preisler, for example, recorded both mixed-sex and single-sex groups discussing controversial topics such as corporal punishment. His analysis showed that the women in the sample—both in the mixed-sex and single-sex groups—used incorporated more hedges into their speech. Here again, however, there are other variables that could be influencing the linguistic form. In a study of courtroom language of 1980, O’Barr and Atkins found that the greatest linguistic differences between witnesses (defined specifically by ten features—including hedges—that they had judged characteristic of women’s language) was dependent more on the speaker’s social status and previous court experience than on the speaker’s gender (Weatherall 65). Again, the gender identity can be manipulated, as power and status are reversed.
The previous examples have shown that linguistic differences are primarily the result of the social circumstances. Examining the linguistic differences between men and women with the idea that they reflect the differing social constructs, then, reveals a great deal about contemporary gender identity. For example, men’s tendency to interrupt more frequently than women during mixed-sex conversations, for example, suggests an inequity of power in conversation. While the Eakins’ study (see above) showed that the interruptions during the meeting reflected status more than it did gender, linguistic research has found that women in general interrupt less than men do; looking at these two results together suggests that women’s status is generally lower—although status in this case may not be defined strictly in employment terms. Specifically, Candace West and Don Zimmerman’s 1983 analysis of thirty-one conversations between two participants showed a profound difference between interruptions in same-sex versus in mixed-sex conversations; this difference emphasizes that the linguistic differences between men and women are not inherent or fixed, but rather reflect the socially sanctioned relations of dominance and submission between men and women. That is, men and women are not biologically programmed to interrupt more or less; rather, the men could adjust their speaking patterns when they approached a different sociological situation. In the thirty-one conversations—ten between two women, ten between two men, and eleven between one man and one woman—West and Zimmerman found that although the total number of interruptions in the twenty single-sex conversations was only seven, there were forty-eight interruptions in the eleven coed conversations—96% of which were caused by the man interrupting the woman; these results are confirmed by other research looking at interruptions. The fact that men’s rate of interruptions increased significantly during conversations with women indicate that “men infringe women’s right to speak, specifically women’s right to finish a turn” (Coates 115). Preventing the speaker from finishing his turn, while gaining a turn for himself, the interruptor clearly asserts his dominance; men’s greater use of interruptions places them in the dominant role.
In the case of interruptions, we learn more about the allocation of power between men and women; research findings on further linguistic differences—from style to form to quantity—can be further analyzed in this way to better understand the social construct of gender. For the reality is that we cannot help but carry our notions of what it means to be masculine or feminine wherever we go. The theory behind stereotype threat is testimony to this idea that our engrained social perceptions directly impact our behavior; the research on the stereotype threat effect indicates that when a person’s social identity is attached to a negative stereotype, the person will perform negatively “in a manner consist with the stereotype” (Steele). For example, when test administrators told women that certain math tests showed no gender differences, women performed equal to men, while those who were told nothing did significantly worse than men. Unless they were specifically directed otherwise, the women’s abilities were influenced by their preconceptions about gender and mathematic performance
The stereotype threat effect, then, only reinforces how powerful our judgments and ideas about identity are in shaping our behavior. And language is one of the most revealing modes of behavior in expressing and reflecting these ideas, especially as they relate to gender. For although it is easy to criticize the existence of linguistic variation as it was described in the past, reflective as the views are of an androcentric society, modern research conducted outside the frame of a dominance or deficit approach continues to show the existence of variation: women’s greater use of the standard forms and of hedges and men’s greater use of interruptions are only a few examples of such differences. And the manipulation of these linguistic devices when status is reversed or social circumstances change attests to the social identities inherent in our definitions of the masculine and feminine genders that create the differences. For the world we live in sends us messages about the different gender roles from the moment we are born, and how we use language is a direct result of this socialization.
Cheshire, Jenny. “Sex and Gender in Variationist Research.” 7 December, 2007. http://alpha.qmul.ac.uk/~uglv003/sex%20and%20gender.pdf
Coates, Jennifer. Women, Men, and Language. 3rd ed. Pearson Education Ltd: London, 2004.
Grégoire, Suzanne. “Gender and Language Change: The Case of Early Modern Women.” 9 December 2007. http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~cpercy/courses/6362-gregoire.htm 2006
Holmes, Janet. Women, Men, and Politeness. Longman Publishing: New York: 1995.
Litosseliti, Lia. Gender & Language: Theory and Practice. Oxford University Press: New York, 2006.
Spender, Dale. Man Made Language. 4th ed. Rivers Oram Press: London, 1998.
Steele, C. M. A threat in the air: How stereotypes shape intellectual identity and performance. American Psychologist, 52, 613-619. 1997
Weatherall, Ann. Gender, Language, and Discourse. MPG Books, Ltd: Cornwall, 2002.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Connections Between Language and Intelligence
In a blog from a few weeks ago, I discussed aphasia, the disorder in which there is damage done to certain portions of the brain affecting the ability to use language; the disorder can impair both the expression and understanding of language, as well as reading and writing. But there’s another type of disorder that Steven Pinker discusses in The Language Instinct which seems to do precisely the opposite. Whereas aphasia impairs language, but seems to leave the rest of intelligence more or less intact, individuals suffering from Williams syndrome have good language skills, but bad cognition.
Williams syndrome is a rare genetic condition associated with a defective gene on a chromosome, resulting in this specific form of retardation. Those who suffer from it are generally especially articulate and eloquent and able to speak with fluent grammatical language. In fact, they are much better conversationalists than the average person and incorporate sophisticated vocabulary into their speech.
And yet their IQ is typically between 50 and 70, low enough to qualify them as moderately to mildly retarded. They tend to have limited spatial skills and motor control, and cannot understand mathematical concepts. In fact, virtually no individual with Williams syndrome is living alone; they cannot deal with demands of everyday life. Education psychologist Eleanor Semel comments that in schools, “Educators are confused because the Williams syndrome child tests like the retarded child, talks like a gifted child, behaves like a disturbed child, and functions like a learning-disabled child."
The existence of disorders like aphasia and Williams syndrome—a case in which language is impaired but intelligence is intact and a case in which language is intact but intelligence is impaired—seems to show that intelligence and language are not necessarily interconnected, which may suggest (as Pinker believes to be the case) that the ability to use language is based in our biology, not in our training.
But focusing solely on the Williams syndrome provides further possible insights as to the workings of the brain. Given our discussions in class about the possible connection between language and music , it’s interesting that children with the syndrome generally exhibit “savant-like musical skill”; it seems as though the fact that both their language and music skills remain intact—actually, more than just intact, but heightened—while their intelligence is affected is testimony to the interconnection between the two in the brain.
Using brain scans to compare the brains of affected and unaffected individuals, researchers found that
“cells in the primary visual cortex of carriers of the Williams deletion are smaller and more densely packed -- allowing for fewer connections between cells. Neurons in the primary auditory cortex, on the other hand, were larger and loosely packed, denoting increased connectedness." They believe that it is this greater connectedness of the auditory cortex that leads to increased skill in areas involving auditory phonology in individuals with Williams syndrome.
Apart from better than average skills in discerning music, people with Williams have exuberant personalities and love company and conversation; they talk a lot, and with everyone. They have no difficulty approaching anyone and starting a conversation. Whereas the amygdala (the brain’s main fear processor) shows heightened activity when most of us see angry or worried faces, it shows no reaction when a person with Williams views such faces. As journalist David Dobbs says, “It’s as if they see all faces as friendly.”
Studying the brains of people with Williams shows that while their dorsal areas (the area along the back and top of brain that is thought to be involved with mathematics, vision, and space) are severely underdeveloped, their ventral areas (the area along the front and bottom of the brain that is thought to be involved in language, emotion, and social drive) are unusually rich in synaptic connections. Again, in terms of interconnectivity in the brain, then, it seems as though our social instincts and ability to use language are related—which perhaps reflects the fact that the more effectively we use language, the better we can navigate and communicate in society.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/10/061003191006.htm
http://www.nasw.org/finn/ws.html
http://eands.caltech.edu/articles/LXVI3/genetics.html
The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker
Williams syndrome is a rare genetic condition associated with a defective gene on a chromosome, resulting in this specific form of retardation. Those who suffer from it are generally especially articulate and eloquent and able to speak with fluent grammatical language. In fact, they are much better conversationalists than the average person and incorporate sophisticated vocabulary into their speech.
And yet their IQ is typically between 50 and 70, low enough to qualify them as moderately to mildly retarded. They tend to have limited spatial skills and motor control, and cannot understand mathematical concepts. In fact, virtually no individual with Williams syndrome is living alone; they cannot deal with demands of everyday life. Education psychologist Eleanor Semel comments that in schools, “Educators are confused because the Williams syndrome child tests like the retarded child, talks like a gifted child, behaves like a disturbed child, and functions like a learning-disabled child."
The existence of disorders like aphasia and Williams syndrome—a case in which language is impaired but intelligence is intact and a case in which language is intact but intelligence is impaired—seems to show that intelligence and language are not necessarily interconnected, which may suggest (as Pinker believes to be the case) that the ability to use language is based in our biology, not in our training.
But focusing solely on the Williams syndrome provides further possible insights as to the workings of the brain. Given our discussions in class about the possible connection between language and music , it’s interesting that children with the syndrome generally exhibit “savant-like musical skill”; it seems as though the fact that both their language and music skills remain intact—actually, more than just intact, but heightened—while their intelligence is affected is testimony to the interconnection between the two in the brain.
Using brain scans to compare the brains of affected and unaffected individuals, researchers found that
“cells in the primary visual cortex of carriers of the Williams deletion are smaller and more densely packed -- allowing for fewer connections between cells. Neurons in the primary auditory cortex, on the other hand, were larger and loosely packed, denoting increased connectedness." They believe that it is this greater connectedness of the auditory cortex that leads to increased skill in areas involving auditory phonology in individuals with Williams syndrome.
Apart from better than average skills in discerning music, people with Williams have exuberant personalities and love company and conversation; they talk a lot, and with everyone. They have no difficulty approaching anyone and starting a conversation. Whereas the amygdala (the brain’s main fear processor) shows heightened activity when most of us see angry or worried faces, it shows no reaction when a person with Williams views such faces. As journalist David Dobbs says, “It’s as if they see all faces as friendly.”
Studying the brains of people with Williams shows that while their dorsal areas (the area along the back and top of brain that is thought to be involved with mathematics, vision, and space) are severely underdeveloped, their ventral areas (the area along the front and bottom of the brain that is thought to be involved in language, emotion, and social drive) are unusually rich in synaptic connections. Again, in terms of interconnectivity in the brain, then, it seems as though our social instincts and ability to use language are related—which perhaps reflects the fact that the more effectively we use language, the better we can navigate and communicate in society.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/10/061003191006.htm
http://www.nasw.org/finn/ws.html
http://eands.caltech.edu/articles/LXVI3/genetics.html
The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker
Monday, December 3, 2007
An Intentionally Beautiful Language
In last week’s blog, I talked about the origins of Spanish; today, I want to discuss the origins of modern-day Italian, because it has a really a cool history.
While Italy is like Spain—and like multiple other European countries—in that the basis of its language is essentially derived from Latin, Italian evolved in a very intentional way. Because Italy wasn’t unified until much later than the other European countries, but rather existed as separate city-states for centuries, the dialects of each region were significantly different—to the extent that inhabitants of the different city-states could barely communicate with each other. There were no overarching leaders—like Ferdinand and Isabella in Spain—to standardize the Italian language.
In the 16th century, then, a group of intellectuals in Italy decided to create one unified Italian language. But they didn’t just want to arbitrarily choose a specific dialect to impose upon the rest of the country, or choose the dialect from the most powerful or prominent region—they wanted to choose the most beautiful dialect. The language they chose was the language of Florentine poet Dante Alighieri, who had written The Divine Comedy in 1321, and was virtually the first intellectual to not write in Latin. Although Dante based his writing on the Florentine dialect he heard, the result was not purely Florentine; Dante put his own poetic abilities into the language. Elizabeth Gilbert explains that he wrote The Divine Comedy “in terza rima, triple rhyme, a chain of rhymes with each rhyme repeating three times every five lines, giving his pretty Florentine vernacular what scholars call a ‘cascading rhythm.’”
As she points out, the equivalent of this would be “if a group of Oxford dons had sat down one day in the early 19th century and decided that—from this point forward—everybody in England was going to speak pure Shakespeare. And it actually worked.“
Although—as Autumn noted in her blog—it’s difficult (and maybe impossible) to determine the “beauty” of a language since it’s such a subjective judgment, this makes me think that there can be a certain objectivity in discerning beauty; some sounds are more pleasing to us than others. Shakespeare, for example, wrote his plays in iambic pentameter, a rhythm which specifically mimics the heart beat, and so moves us more than regular prose. So I think we can—to an extent—judge the beauty of a language by its flow and rhythm, the same way some music (Beethoven, Mozart) is judged as beautiful almost universally.
Actually, researchers have found that some languages are more euphonious (definition: pleasing to the ear; pleasant-sounding, mellifluous, lyrical, soothing, harmonious) than others. Supposedly, babies turn more towards vowel sounds than towards consonant sounds; languages that incorporate the vowels more (or that have more words than end in vowels) are perceived as gentler and more pleasing. In contrast, more people find languages that are heavy on consonants and gutturals (like Hebrew) harsher and more cacophonous. Yet I am wary of suggesting that a language’s beauty has much sociological effect…The mere beauty of a language cannot inspire beautiful thoughts (and this probably has more to do with the idea of universal mentalese, which goes beyond language).
http://www.101languages.net/italian/history.html
http://books.google.com/books?id=q94FAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA241&lpg=PA241&dq=italian+language+dante&source=web&ots=coUimRa8vu&sig=DIYfHYUm1M3PQbV9ZMwxcfw9XBc
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
While Italy is like Spain—and like multiple other European countries—in that the basis of its language is essentially derived from Latin, Italian evolved in a very intentional way. Because Italy wasn’t unified until much later than the other European countries, but rather existed as separate city-states for centuries, the dialects of each region were significantly different—to the extent that inhabitants of the different city-states could barely communicate with each other. There were no overarching leaders—like Ferdinand and Isabella in Spain—to standardize the Italian language.
In the 16th century, then, a group of intellectuals in Italy decided to create one unified Italian language. But they didn’t just want to arbitrarily choose a specific dialect to impose upon the rest of the country, or choose the dialect from the most powerful or prominent region—they wanted to choose the most beautiful dialect. The language they chose was the language of Florentine poet Dante Alighieri, who had written The Divine Comedy in 1321, and was virtually the first intellectual to not write in Latin. Although Dante based his writing on the Florentine dialect he heard, the result was not purely Florentine; Dante put his own poetic abilities into the language. Elizabeth Gilbert explains that he wrote The Divine Comedy “in terza rima, triple rhyme, a chain of rhymes with each rhyme repeating three times every five lines, giving his pretty Florentine vernacular what scholars call a ‘cascading rhythm.’”
As she points out, the equivalent of this would be “if a group of Oxford dons had sat down one day in the early 19th century and decided that—from this point forward—everybody in England was going to speak pure Shakespeare. And it actually worked.“
Although—as Autumn noted in her blog—it’s difficult (and maybe impossible) to determine the “beauty” of a language since it’s such a subjective judgment, this makes me think that there can be a certain objectivity in discerning beauty; some sounds are more pleasing to us than others. Shakespeare, for example, wrote his plays in iambic pentameter, a rhythm which specifically mimics the heart beat, and so moves us more than regular prose. So I think we can—to an extent—judge the beauty of a language by its flow and rhythm, the same way some music (Beethoven, Mozart) is judged as beautiful almost universally.
Actually, researchers have found that some languages are more euphonious (definition: pleasing to the ear; pleasant-sounding, mellifluous, lyrical, soothing, harmonious) than others. Supposedly, babies turn more towards vowel sounds than towards consonant sounds; languages that incorporate the vowels more (or that have more words than end in vowels) are perceived as gentler and more pleasing. In contrast, more people find languages that are heavy on consonants and gutturals (like Hebrew) harsher and more cacophonous. Yet I am wary of suggesting that a language’s beauty has much sociological effect…The mere beauty of a language cannot inspire beautiful thoughts (and this probably has more to do with the idea of universal mentalese, which goes beyond language).
http://www.101languages.net/italian/history.html
http://books.google.com/books?id=q94FAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA241&lpg=PA241&dq=italian+language+dante&source=web&ots=coUimRa8vu&sig=DIYfHYUm1M3PQbV9ZMwxcfw9XBc
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Spanish: A History
For today’s blog, I wanted to take a step back from language as it exists today to look at the history of specific languages. The article I chose discussed the origins of Spanish and the deviations that exist in the language. Learning about its history reveals the extent to which language is affected by the political operations taking place (conquests, etc).
Spanish originated in the Iberian Peninsula; the inhabitants learned Latin from Roman traders, settlers, administrators, and soldiers under Roman rule in 19 BCE and mixed it with their native languages (namely, Iberian, Celtic, and Carthaginian). The result is a language referred to as Vulgar Latin, which borrowed the basic models from Latin, but borrowed and added words from other languages. This remained the official language until about 719 CE, when the Moors, Arabic-speaking Islamic groups, conquered the region. As a result, Vulgar Latin expanded and changed as it borrowed many words from the Arabic dialects.
When the Christian kingdoms reconquered Moorish Spain, they carried Castilian (a dialect from the Northern Central plains that was a hybrid between Vulgar Latin and Arabic) South as they moved across Spain. In the 13th century, King Alfonso X worked to make Castilian the official language of Spain, and made his scholars write original works in Castilian and translate existing scientific, legal, and literary works into Castilian. Castilian became the written and educational standard in Spain under the rule of Isabella and Ferdinand; however, several other spoken dialects remained. The most prominent of these was Andalusian, spoken in the southern region of Spain.
The Spanish language crossed the ocean along with the Spanish explorers, conquistadors, and colonizers beginning in the 1400’s. Both the Castilian and Andalusian dialects were brought along; Castilian was used in administrative and cultural centers such as Mexico City and Lima in Peru, while the Andalusian dialect became dominant in Argentina and Central America, which were regions remote from the influence of the Spanish government's administrative centers.
The Spanish spoken in the Americas today differs from European Spanish because it borrowed many words from the languages of the indigenous peoples. These differences are reflected both in the actual words and grammar of the language. One interesting difference is the use of “vos” (meaning “you”) instead of “tu” in South American countries like Uruguay, Ecuador, and Argentina. While “vos” was once used in Castilian Spanish, it is no longer a part of the language. One explanation for this is:
“In Spain, although vos denoted high social status by those who were addressed as such (monarchs, nobility, etc.), these people never actually used the pronoun themselves since there were not any people above them in society. Those who used vos were the inferiors (lower classes and peasants). When the waves of Spanish immigrants arrived to populate the New World, they were primarily comprised of these lower classes and peasants. They would then want to raise their social status from what it was in Spain and would demand to be addressed as vos. Everyone thus became vos in the Americas, and the pronoun was transformed into an indicator of low status not only for the addresser, but also for the addressee. Conversely, in Spain today vos is still considered a highly exalted archaism that is confined to liturgy, and its use by native Spaniards is seen as deliberate archaism.”
Although this explanation sounds plausible, it does not explain why vos is barely used in Mexico or in other South American countries like Paraguay, Bolivia, and Chile.
And it’s not just the words and grammar that are different across the Spanish-speaking countries; the accent changes noticeably from place to place. Hispanic linguist Bertil Malmberg gave one explanation for the different accents in Mexico and Spain. He explained that there is a tendency in Spanish to prefer syllables that end in vowels, which leads to a weakening of final consonants. However, in Mexican Spanish, it is vowels that lose strength, while consonants are fully pronounced, which he claims is caused by the influence of English from the geographically close United States. Mexican Spanish further tends to imitate English in its tendency towards stress timing (in a stress-timed language—like English—syllables may last different amounts of time, but there is a constant amount of time on average between two consecutive stressed syllables).
It’s an interesting idea: that a language can be influenced simply by the close and ubiquitous presence of a language with different standards of pronunciation. It makes me think about my own experience as a Spanish speaker living in the US; when I speak to other Spanish speakers, they comment that my Spanish is distinct—it’s not exactly Mexican nor South American nor Castilian. I know that part of the reason for this is because although I speak Spanish at home, I don’t hear it in public or in the media, so my knowledge of regional slang is severely limited: in terms of slang and colloquialisms, I know only what I hear from my parents. But maybe another part of it is that my Spanish is influenced by the patterns of speech I hear in English?
http://media.www.signal-online.net/media/storage/paper771/news/2007/11/28/News/Spanish.Not.Your.Standard.Language-3117377.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_dialects_and_varieties
http://www.alsintl.com/languages/Spanish.shtml
Spanish originated in the Iberian Peninsula; the inhabitants learned Latin from Roman traders, settlers, administrators, and soldiers under Roman rule in 19 BCE and mixed it with their native languages (namely, Iberian, Celtic, and Carthaginian). The result is a language referred to as Vulgar Latin, which borrowed the basic models from Latin, but borrowed and added words from other languages. This remained the official language until about 719 CE, when the Moors, Arabic-speaking Islamic groups, conquered the region. As a result, Vulgar Latin expanded and changed as it borrowed many words from the Arabic dialects.
When the Christian kingdoms reconquered Moorish Spain, they carried Castilian (a dialect from the Northern Central plains that was a hybrid between Vulgar Latin and Arabic) South as they moved across Spain. In the 13th century, King Alfonso X worked to make Castilian the official language of Spain, and made his scholars write original works in Castilian and translate existing scientific, legal, and literary works into Castilian. Castilian became the written and educational standard in Spain under the rule of Isabella and Ferdinand; however, several other spoken dialects remained. The most prominent of these was Andalusian, spoken in the southern region of Spain.
The Spanish language crossed the ocean along with the Spanish explorers, conquistadors, and colonizers beginning in the 1400’s. Both the Castilian and Andalusian dialects were brought along; Castilian was used in administrative and cultural centers such as Mexico City and Lima in Peru, while the Andalusian dialect became dominant in Argentina and Central America, which were regions remote from the influence of the Spanish government's administrative centers.
The Spanish spoken in the Americas today differs from European Spanish because it borrowed many words from the languages of the indigenous peoples. These differences are reflected both in the actual words and grammar of the language. One interesting difference is the use of “vos” (meaning “you”) instead of “tu” in South American countries like Uruguay, Ecuador, and Argentina. While “vos” was once used in Castilian Spanish, it is no longer a part of the language. One explanation for this is:
“In Spain, although vos denoted high social status by those who were addressed as such (monarchs, nobility, etc.), these people never actually used the pronoun themselves since there were not any people above them in society. Those who used vos were the inferiors (lower classes and peasants). When the waves of Spanish immigrants arrived to populate the New World, they were primarily comprised of these lower classes and peasants. They would then want to raise their social status from what it was in Spain and would demand to be addressed as vos. Everyone thus became vos in the Americas, and the pronoun was transformed into an indicator of low status not only for the addresser, but also for the addressee. Conversely, in Spain today vos is still considered a highly exalted archaism that is confined to liturgy, and its use by native Spaniards is seen as deliberate archaism.”
Although this explanation sounds plausible, it does not explain why vos is barely used in Mexico or in other South American countries like Paraguay, Bolivia, and Chile.
And it’s not just the words and grammar that are different across the Spanish-speaking countries; the accent changes noticeably from place to place. Hispanic linguist Bertil Malmberg gave one explanation for the different accents in Mexico and Spain. He explained that there is a tendency in Spanish to prefer syllables that end in vowels, which leads to a weakening of final consonants. However, in Mexican Spanish, it is vowels that lose strength, while consonants are fully pronounced, which he claims is caused by the influence of English from the geographically close United States. Mexican Spanish further tends to imitate English in its tendency towards stress timing (in a stress-timed language—like English—syllables may last different amounts of time, but there is a constant amount of time on average between two consecutive stressed syllables).
It’s an interesting idea: that a language can be influenced simply by the close and ubiquitous presence of a language with different standards of pronunciation. It makes me think about my own experience as a Spanish speaker living in the US; when I speak to other Spanish speakers, they comment that my Spanish is distinct—it’s not exactly Mexican nor South American nor Castilian. I know that part of the reason for this is because although I speak Spanish at home, I don’t hear it in public or in the media, so my knowledge of regional slang is severely limited: in terms of slang and colloquialisms, I know only what I hear from my parents. But maybe another part of it is that my Spanish is influenced by the patterns of speech I hear in English?
http://media.www.signal-online.net/media/storage/paper771/news/2007/11/28/News/Spanish.Not.Your.Standard.Language-3117377.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_dialects_and_varieties
http://www.alsintl.com/languages/Spanish.shtml
Monday, November 12, 2007
Can Music Transcend Language?
At the annual Latin Grammy awards, Ricky Martin championed the power of Latin music and the Spanish language, telling reporters, “Music breaks borders and unites cultures.”
And yet the success-—or lack of—-of foreign language songs in English-speaking countries, notably the US and the UK, says otherwise. Songs that aren’t in English just don’t rate the same success. The songs of Juanes, the biggest-selling pop artist in Latin American, for example, have yet to cross over to non-Spanish speakers. While his songs play continuously on virtually every Spanish-language radio station, only a minimal percentage of non-Latin stations are playing his music.
Other Latin artists, like Shakira or Ricky Martin, who have attained popularity across the cultures, have prepared different albums for different countries, recording both in English and Spanish. And only certain types of songs are able to cross-over: the biggest recent hits belong to Daddy Yankee with "Rompe" in 2006 and, prior to that, "Gasolina." As the article points out, “both are reggaeton tracks, synonymous with danceable.” And “the last big Spanish-language hit on mainstream U.S. radio was ‘Macarena,’ the queen of easy-to-dance-to tracks. That was a decade ago.”
Of Juanes, a British article states, “He's now trying to extend his popularity to the UK, with his album Mi Sangre (My Blood). His label, Polydor, has big plans for him, convinced our sceptical island is ready to welcome him as our continental neighbours have. But there's one thing Polydor seems to have forgotten - the British don't buy records not sung in English.”
My thoughts on this? I’ve always thought that music lyrics must be the hardest thing to translate; it’s where the gap between languages appears most sharply. In music, lyrics have to be perfectly fitted to the rhythm of the song (down to the number of syllables) and have a certain appealing sound; the words are so important for the song’s meaning. The word choice radically affects the song’s tone, and there are certain expressions in each language that will not survive literal translation. The translations end up sounding just silly, as in the case of Chinese singer Jay Chow, whose song titles translate to “Hair Like Snow” and “Romantic Mobile Phone.” So it was gratifying to read that Juanes refuses to compromise the integrity of his songs by translating them into English for the different market.
As well, the fact that songs in English achieve popularity in other countries whereas foreign language music doesn’t fare as well in English-speaking countries speaks to the connection between language and culture. There are a lot of factors that could be involved in the disparate rates of success: the US’ role as a major player in the world of entertainment, the attitudes of the Americans and the British towards all things foreign (an ingrained perceived cultural superiority?), the ubiquity of the English language all over the world. So music has to overcome far more than the language barrier in order to truly cross cultures!
http://www.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idUSN0938009720071110
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/filmandmusic/story/0,,1757374,00.html
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.htmlres=9F0CE7DD163EF93AA2575AC0A965958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all
And yet the success-—or lack of—-of foreign language songs in English-speaking countries, notably the US and the UK, says otherwise. Songs that aren’t in English just don’t rate the same success. The songs of Juanes, the biggest-selling pop artist in Latin American, for example, have yet to cross over to non-Spanish speakers. While his songs play continuously on virtually every Spanish-language radio station, only a minimal percentage of non-Latin stations are playing his music.
Other Latin artists, like Shakira or Ricky Martin, who have attained popularity across the cultures, have prepared different albums for different countries, recording both in English and Spanish. And only certain types of songs are able to cross-over: the biggest recent hits belong to Daddy Yankee with "Rompe" in 2006 and, prior to that, "Gasolina." As the article points out, “both are reggaeton tracks, synonymous with danceable.” And “the last big Spanish-language hit on mainstream U.S. radio was ‘Macarena,’ the queen of easy-to-dance-to tracks. That was a decade ago.”
Of Juanes, a British article states, “He's now trying to extend his popularity to the UK, with his album Mi Sangre (My Blood). His label, Polydor, has big plans for him, convinced our sceptical island is ready to welcome him as our continental neighbours have. But there's one thing Polydor seems to have forgotten - the British don't buy records not sung in English.”
My thoughts on this? I’ve always thought that music lyrics must be the hardest thing to translate; it’s where the gap between languages appears most sharply. In music, lyrics have to be perfectly fitted to the rhythm of the song (down to the number of syllables) and have a certain appealing sound; the words are so important for the song’s meaning. The word choice radically affects the song’s tone, and there are certain expressions in each language that will not survive literal translation. The translations end up sounding just silly, as in the case of Chinese singer Jay Chow, whose song titles translate to “Hair Like Snow” and “Romantic Mobile Phone.” So it was gratifying to read that Juanes refuses to compromise the integrity of his songs by translating them into English for the different market.
As well, the fact that songs in English achieve popularity in other countries whereas foreign language music doesn’t fare as well in English-speaking countries speaks to the connection between language and culture. There are a lot of factors that could be involved in the disparate rates of success: the US’ role as a major player in the world of entertainment, the attitudes of the Americans and the British towards all things foreign (an ingrained perceived cultural superiority?), the ubiquity of the English language all over the world. So music has to overcome far more than the language barrier in order to truly cross cultures!
http://www.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idUSN0938009720071110
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/filmandmusic/story/0,,1757374,00.html
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.htmlres=9F0CE7DD163EF93AA2575AC0A965958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all
Thursday, November 8, 2007
A (Literally) Backwards Language
It was refreshing to read about the street-slang culture of France, because I definitely have a view of the French as being snobbish about the purity of their language (especially hearing about others’ experiences in France!) But a newly produced slang dictionary called the “Lexik des cites” is now being hailed as a cultural achievement in France. The dictionary was created by ten men and women from southern Paris and translates caillera, which is the mix of old argot, Arabic, black American, African, Creole, and Romany primarily spoken by the minority low-income populations.
The article gave some examples of these slang words:
kéblo: inhibited (reverse form of bloqué, or blocked)
bellek: look out (from African Arabic)
un meskin: poor sod (from Arabic meaning of poor; means ungenerous in standard French)
un flow: smooth talker (from US rap)
un frolo: boy (from the film The Hunchback of Notre Dame)
kalech: skint (from old Parisian calèche, a wagon to the poor house)
It’s surprising to see the diversity of sources from which the words are derived; the language seems to be culled from across geographical, historical, cultural, and social spheres.
One of these sources is verlan, a popular slang in which standard French spellings or syllables are reversed or recombined, or both. For example, “Bonjour, ça va?" or "Good day, how are you?" becomes "Jourbon, ça av?"And the word Verlan itself is a Verlanization of the term l'envers, meaning "the reverse.”
This language—for I would argue that Verlan has become a language—has a really interesting history. The first documented use of Verlan dates back to the 19th century, when it was used as a code language among criminals. But it was revived in France's banlieus, the peripheral areas outside major cities, where the government built high-rise housing for its immigrant worker population after World War II, and which later became home to many North African workers in the 1960’s and 70’s. These second generation immigrants of the banlieus were thus caught between cultures: they were born in France, but did not feel integrated into France, living in an area that had been intentionally built apart from the mainstream society. So Verlan became “a way of their establishing their language and their own distinct identity.” Verlan then spread across the other immigrant groups of the banlieus, mainly sub-Saharan Africans and Caribbean blacks, becoming the “speech of the disenfranchised,” as anthropologist Vivienne Mela puts it. It further served as a way of connecting these different groups who didn’t have a common language.
From the banlieus, Verlan was discovered by mainstream French in the 1980's after a series of major riots brought the problems of the immigrant housing to the attention of most French; the language became more popular after the publication of several books and productions of movies about life in the banlieus. Its popularity—especially with young liberals—can be explained by the fact that the language had a subversive element: it both became a metaphor of opposition and the counter-culture, and represented solidarity with and awareness of the immigrant community. Today, Verlan has gained widespread popularity among young people across France, seeping into film dialogue, advertising campaigns, French rap and hip-hop music, and even making it into some of the country's leading dictionaries.
And, interestingly, Verlan has become a way for the French to speak about more taboo topics, such as race, ethnicity, and sex. Natalie Lefkowitz, a professor of French applied linguistics, says that, “Verlanizing words changes their tone and meaning.” The Verlanized words for Arab, black or Jew, for example, "allow you to mark racial and culture differences without insulting people.” And a recent study documented about 350 Verlan terms, which tended to cluster around taboo topics. It’s as though the remnants of illicitness and informality that surround Verlan gives the speakers a sense that the words carry less weight and makes it easier to discuss these topics. But maybe it also has to do with the identity of the speakers; Verlan is most widely spoken by young people, who—independently of Verlan—have different vocabularies (both in content and form) from those of older generations.
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article2827616.ece
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~cskarocz/french370/boumkoeur/verlan.html
The article gave some examples of these slang words:
kéblo: inhibited (reverse form of bloqué, or blocked)
bellek: look out (from African Arabic)
un meskin: poor sod (from Arabic meaning of poor; means ungenerous in standard French)
un flow: smooth talker (from US rap)
un frolo: boy (from the film The Hunchback of Notre Dame)
kalech: skint (from old Parisian calèche, a wagon to the poor house)
It’s surprising to see the diversity of sources from which the words are derived; the language seems to be culled from across geographical, historical, cultural, and social spheres.
One of these sources is verlan, a popular slang in which standard French spellings or syllables are reversed or recombined, or both. For example, “Bonjour, ça va?" or "Good day, how are you?" becomes "Jourbon, ça av?"And the word Verlan itself is a Verlanization of the term l'envers, meaning "the reverse.”
This language—for I would argue that Verlan has become a language—has a really interesting history. The first documented use of Verlan dates back to the 19th century, when it was used as a code language among criminals. But it was revived in France's banlieus, the peripheral areas outside major cities, where the government built high-rise housing for its immigrant worker population after World War II, and which later became home to many North African workers in the 1960’s and 70’s. These second generation immigrants of the banlieus were thus caught between cultures: they were born in France, but did not feel integrated into France, living in an area that had been intentionally built apart from the mainstream society. So Verlan became “a way of their establishing their language and their own distinct identity.” Verlan then spread across the other immigrant groups of the banlieus, mainly sub-Saharan Africans and Caribbean blacks, becoming the “speech of the disenfranchised,” as anthropologist Vivienne Mela puts it. It further served as a way of connecting these different groups who didn’t have a common language.
From the banlieus, Verlan was discovered by mainstream French in the 1980's after a series of major riots brought the problems of the immigrant housing to the attention of most French; the language became more popular after the publication of several books and productions of movies about life in the banlieus. Its popularity—especially with young liberals—can be explained by the fact that the language had a subversive element: it both became a metaphor of opposition and the counter-culture, and represented solidarity with and awareness of the immigrant community. Today, Verlan has gained widespread popularity among young people across France, seeping into film dialogue, advertising campaigns, French rap and hip-hop music, and even making it into some of the country's leading dictionaries.
And, interestingly, Verlan has become a way for the French to speak about more taboo topics, such as race, ethnicity, and sex. Natalie Lefkowitz, a professor of French applied linguistics, says that, “Verlanizing words changes their tone and meaning.” The Verlanized words for Arab, black or Jew, for example, "allow you to mark racial and culture differences without insulting people.” And a recent study documented about 350 Verlan terms, which tended to cluster around taboo topics. It’s as though the remnants of illicitness and informality that surround Verlan gives the speakers a sense that the words carry less weight and makes it easier to discuss these topics. But maybe it also has to do with the identity of the speakers; Verlan is most widely spoken by young people, who—independently of Verlan—have different vocabularies (both in content and form) from those of older generations.
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article2827616.ece
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/~cskarocz/french370/boumkoeur/verlan.html
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Editing Our Speech
Because the process of speaking involves so many complex processes, we’re bound to mess up occasionally. But our brains actually have a sort of editing process in place to correct our mistakes. Psycholinguist Willem Levelt discusses how speech perception interacts with speech production; he states that the type of feedback our brain receives involves:
Am I saying what I meant to say?
Is this the way I meant to say it?
Is what I am saying socially appropriate?
Am I selecting the right words?
Am I using the right syntax and morphology?
Am I making any phonological errors?
Is my articulation at the right speed and pitch?
He postulates that, “The major feature of editor theories is that production results are fed back through a device that is external to the production system. This device can be distributed in the sense that it can check in-between results at different levels of processing. The editor may, for instance, monitor the construction of the preverbal message, the appropriateness of lexical access, the well-formedness of syntax, or the flawlessness of phonological-form access.”
While I agree that editing monitors all levels of speech—when I’m speaking, I may realize I’ve pronounced a word wrong, or chosen the wrong word, or phrased something the wrong way (all of which involve different levels of the speech production process)—I don’t really understand the idea of this device as something external. Does he mean it is physically separate in the brain from our language production center? Or chronologically separate (it gets involved only after we have begun to speak)? Or is the device simply a neurologically different process from that of the speech production process?
Researcher Claudy Oomen explains that Levelt saw speech production as comprised of three stages—conceptualization, formulation, and articulation (which is basically a less compartmentalized view than the speech production levels described in the previous blog)—and saw the monitoring mechanism as proceeding through perception, so speakers can detect their own speech errors “by parsing their inner and overt speech in the same way.” That is, the mechanism is active in correction both before and after articulation. Levelt presents the idea of a “flow-through monitor”—one that allows the production process to continue while the conceptual/inner loop monitoring is taking place (so errors detected before articulation can still become overt).
But another hypothesis presents the idea that monitoring is “an integral part of the production process, allowing direct access to the various processing components of speech production” (like lexical selection); this hypothesis suggests that if an error is detected during any of the stages of the speech production process, further processing is canceled while the error is repaired, all before articulation. This model includes a sensory register model for checking overt speech.
Other linguists have pursued Levelt’s idea of a feedback system; one researcher developed a technique of replaying a person's speech to that person's own ears, subject to a variable time delay. From his studies, he came to the conclusion of a multiple loop control hierarchy, with four levels of feedback:
The Thought Loop: The highest level feedback loop monitors the pragmatic appropriacy of the output.
The Word Loop: The second highest loop monitors speech production for word selection accuracy.
The Voice Loop: The third highest loop monitors speech production at whole-syllable level for morphological accuracy.
The Articulating Loop: Finally, the lowest loop monitors speech production checking that the right phonemes have been used within each syllable.
This "loop" system seems logical; it corresponds to the stages proposed in the speech production model. Although it's important to remember that the speech production model itself is just that--a model. As Lera noted in class, it is only one way of explaining our language system. And in terms of the editing mechanisms, it’s interesting to see the different models proposed to explain our system for correcting our speech; the ones I’ve presented are only two of many! The existence of all these different hypothesized models is further testimony to the difficulty inherent in giving definitive answers to questions about how our brain processes and uses language.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/m761760977386125/fulltext.pdf
http://www.smithsrisca.demon.co.uk/speech-errors.html
Am I saying what I meant to say?
Is this the way I meant to say it?
Is what I am saying socially appropriate?
Am I selecting the right words?
Am I using the right syntax and morphology?
Am I making any phonological errors?
Is my articulation at the right speed and pitch?
He postulates that, “The major feature of editor theories is that production results are fed back through a device that is external to the production system. This device can be distributed in the sense that it can check in-between results at different levels of processing. The editor may, for instance, monitor the construction of the preverbal message, the appropriateness of lexical access, the well-formedness of syntax, or the flawlessness of phonological-form access.”
While I agree that editing monitors all levels of speech—when I’m speaking, I may realize I’ve pronounced a word wrong, or chosen the wrong word, or phrased something the wrong way (all of which involve different levels of the speech production process)—I don’t really understand the idea of this device as something external. Does he mean it is physically separate in the brain from our language production center? Or chronologically separate (it gets involved only after we have begun to speak)? Or is the device simply a neurologically different process from that of the speech production process?
Researcher Claudy Oomen explains that Levelt saw speech production as comprised of three stages—conceptualization, formulation, and articulation (which is basically a less compartmentalized view than the speech production levels described in the previous blog)—and saw the monitoring mechanism as proceeding through perception, so speakers can detect their own speech errors “by parsing their inner and overt speech in the same way.” That is, the mechanism is active in correction both before and after articulation. Levelt presents the idea of a “flow-through monitor”—one that allows the production process to continue while the conceptual/inner loop monitoring is taking place (so errors detected before articulation can still become overt).
But another hypothesis presents the idea that monitoring is “an integral part of the production process, allowing direct access to the various processing components of speech production” (like lexical selection); this hypothesis suggests that if an error is detected during any of the stages of the speech production process, further processing is canceled while the error is repaired, all before articulation. This model includes a sensory register model for checking overt speech.
Other linguists have pursued Levelt’s idea of a feedback system; one researcher developed a technique of replaying a person's speech to that person's own ears, subject to a variable time delay. From his studies, he came to the conclusion of a multiple loop control hierarchy, with four levels of feedback:
The Thought Loop: The highest level feedback loop monitors the pragmatic appropriacy of the output.
The Word Loop: The second highest loop monitors speech production for word selection accuracy.
The Voice Loop: The third highest loop monitors speech production at whole-syllable level for morphological accuracy.
The Articulating Loop: Finally, the lowest loop monitors speech production checking that the right phonemes have been used within each syllable.
This "loop" system seems logical; it corresponds to the stages proposed in the speech production model. Although it's important to remember that the speech production model itself is just that--a model. As Lera noted in class, it is only one way of explaining our language system. And in terms of the editing mechanisms, it’s interesting to see the different models proposed to explain our system for correcting our speech; the ones I’ve presented are only two of many! The existence of all these different hypothesized models is further testimony to the difficulty inherent in giving definitive answers to questions about how our brain processes and uses language.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/m761760977386125/fulltext.pdf
http://www.smithsrisca.demon.co.uk/speech-errors.html
Thursday, November 1, 2007
On the Tip of the Tongue
In other blogs, I’ve written about how speech disorders, production errors, and hesitation phenomena provide information on what happens in our minds when we are speaking. But linguist Paul Georg Meyer claims that “the most revealing errors…are the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon.”
The TOT (tip-of-the-tongue) state is one familiar to everyone; it’s when we can’t seem to find a particular word that seems just out of our reach. We more or less know the word we want to say, but can’t bring it all the way to consciousness. Linguistics Harley and Brown describe the phenomenon as a moment when a person has been able to successfully access the abstract lemma* through semantic specification, and yet is unable to access the corresponding phonological word form.
It’s easy to induce this phenomenon artificially, which allows linguists to analyze our struggle for the right word. What the experiments showed is that people’s ability to recall specific words improved when they were provided with phonologically related words. Based on their experiments, researchers James and Burke theorized that language retrieval depends on memory of both a word’s meaning and its sound. Their Transmission Deficit Model they created based upon their research states that language production “depends on the strength of connections within a network that includes conceptual and phonological levels.” The theory suggests that TOTs occur when semantic, but not phonological nodes, receive adequate activation. That is, we may know the exact meaning, but if we can’t recall the sound, we cannot articulate—or even think of—the word.
This idea is more revolutionary than it may sound. For years, the traditional idea was that TOTs arose because words with similar sounds actually blocked the target word from coming through. This is more intuitive to us because it matches our experience of what TOTs feel like. Whenever I can’t think of a word, there’s always another word that repeatedly keeps coming to mind instead; it definitely feels as though this alternate word is preventing me from being able to attain my target word!
Because TOTs are generally induced by definitions of low-frequency words, it suggests that there is insufficient consolidation of the memory; the word has not been used often enough for our brain to store it within easy reach. The disuse of a word, then, seems to cause a weaker connection between its phonological and semantic forms (since we are relieved from the TOT state only when we are prompted with similar sounding words; the external prompting internally rebuilds that connection), and thus a lesser facility for language. Lera’s idea that language is not inherently instinctive—it is only our ability to learn language that is inherent—fits in with all of this; language is something we have the potential to learn and make better, but also something that is damaged by disuse.
* Lemma signifies the "headword" (or "citation form") of an entry in a glossary (for example, the lemma go consists of go together with goes, going, went, and gone)
Oh, and just something random and interesting: based on the theory that TOTs occur when phonological modes do not receive adequate activation, as well as the fact that depression affects cognition in terms of net reduction in cognitive processing resources, researchers conducted an experiment to test whether depressed people experience more TOT’s, reasoning that depressives would be more likely to experience inadequate activation of phonological modes. Their conclusion? Depressed individuals do, in fact, experience more TOT’s.
http://www.smithsrisca.demon.co.uk/speech-errors.html
http://books.google.com/books?id=I2hXL8WClNUC&pg=PA254&lpg=PA254&dq=tip+of+the+tongue+phenom+linguistic&source=web&ots=KQVww7-ITp&sig=rBkcbzbly9uGrhUob-lCvHDQGmo
http://www.apa.org/releases/tot.html
http://www.apa.org/monitor/nov00/sw.html
http://arxiv.org/html/cs.CL/0103002
http://www.puc.edu/Faculty/Aubyn_Fulton/fulton/research/tot97.htm
The TOT (tip-of-the-tongue) state is one familiar to everyone; it’s when we can’t seem to find a particular word that seems just out of our reach. We more or less know the word we want to say, but can’t bring it all the way to consciousness. Linguistics Harley and Brown describe the phenomenon as a moment when a person has been able to successfully access the abstract lemma* through semantic specification, and yet is unable to access the corresponding phonological word form.
It’s easy to induce this phenomenon artificially, which allows linguists to analyze our struggle for the right word. What the experiments showed is that people’s ability to recall specific words improved when they were provided with phonologically related words. Based on their experiments, researchers James and Burke theorized that language retrieval depends on memory of both a word’s meaning and its sound. Their Transmission Deficit Model they created based upon their research states that language production “depends on the strength of connections within a network that includes conceptual and phonological levels.” The theory suggests that TOTs occur when semantic, but not phonological nodes, receive adequate activation. That is, we may know the exact meaning, but if we can’t recall the sound, we cannot articulate—or even think of—the word.
This idea is more revolutionary than it may sound. For years, the traditional idea was that TOTs arose because words with similar sounds actually blocked the target word from coming through. This is more intuitive to us because it matches our experience of what TOTs feel like. Whenever I can’t think of a word, there’s always another word that repeatedly keeps coming to mind instead; it definitely feels as though this alternate word is preventing me from being able to attain my target word!
Because TOTs are generally induced by definitions of low-frequency words, it suggests that there is insufficient consolidation of the memory; the word has not been used often enough for our brain to store it within easy reach. The disuse of a word, then, seems to cause a weaker connection between its phonological and semantic forms (since we are relieved from the TOT state only when we are prompted with similar sounding words; the external prompting internally rebuilds that connection), and thus a lesser facility for language. Lera’s idea that language is not inherently instinctive—it is only our ability to learn language that is inherent—fits in with all of this; language is something we have the potential to learn and make better, but also something that is damaged by disuse.
* Lemma signifies the "headword" (or "citation form") of an entry in a glossary (for example, the lemma go consists of go together with goes, going, went, and gone)
Oh, and just something random and interesting: based on the theory that TOTs occur when phonological modes do not receive adequate activation, as well as the fact that depression affects cognition in terms of net reduction in cognitive processing resources, researchers conducted an experiment to test whether depressed people experience more TOT’s, reasoning that depressives would be more likely to experience inadequate activation of phonological modes. Their conclusion? Depressed individuals do, in fact, experience more TOT’s.
http://www.smithsrisca.demon.co.uk/speech-errors.html
http://books.google.com/books?id=I2hXL8WClNUC&pg=PA254&lpg=PA254&dq=tip+of+the+tongue+phenom+linguistic&source=web&ots=KQVww7-ITp&sig=rBkcbzbly9uGrhUob-lCvHDQGmo
http://www.apa.org/releases/tot.html
http://www.apa.org/monitor/nov00/sw.html
http://arxiv.org/html/cs.CL/0103002
http://www.puc.edu/Faculty/Aubyn_Fulton/fulton/research/tot97.htm
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Examining Hesitation
After our discussion in class about the blogs, I thought I would expand on a topic I blogged about earlier instead of writing about a new one. Specifically, the topic that most interested me was about the mental processes involved in putting thoughts into words [see “The Science of Slip-ups”].
To understand what our mind does in the process, researchers analyze our speech patterns. For example, studying hesitations in speech teaches us more about psychological processing time. There are four different kinds of hesitations:
1. Pauses: further divided into filled (vocalized) and unfilled (silent) pauses
2. False starts: utterance begun and then abandoned
3. Restarts: utterance begun and restarted
4. Word lengthening: enunciation of word is stretched out past normal length
How and when a speaker hesitates in his speech reflects the psycholinguistic operations of speech production; some researchers have theorized that “hesitation pauses correspond to points of highest statistical uncertainty in the sequencing of units.” That is, the more information that is to be contained in the words to follow, the longer it takes us to put those words into speech (not surprisingly). Furthermore, hesitation pauses occur more frequently before content words instead of function words (content words are generally nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs, while function words serve to express grammatical relationships with other words). This suggests that there would be differences in hesitations between a native speaker of a language and a person who has learned it as a second language (apart from the natural differences in hesitation due to the native speaker’s obviously greater fluency!) The grammar of a language is so engrained in a native speaker’s mind that he can apply it automatically; it is the words that are more difficult, because they inherently contain more ideas—it takes longer for these words to go through the stages of processing in the mind.
To summarize, these stages are:
Semantic stage: Meaning is generated
Syntactic stage: Syntactic structure is decided upon.
Lexical stage: Content words are extracted from lexicon to give shape to the developing sentence
Prosodic stage: Appropriate intonation pattern is decided upon
Phonological stage: Function words are inserted at key points in the emerging sentence structure
Phonetic System stage: Concrete sounds formulated, muscle activation commences
The hesitations reinforce this idea of the stages of processing: the insertion of function words comes later, when there is less work to be done so speech can ensue.
Researcher Brian Butterworth did further research dealing not just with individual hesitations, but the overall proportion of hesitations to speech. What he found was that there was a mathematical relationship between fluent phases (periods marked by predominant phonation) and hesitant prases (periods marked by predominant silence); he theorized that “the amount of speech in the fluent phrase required the planning time given by the pausing in the hesitant phase.” What I was interested to learn, but couldn’t find, however, was whether the hesitant phases differed in any significant way from the fluent phases; that is, were there more weighty ideas being conveyed in the hesitant phases, which would require greater thinking and planning? Or conversely, were there more weighty ideas being conveyed in the fluent phase, which required planning during the time period before its utterance (during the hesitant phase)?
http://www.springerlink.com/content/m75161152410247g/fulltext.pdf
http://books.google.com/booksid=8yF0Z2sO0oC&pg=PA536&lpg=PA536&dq=hesitation+linguist+filled&source=web&ots=aX-PpFkniI&sig=ZgclOkUZYH2Lwj0DY-UPy-DcJjE#PPA536,M1
http://www.gpwu.ac.jp/~rose/fprc/Definition.htm
http://banana.psychol.ucl.ac.uk/transcription/intro.html
http://www.smithsrisca.demon.co.uk/speech-errors.html
To understand what our mind does in the process, researchers analyze our speech patterns. For example, studying hesitations in speech teaches us more about psychological processing time. There are four different kinds of hesitations:
1. Pauses: further divided into filled (vocalized) and unfilled (silent) pauses
2. False starts: utterance begun and then abandoned
3. Restarts: utterance begun and restarted
4. Word lengthening: enunciation of word is stretched out past normal length
How and when a speaker hesitates in his speech reflects the psycholinguistic operations of speech production; some researchers have theorized that “hesitation pauses correspond to points of highest statistical uncertainty in the sequencing of units.” That is, the more information that is to be contained in the words to follow, the longer it takes us to put those words into speech (not surprisingly). Furthermore, hesitation pauses occur more frequently before content words instead of function words (content words are generally nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs, while function words serve to express grammatical relationships with other words). This suggests that there would be differences in hesitations between a native speaker of a language and a person who has learned it as a second language (apart from the natural differences in hesitation due to the native speaker’s obviously greater fluency!) The grammar of a language is so engrained in a native speaker’s mind that he can apply it automatically; it is the words that are more difficult, because they inherently contain more ideas—it takes longer for these words to go through the stages of processing in the mind.
To summarize, these stages are:
Semantic stage: Meaning is generated
Syntactic stage: Syntactic structure is decided upon.
Lexical stage: Content words are extracted from lexicon to give shape to the developing sentence
Prosodic stage: Appropriate intonation pattern is decided upon
Phonological stage: Function words are inserted at key points in the emerging sentence structure
Phonetic System stage: Concrete sounds formulated, muscle activation commences
The hesitations reinforce this idea of the stages of processing: the insertion of function words comes later, when there is less work to be done so speech can ensue.
Researcher Brian Butterworth did further research dealing not just with individual hesitations, but the overall proportion of hesitations to speech. What he found was that there was a mathematical relationship between fluent phases (periods marked by predominant phonation) and hesitant prases (periods marked by predominant silence); he theorized that “the amount of speech in the fluent phrase required the planning time given by the pausing in the hesitant phase.” What I was interested to learn, but couldn’t find, however, was whether the hesitant phases differed in any significant way from the fluent phases; that is, were there more weighty ideas being conveyed in the hesitant phases, which would require greater thinking and planning? Or conversely, were there more weighty ideas being conveyed in the fluent phase, which required planning during the time period before its utterance (during the hesitant phase)?
http://www.springerlink.com/content/m75161152410247g/fulltext.pdf
http://books.google.com/booksid=8yF0Z2sO0oC&pg=PA536&lpg=PA536&dq=hesitation+linguist+filled&source=web&ots=aX-PpFkniI&sig=ZgclOkUZYH2Lwj0DY-UPy-DcJjE#PPA536,M1
http://www.gpwu.ac.jp/~rose/fprc/Definition.htm
http://banana.psychol.ucl.ac.uk/transcription/intro.html
http://www.smithsrisca.demon.co.uk/speech-errors.html
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Crossing the Language Barrier Isn't Enough
With the large percentage of immigrants living in the US, many hospitals and clinics have finally begun to formalize the implementation of bilingual services to bridge the language gap. The need for such services seems so obvious; miscommunication in issues of health can be incredibly dangerous! Doctors and nurses can’t rely on just gestures or stilted and broken language to communicate complicated medical terminology or deliver life-altering diagnoses.
A lack of translation can prove fatal, as in the case of a power outage in Washington: seventeen people died from carbon-monoxide poisoning caused by indoor use of generators and charcoal grills because they could not read the equipment warnings!
So it’s almost surprising that hospitals have taken this long to offer bilingual services. But there is something special about the new language services offered in one hospital: the staff interpreters not only translate symptoms, injuries, and medical histories, “but also navigate cultural nuances, explaining patients’ superstitions or their use of herbal remedies to medical personnel.”
This seems really perceptive, because culture is so tied to language. In class, we’ve talked about how finding out someone speaks the same language as us makes us feel a special connection to them; this is due in large part to the fact that we share the same cultural background along with the same language. And in medical clinics, where trust between the patient and the health provider is so important, it’s especially important that a doctor understand the cultural background of a person in order to best treat them.
And in fact, even in the example of the equipment warnings, the problem was as much a cultural one as a language one: while brochures with instructions on how to give first aid, survive an emergency, and create a family emergency plan were translated into a variety of languages, “the problem is with more than just information…some residents don't know what a smoke alarm is, and for them, being reminded to change the battery isn't helpful.” Clearly, crossing the cultural divide is not as simple as translating from one language to another.
This is an issue that resonated with me, because my mom works as a dietitian at a medical clinic, and she always sees patients who speak Spanish or Hebrew. Her ability to speak those languages immediately builds a connection between her and the patient; they can speak to her in their native tongue, but more than that, they recognize that she’s familiar with the Mexican or Israeli foods they eat (which is so important to a discussion on nutrition!); she can relate to the entire background and culture they’re coming from.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-interpret_bd21oct21,1,1529405.story?ctrack=1&cset=true
http://www.ajol.info/viewarticle.php?jid=76&id=29452
http://sociolingo.wordpress.com/category/african-education/african-languages-and-education/
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/snohomishcountynews/2003969991_emergency24n.html
A lack of translation can prove fatal, as in the case of a power outage in Washington: seventeen people died from carbon-monoxide poisoning caused by indoor use of generators and charcoal grills because they could not read the equipment warnings!
So it’s almost surprising that hospitals have taken this long to offer bilingual services. But there is something special about the new language services offered in one hospital: the staff interpreters not only translate symptoms, injuries, and medical histories, “but also navigate cultural nuances, explaining patients’ superstitions or their use of herbal remedies to medical personnel.”
This seems really perceptive, because culture is so tied to language. In class, we’ve talked about how finding out someone speaks the same language as us makes us feel a special connection to them; this is due in large part to the fact that we share the same cultural background along with the same language. And in medical clinics, where trust between the patient and the health provider is so important, it’s especially important that a doctor understand the cultural background of a person in order to best treat them.
And in fact, even in the example of the equipment warnings, the problem was as much a cultural one as a language one: while brochures with instructions on how to give first aid, survive an emergency, and create a family emergency plan were translated into a variety of languages, “the problem is with more than just information…some residents don't know what a smoke alarm is, and for them, being reminded to change the battery isn't helpful.” Clearly, crossing the cultural divide is not as simple as translating from one language to another.
This is an issue that resonated with me, because my mom works as a dietitian at a medical clinic, and she always sees patients who speak Spanish or Hebrew. Her ability to speak those languages immediately builds a connection between her and the patient; they can speak to her in their native tongue, but more than that, they recognize that she’s familiar with the Mexican or Israeli foods they eat (which is so important to a discussion on nutrition!); she can relate to the entire background and culture they’re coming from.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-interpret_bd21oct21,1,1529405.story?ctrack=1&cset=true
http://www.ajol.info/viewarticle.php?jid=76&id=29452
http://sociolingo.wordpress.com/category/african-education/african-languages-and-education/
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/snohomishcountynews/2003969991_emergency24n.html
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
A "Language" Gene?
Clearly, the language we use influences the message we present. In the case of the article I read, the choice of words affects the accuracy of the claim.
The article reported that Neanderthals were capable of speech, shattering the traditional view that they communicated through grunts and gestures. Supposedly, this is supported by the discovery of a gene in Neanderthal DNA called FOXP2. The problem is, the journalist (and many others) labeled the gene “the language gene.” Yet to give it this name suggests that a) it is the gene that determines whether we can use language or not and b) the gene is involved in far more complex processes than is the case.
The gene’s role was determined by studying a family with an abnormal copy of the gene. The family members with this abnormal gene suffered from a severe speech disorder which left them unable to select and produce the fine movements with the tongue and lips necessary for articulation. Further studies of affected individuals reveal that a defective allele of the gene causes oro-facial problems.
The gene, then, seems to control external factors involved in the production of speech; it is the physical, motor part of speaking that is affected, rather than the ability to formulate ideas into language. Or in any case, we can infer that the gene affects only the external; we cannot yet make any claims as to its effect on the workings of our mind and on our ability to go from the semantic level to the lexical levels and beyond [see previous blog]. To call it the language gene is misleading; with our knowledge, we can only conclude that it affects the most basic part of our speech, which doesn’t involve language so much as it involves simple physical movement. Furthermore, calling it the language gene restricts all of the complex workings of language to a mutation in one gene, when we know that language must involve many more genes that influence cognitive skills. Reading about aphasia a few weeks ago made me realize how many different parts of our brain are involved in producing speech; it is the combination of all our faculties and cognitive abilities that allows us to put abstract thoughts into language.
However—to get back to the article—the discovery of this gene in Neanderthals does allow us to theorize on the evolution of language. It is possible that the fine oro-facial movements regulated by the gene actually triggered the development of language; perhaps with the ability to make distinct clear sounds, Neanderthals were more likely to attribute specific meanings to each sound, gaining mental skills in the process (of remembering the meanings of each one and choosing which one to use for a specific situation). The discussions over this so-called “language gene” reveal how interconnected the fields of linguistics and biology are; gaining a greater understanding of the evolution and development of language requires close collaboration between the two!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/20/nbrute120.xml
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,303282,00.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/10/1004_TVlanguagegene.html
http://human-brain.org/language-gene.html
http://www.evolutionpages.com/FOXP2_language.htm
The article reported that Neanderthals were capable of speech, shattering the traditional view that they communicated through grunts and gestures. Supposedly, this is supported by the discovery of a gene in Neanderthal DNA called FOXP2. The problem is, the journalist (and many others) labeled the gene “the language gene.” Yet to give it this name suggests that a) it is the gene that determines whether we can use language or not and b) the gene is involved in far more complex processes than is the case.
The gene’s role was determined by studying a family with an abnormal copy of the gene. The family members with this abnormal gene suffered from a severe speech disorder which left them unable to select and produce the fine movements with the tongue and lips necessary for articulation. Further studies of affected individuals reveal that a defective allele of the gene causes oro-facial problems.
The gene, then, seems to control external factors involved in the production of speech; it is the physical, motor part of speaking that is affected, rather than the ability to formulate ideas into language. Or in any case, we can infer that the gene affects only the external; we cannot yet make any claims as to its effect on the workings of our mind and on our ability to go from the semantic level to the lexical levels and beyond [see previous blog]. To call it the language gene is misleading; with our knowledge, we can only conclude that it affects the most basic part of our speech, which doesn’t involve language so much as it involves simple physical movement. Furthermore, calling it the language gene restricts all of the complex workings of language to a mutation in one gene, when we know that language must involve many more genes that influence cognitive skills. Reading about aphasia a few weeks ago made me realize how many different parts of our brain are involved in producing speech; it is the combination of all our faculties and cognitive abilities that allows us to put abstract thoughts into language.
However—to get back to the article—the discovery of this gene in Neanderthals does allow us to theorize on the evolution of language. It is possible that the fine oro-facial movements regulated by the gene actually triggered the development of language; perhaps with the ability to make distinct clear sounds, Neanderthals were more likely to attribute specific meanings to each sound, gaining mental skills in the process (of remembering the meanings of each one and choosing which one to use for a specific situation). The discussions over this so-called “language gene” reveal how interconnected the fields of linguistics and biology are; gaining a greater understanding of the evolution and development of language requires close collaboration between the two!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/20/nbrute120.xml
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,303282,00.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/10/1004_TVlanguagegene.html
http://human-brain.org/language-gene.html
http://www.evolutionpages.com/FOXP2_language.htm
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
The Science of Slip-Ups
It's easy to underestimate the complexity of our language production system; we generally take our ability to speak easily and fluently for granted. But think about it: the fact that we can take abstract thoughts, choose the specific words from our extensive vocabulaty, string them together into phrases, and communicate them to others--all in split seconds!--is pretty amazing.
But sometimes our system slips up. And these slip-ups can tell us a lot about the way we process and communicate our thoughts. A study done in 1968 actually identified three distinct types of errors we make. These are:
1. Sound Errors: Accident interchanges of sounds between words. For example, "heal the sick" would become "seal the hick." These mistakes are the most common.
2. Morpheme Errors: Accidental interchanges of morphemes (the smallest meaningful unit in the grammar of a language) between words. For example, "self-destruct instruction" would become "self-instruct destruction" and "creative writing" could become "creating writive."
3. Word Errors: Accidental transpositions of words. For example, "giving a present to my friend" would become "giving a friend to my present."
On a more detailed level, each of these errors could take different forms:
1. Anticipations: Where an early word is influenced by an element belonging to a later one. For example, "reading list" would become "leading list."
2. Perseverations: Where a later word is influenced by an element belonging to an earlier one. For example, "new car" becomes "new nar."
3. Deletions: Where an element is somehow totally lost. For example, "clay carrot" becomes "cay carrot."
Generally, these kinds of mistakes are known as "Spoonerisms," named for the Reverend Spooner, who was known for mixing sounds and words (he once made a toast to the queen: "Three cheers for the queer old dean!")
There is a clear same-category pattern to most error occurrences--initial consonants will interact predominantly with other initial consonants, prefixes with other prefixes, and nouns with nouns, etc--suggesting that our verbal storage and retrieval processes are organised on some sort of same-category basis. And the greater occurences of anticipations over perseverations attests to the fact that our minds run at much faster speeds than our words can follow.
Furthermore, in linguistic specialist Michael Erard's Um…: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean," he discusses what the resulting slip-up says about the programming of our mind. He asks the question: Do slips of the tongue produce real words more frequently than nonwords? If they do, it suggests that "in the rapid processes involved in thinking and speaking, a speaker inspects a word as a whole, not as a sequence of specific sounds. Thus a word that 'looks right' to the speaker-—or, more precisely, to a sort of internal editor or blunder checker—-will be cleared for pronouncing, like planes are cleared for takeoff." Apparently, studies have shown that people do, in fact, tend to make more speech errors that involve individual sounds and produce legitimate words.
While we generally call these errors "slips of the tongue," the errors are rarely actually mistakes in articulation; they are, rather, mistakes in the programming of our speech. In Victoria Fromkin's "Speech Errors as Linguistic Evidence," she describes the encoding process--from thought to pronunciation--in a series of levels. There is the semantic level, which is thinking what we want to say. Then there is the lexical level, in which the person actually selects the words he intends to actually use--but only in their root form. Then there are the morpheme and phoneme (smallest contrastive unit) levels, at which the speaker modifies the root words to construct the sentence, and finally, the motor control level, which deals with the actual utterance of the speech. It's actually impressive that we don't make more mistakes in everyday speech!
Reading about the process of translating thoughts into words makes me wonder about a couple of different things. For one, why do perseverances occur in our speech at all? Aren't we always thinking ahead to the next part of our sentences? If we are still stuck on the sounds that are involved in a previous word, doesn't this suggest that there are a lot of different processes going on simultaneously--not subsequently, as Fromkin suggests--in our mind? Because it sounds as though there must be some part of the brain that is working on what is to follow in our speech, while the other part is stuck on what we have already said.
And on a more general level, is there a significant time difference in switching from the semantic level to the lexical level when the thoughts are more complex (aka regarding philosophy, abstract ideas) than when the thoughts are more basic (like "I am hungry")?
http://books.google.com/books?id=nP_-YEFoxCkC&pg=PA162&lpg=PA162&dq=morpheme+error+example&source=web&ots=hw2AbyBJdL&sig=AzT7jXQLSh86Mf-CGkkAFJvIiR0
http://www.smithsrisca.demon.co.uk/speech-errors.html
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14036334
http://www.voanews.com/english/AmericanLife/2007-10-16-voa25.cfm
But sometimes our system slips up. And these slip-ups can tell us a lot about the way we process and communicate our thoughts. A study done in 1968 actually identified three distinct types of errors we make. These are:
1. Sound Errors: Accident interchanges of sounds between words. For example, "heal the sick" would become "seal the hick." These mistakes are the most common.
2. Morpheme Errors: Accidental interchanges of morphemes (the smallest meaningful unit in the grammar of a language) between words. For example, "self-destruct instruction" would become "self-instruct destruction" and "creative writing" could become "creating writive."
3. Word Errors: Accidental transpositions of words. For example, "giving a present to my friend" would become "giving a friend to my present."
On a more detailed level, each of these errors could take different forms:
1. Anticipations: Where an early word is influenced by an element belonging to a later one. For example, "reading list" would become "leading list."
2. Perseverations: Where a later word is influenced by an element belonging to an earlier one. For example, "new car" becomes "new nar."
3. Deletions: Where an element is somehow totally lost. For example, "clay carrot" becomes "cay carrot."
Generally, these kinds of mistakes are known as "Spoonerisms," named for the Reverend Spooner, who was known for mixing sounds and words (he once made a toast to the queen: "Three cheers for the queer old dean!")
There is a clear same-category pattern to most error occurrences--initial consonants will interact predominantly with other initial consonants, prefixes with other prefixes, and nouns with nouns, etc--suggesting that our verbal storage and retrieval processes are organised on some sort of same-category basis. And the greater occurences of anticipations over perseverations attests to the fact that our minds run at much faster speeds than our words can follow.
Furthermore, in linguistic specialist Michael Erard's Um…: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean," he discusses what the resulting slip-up says about the programming of our mind. He asks the question: Do slips of the tongue produce real words more frequently than nonwords? If they do, it suggests that "in the rapid processes involved in thinking and speaking, a speaker inspects a word as a whole, not as a sequence of specific sounds. Thus a word that 'looks right' to the speaker-—or, more precisely, to a sort of internal editor or blunder checker—-will be cleared for pronouncing, like planes are cleared for takeoff." Apparently, studies have shown that people do, in fact, tend to make more speech errors that involve individual sounds and produce legitimate words.
While we generally call these errors "slips of the tongue," the errors are rarely actually mistakes in articulation; they are, rather, mistakes in the programming of our speech. In Victoria Fromkin's "Speech Errors as Linguistic Evidence," she describes the encoding process--from thought to pronunciation--in a series of levels. There is the semantic level, which is thinking what we want to say. Then there is the lexical level, in which the person actually selects the words he intends to actually use--but only in their root form. Then there are the morpheme and phoneme (smallest contrastive unit) levels, at which the speaker modifies the root words to construct the sentence, and finally, the motor control level, which deals with the actual utterance of the speech. It's actually impressive that we don't make more mistakes in everyday speech!
Reading about the process of translating thoughts into words makes me wonder about a couple of different things. For one, why do perseverances occur in our speech at all? Aren't we always thinking ahead to the next part of our sentences? If we are still stuck on the sounds that are involved in a previous word, doesn't this suggest that there are a lot of different processes going on simultaneously--not subsequently, as Fromkin suggests--in our mind? Because it sounds as though there must be some part of the brain that is working on what is to follow in our speech, while the other part is stuck on what we have already said.
And on a more general level, is there a significant time difference in switching from the semantic level to the lexical level when the thoughts are more complex (aka regarding philosophy, abstract ideas) than when the thoughts are more basic (like "I am hungry")?
http://books.google.com/books?id=nP_-YEFoxCkC&pg=PA162&lpg=PA162&dq=morpheme+error+example&source=web&ots=hw2AbyBJdL&sig=AzT7jXQLSh86Mf-CGkkAFJvIiR0
http://www.smithsrisca.demon.co.uk/speech-errors.html
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14036334
http://www.voanews.com/english/AmericanLife/2007-10-16-voa25.cfm
Monday, October 15, 2007
Reviving a (Divided) Language
For a language spoken fluently by only about 300 people, the Cornish language (spoken in Cornwall in Southwest England) has provoked more than its share of controversy.
A brief history first:
A language that began as a variation of the Welsh language around the 7th century CE, Cornish disappeared from everyday use at the end of the 19th century. At the beginning of the 20th century, a man named Henry Jenner began reading medieval Cornish plays and became interested in reviving the language. To this end, he spent many years travelling all over Cornwall interviewing Cornish speakers, learning Cornish from them and studying any Cornish texts he could find. In 1904, he published a "Handbook of the Cornish language," a textbook aiming to teach the language. His work sparked others' interest, and a man named Robert Nance reconstructed a version of Cornish he called Unified Cornish. This was the language promoted by the Cornish Language Board in the later 20th century. Yet as this version of the language grew more widespread, people began to notice inaccuracies and shortcomings of the language. The creation of several different versions followed. These are:
Phonemic (or Common) Cornish: Based on Medieval Cornish manuscripts, with phonetic spelling system
Modern Cornish: English-based orthography, somewhat simple grammar, language contains certain amount of English vocabulary
Unified Cornish Revised: Spelling somewhat regularized, but traditional orthographic practices of medieval scribes maintained (the first edition of the New Testament in Cornish was published in UCR in 2002)
The problem is that the existence of these differences created a divisive controversy, which threatened the Cornish language's ability to be fully revived. The differences between the various versions of Cornish are not huge and do not actually prevent speakers from communicating with one another; however, when Cornish was added to the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages and became eligible to receive funding to promote the language, it was necessary to consolidate the differences into one unified language.
But on October 14, 2007, a commission of learned experts ruled that all of the forms were valid, and an independent arbitrator was appointed to take the three or more forms of the language and create one single official written form.
My reactions to this issue?
Reading about the different forms of the language reminded me of a question we keep coming back to in class: how do you distinguish between a language and a dialect? I came up with a tenuous answer: People who speak the same language, but different dialects, can communicate with each other, if only imperfectly. People who speak different languages cannot communicate. It's the same sort of idea that is used in biology to define different species, as opposed to different variations of animals in the same species; animals of different species cannot mate.
I also thought it was interesting to learn about the methods of reviving a language; it seems like an uphill battle in today's increasingly globalized world. Hebrew is an example of a language that was revived extremely successfully--but the situation was pretty unique; with the creation of Israel, Hebrew was made the official language, and students were required to learn it in school. Furthermore, the general idea was that it was absolutely necessary for citizens to speak Hebrew in order to create a unified Israeli community. Without such intense conditions, it seems unlikely that a real revival can ever occur. (By a real revival, I mean that the language is revived to the extent that a person can be mono-lingual in that language, and never need another language to get along in society). And while in Cornwall, it has become more common to see signs posted in both English and Cornish, there is no real urgent motivation for the new generations to learn Cornish fluently--or actually use it as a way to communicate.
Finally, I'm curious to learn about how the "independent arbitrator" will consolidate the different forms the language. How will he decide which version is better or more valid?
http://www.cornish-language.org/english/faq.asp
http://www.guardian.co.uk/britain/article/0,,2191378,00.html#article_continue
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/cornish.htm
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/ben_yehuda.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornish_language
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cornwall/4092664.stm
A brief history first:
A language that began as a variation of the Welsh language around the 7th century CE, Cornish disappeared from everyday use at the end of the 19th century. At the beginning of the 20th century, a man named Henry Jenner began reading medieval Cornish plays and became interested in reviving the language. To this end, he spent many years travelling all over Cornwall interviewing Cornish speakers, learning Cornish from them and studying any Cornish texts he could find. In 1904, he published a "Handbook of the Cornish language," a textbook aiming to teach the language. His work sparked others' interest, and a man named Robert Nance reconstructed a version of Cornish he called Unified Cornish. This was the language promoted by the Cornish Language Board in the later 20th century. Yet as this version of the language grew more widespread, people began to notice inaccuracies and shortcomings of the language. The creation of several different versions followed. These are:
Phonemic (or Common) Cornish: Based on Medieval Cornish manuscripts, with phonetic spelling system
Modern Cornish: English-based orthography, somewhat simple grammar, language contains certain amount of English vocabulary
Unified Cornish Revised: Spelling somewhat regularized, but traditional orthographic practices of medieval scribes maintained (the first edition of the New Testament in Cornish was published in UCR in 2002)
The problem is that the existence of these differences created a divisive controversy, which threatened the Cornish language's ability to be fully revived. The differences between the various versions of Cornish are not huge and do not actually prevent speakers from communicating with one another; however, when Cornish was added to the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages and became eligible to receive funding to promote the language, it was necessary to consolidate the differences into one unified language.
But on October 14, 2007, a commission of learned experts ruled that all of the forms were valid, and an independent arbitrator was appointed to take the three or more forms of the language and create one single official written form.
My reactions to this issue?
Reading about the different forms of the language reminded me of a question we keep coming back to in class: how do you distinguish between a language and a dialect? I came up with a tenuous answer: People who speak the same language, but different dialects, can communicate with each other, if only imperfectly. People who speak different languages cannot communicate. It's the same sort of idea that is used in biology to define different species, as opposed to different variations of animals in the same species; animals of different species cannot mate.
I also thought it was interesting to learn about the methods of reviving a language; it seems like an uphill battle in today's increasingly globalized world. Hebrew is an example of a language that was revived extremely successfully--but the situation was pretty unique; with the creation of Israel, Hebrew was made the official language, and students were required to learn it in school. Furthermore, the general idea was that it was absolutely necessary for citizens to speak Hebrew in order to create a unified Israeli community. Without such intense conditions, it seems unlikely that a real revival can ever occur. (By a real revival, I mean that the language is revived to the extent that a person can be mono-lingual in that language, and never need another language to get along in society). And while in Cornwall, it has become more common to see signs posted in both English and Cornish, there is no real urgent motivation for the new generations to learn Cornish fluently--or actually use it as a way to communicate.
Finally, I'm curious to learn about how the "independent arbitrator" will consolidate the different forms the language. How will he decide which version is better or more valid?
http://www.cornish-language.org/english/faq.asp
http://www.guardian.co.uk/britain/article/0,,2191378,00.html#article_continue
http://www.omniglot.com/writing/cornish.htm
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/ben_yehuda.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornish_language
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cornwall/4092664.stm
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
The Case for Linguistic Determinism
We go off on a lot of different tangents in this class, but the main question we keep coming back to is: Does language shape the way we think? (That's the title of the seminar, after all!) I definitely don't propose to answer that question in one blog post. But here's an interesting article (not recent--it's from 2004) I found that can help make the case that how we speak does, in fact, affect the way we think.
There is a hunter-gatherer tribe in Brazil called the Piraha, whose language contains only words for the numbers one and two; for all other numbers, a word that simply signifies "many" is used. Psychologists then conducted a study in which they gave tribe members a variety of counting tasks. For example, a random number of familiar objects were laid out in a row in front of them, and the Piraha were asked to lay out the same number of objects from their own pile of objects. The result? "For one, two and three objects, members of the tribe consistently matched Gordon’s pile correctly. But for four and five and up to ten, they could only match it approximately, deviating more from the correct number as the row got longer." The fact that they did not match the number of objects is not definitive in determining whether or not they can count. Or instead, maybe the experiment can show that they cannot count according to our definition of counting--but does that mean that there is something inherently different in their brains? Or is counting something less basic, less indicative of the way we think?
The experiment seems to provide strong support for the idea that our thoughts are shaped by our language; because the Piraha did not have words for larger numbers, they could not differentiate between rows of four and rows of five. However, there are also a lot of other explanations for this phenomenon, which have a lot to do with the fact that the Piraha have such a different culture. For one thing, coming up with the equivalent number of objects may not have seemed very important to them. Also, they may not be used to doing such tasks. The fact that they did not match the number of objects is not definitive in determining whether or not they can count. Or instead, maybe the experiment can show that they cannot count according to our definition of counting--but does that mean that there is something inherently different in their brains? Or is counting something less basic, less indicative of the way we think?
[http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6303.html]
I'd love to find out about more experiments that attempt to find out more about the influence of languags, but it seems as though although the question is widely debated, only a small number of experiments on the topic have been done. (Actually, one of the links that came up while I was searching for this was Lera's, which referenced experiments showing that "the extent to which Mandarin–English bilinguals think about time vertically is related to how old they were when they first began to learn English" and "Mandarin speakers tended to think about time vertically even when they were thinking for English.")
[http://http-server.carleton.ca/~jlogan/PSYC4704/BORODITSKY2001.pdf]
There is a hunter-gatherer tribe in Brazil called the Piraha, whose language contains only words for the numbers one and two; for all other numbers, a word that simply signifies "many" is used. Psychologists then conducted a study in which they gave tribe members a variety of counting tasks. For example, a random number of familiar objects were laid out in a row in front of them, and the Piraha were asked to lay out the same number of objects from their own pile of objects. The result? "For one, two and three objects, members of the tribe consistently matched Gordon’s pile correctly. But for four and five and up to ten, they could only match it approximately, deviating more from the correct number as the row got longer." The fact that they did not match the number of objects is not definitive in determining whether or not they can count. Or instead, maybe the experiment can show that they cannot count according to our definition of counting--but does that mean that there is something inherently different in their brains? Or is counting something less basic, less indicative of the way we think?
The experiment seems to provide strong support for the idea that our thoughts are shaped by our language; because the Piraha did not have words for larger numbers, they could not differentiate between rows of four and rows of five. However, there are also a lot of other explanations for this phenomenon, which have a lot to do with the fact that the Piraha have such a different culture. For one thing, coming up with the equivalent number of objects may not have seemed very important to them. Also, they may not be used to doing such tasks. The fact that they did not match the number of objects is not definitive in determining whether or not they can count. Or instead, maybe the experiment can show that they cannot count according to our definition of counting--but does that mean that there is something inherently different in their brains? Or is counting something less basic, less indicative of the way we think?
[http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn6303.html]
I'd love to find out about more experiments that attempt to find out more about the influence of languags, but it seems as though although the question is widely debated, only a small number of experiments on the topic have been done. (Actually, one of the links that came up while I was searching for this was Lera's, which referenced experiments showing that "the extent to which Mandarin–English bilinguals think about time vertically is related to how old they were when they first began to learn English" and "Mandarin speakers tended to think about time vertically even when they were thinking for English.")
[http://http-server.carleton.ca/~jlogan/PSYC4704/BORODITSKY2001.pdf]
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Language Differences Between Men & Women
We've all heard that men and women communicate very differently; there are multiple books that discuss this difference. The basic premise of most of these pseudo-scientific books (pseudo-scientific because the research, in general, does not follow the scientific method) contend that women talk more than men, that they are more verbally skilled, and that "men's way of using language is competitive...whereas women's use of language is cooperative."
[http://books.guardian.co.uk/extracts/story/0,,2181069,00.html]
The accuracy of these statements is questionable. We tend to accept these statements as true, because they fit in with a certain stereotype of the sexes. But most of the research studies investigating the language patterns of men and women are based on the presumption that there is a difference. Then "if a study finds a significant difference between male and female subjects, that is considered to be a "positive" finding, and has a good chance of being published. A study that finds no significant differences is less likely to be published."
In any case, I was more curious specifically about the language itself; that is, in learning whether men and women actually speak using different vocabularies. I found that the vocabularies do differ in certain areas. For example, women have larger color vocabularies than do men. An experiment conducted to test this point showed several results:
1. Women use fancier words than men.
2. Younger men use fancier words than older men.
3. All the women have similar size vocabularies except the nuns, who use fewer fancy words than the other women.
It seems very clear, then, that it is society which largely affects our language. If the women know and use more colors because they spend more time on colour-related activities (such as choosing clothes), the nuns who were more cloistered from societal pressures would naturally not know as many colors.
Other experiments reveal that men's and women's speech "differ with respect to the use of swear words and euphemisms."
[http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~ear/Sex-Related_Colour.htm]
This all seems pretty intuitive; it seems obvious that the society we live in gives men and women different roles, which consequently impacts how we speak. But in other societies, the reasons for the speech difference are less obvious. About one tenth of the vocabulary is different for women than for men in the language of the Caribbeans of the small Antilles; "the differences occur primarily in kinship terms, names for parts of the body, and also in isolated words such as friend, enemy, joy, work, war, house, garden, bed, poison, tree, sun, moon, sea, and earth."
There are also differences in phonetics between men and women. In a Mongoloid tribe in northeast Siberia, women "tend to substitue ts for ch and tsts for tk and chh" so that the same word may sound entirely different when said by a man and by a woman. And interestingly, there are also sometimes grammatical differences in the speech of men and women. In the speech of the Chiquito of Bolivia, there are certain gender distinctions in the language itself: men use feminine construction for feminine nouns and masculine construction for masculine nouns, while the women use feminine constructions in all cases regardless of gender.
[http://www.jstor.org/view/0362515x/ap060020/06a00040/4?frame=noframe&userID=ab423cfc@stanford.edu/01c054500d005024027&dpi=3&config=jstor]
Why do these differences exist? And does the fact that they exist most strikingly in the more "primitive" languages suggest that the differences between men and women have gradually decreased in modern society?
The language of the Chiquito, where men and supernatural beings are grouped in one category, while women and inanimate objects are classed in another, reveals conspicuous sexism. But does the fact that women did not use this form of classification through their grammar suggest that they did not accept this degradation?
...Which leads me to another question: did these languages exist with different variations for men and women because the culture lent itself to this divide? Or did the variations appear after the formation of "root" language, as a result of the contemporary culture?
[http://books.guardian.co.uk/extracts/story/0,,2181069,00.html]
The accuracy of these statements is questionable. We tend to accept these statements as true, because they fit in with a certain stereotype of the sexes. But most of the research studies investigating the language patterns of men and women are based on the presumption that there is a difference. Then "if a study finds a significant difference between male and female subjects, that is considered to be a "positive" finding, and has a good chance of being published. A study that finds no significant differences is less likely to be published."
In any case, I was more curious specifically about the language itself; that is, in learning whether men and women actually speak using different vocabularies. I found that the vocabularies do differ in certain areas. For example, women have larger color vocabularies than do men. An experiment conducted to test this point showed several results:
1. Women use fancier words than men.
2. Younger men use fancier words than older men.
3. All the women have similar size vocabularies except the nuns, who use fewer fancy words than the other women.
It seems very clear, then, that it is society which largely affects our language. If the women know and use more colors because they spend more time on colour-related activities (such as choosing clothes), the nuns who were more cloistered from societal pressures would naturally not know as many colors.
Other experiments reveal that men's and women's speech "differ with respect to the use of swear words and euphemisms."
[http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~ear/Sex-Related_Colour.htm]
This all seems pretty intuitive; it seems obvious that the society we live in gives men and women different roles, which consequently impacts how we speak. But in other societies, the reasons for the speech difference are less obvious. About one tenth of the vocabulary is different for women than for men in the language of the Caribbeans of the small Antilles; "the differences occur primarily in kinship terms, names for parts of the body, and also in isolated words such as friend, enemy, joy, work, war, house, garden, bed, poison, tree, sun, moon, sea, and earth."
There are also differences in phonetics between men and women. In a Mongoloid tribe in northeast Siberia, women "tend to substitue ts for ch and tsts for tk and chh" so that the same word may sound entirely different when said by a man and by a woman. And interestingly, there are also sometimes grammatical differences in the speech of men and women. In the speech of the Chiquito of Bolivia, there are certain gender distinctions in the language itself: men use feminine construction for feminine nouns and masculine construction for masculine nouns, while the women use feminine constructions in all cases regardless of gender.
[http://www.jstor.org/view/0362515x/ap060020/06a00040/4?frame=noframe&userID=ab423cfc@stanford.edu/01c054500d005024027&dpi=3&config=jstor]
Why do these differences exist? And does the fact that they exist most strikingly in the more "primitive" languages suggest that the differences between men and women have gradually decreased in modern society?
The language of the Chiquito, where men and supernatural beings are grouped in one category, while women and inanimate objects are classed in another, reveals conspicuous sexism. But does the fact that women did not use this form of classification through their grammar suggest that they did not accept this degradation?
...Which leads me to another question: did these languages exist with different variations for men and women because the culture lent itself to this divide? Or did the variations appear after the formation of "root" language, as a result of the contemporary culture?
Thursday, October 4, 2007
The Language Disorder
When there is damage done to certain portions of the brain, the result is a language disorder called aphasia. The disorder impairs both the expression and understanding of language as well as reading and writing.
The three most common types of aphasia are:
Broca's aphasia: There is damage to the frontal lobe of the brain; those affacted by Broca's aphasia often omit small words such as "is," "and," and "the." For example, a person with Broca's aphasia would say, "Eat food" when they mean "I'm eating food" or "They want to eat food now." Individuals with Broca's aphasia are generally able to understand the speech of others to varying degrees.
Wernicke's aphasia: This results from damage to the temporal lobe. Affected individuals may speak in long sentences that have no meaning, add unnecessary words, and even create new "words." Individuals with Wernicke's aphasia generally have great difficulty understanding speech and are therefore often unaware of their mistakes.
Global aphasia: Results from damage to extensive portions of the language areas of the brain, and severely limits the communication and comprehension skills of affected individuals.
[http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/voice/aphasia.htm]
However, while these are the broad categories, each aphasia is unique. There are multiple types of language disorders grouped under the title 'aphasia' that vary subtly; for example, by afflicting certain word fields in contrast to others. However, the reasons for these subtle differences are not yet clear; despite the fact that there at least 1 million people in the US suffering from aphasia, we still have a very limited knowledge of the mechanisms of aphasia.
The article I read specifically details the case of John Hale, who was diagnosed with aphasia after suffering a stroke. His intelligence was unaffected, but he lost the ability to speak or write correctly. Although he partially recovered his writing after some years, his spoken repertoire consisted of sounds coming close to 'woah dawoah'. His aphasia was strange in that he didn't realize that he was making senseless sounds. He thought he was uttering meaningful sentences while pronoucing gibberish. This special condition in which the person is blind to his own failure in performing usual tasks (like uttering sentences) is called anosognosia. Ultimately, John Hale participated successfully in conversations by use of prosody (stress and intonation) and gestures, but nobody could understand the sentences he believed to had said. The article states, "It seems that the modules of the mind/brain which are responsible to self-monitoring became decoupled from those responsible to control of voluntary speech, respectively speech recognition...In John Hale's case, evidence was also found that -- as was the case with him -- loss of 'inner voice' (accompanying or slightly preceding speech as monitoring process) might be responsible for loss of speech, although read or heard words could be understood by him, and he supposedly could conceptualize what he wanted to say."
More than anything, reading this article makes me realize how much more we still have to learn in the field of neurology and linguistics. (Although in-depth testing of the language ability of individuals with the various aphasic syndromes will be very helpful in helping us achieve a more detailed understanding.) But this article brought up some really interesting points. For one thing, the fact that damage to a specific part of the brain can literally affect what kinds of words we are able to say--or not say--suggests that words register a certain way in our brain. That is, it's not just that we think about certain ideas with the left side of our brain, and certain ideas with the right side, but even the individual words we speak carry some sort of geographical weight in our brain. (Does that last sentence make sense?)The article also brought up the issue of anosognosia, which I'd never heard of before. I think it's so strange the way our brains will perceive something in a way that is so removed from reality. It's the same type of phenomenon that takes place when we hear our own voices; what we hear is different from what others hear when we speak. (Have you ever heard your own voice on an answering machine and not recognized it at all?)
[http://www.uzh.ch/neurol/psychologie/associates/maurer/landis.htm]
[http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=3850&cn=396]
The three most common types of aphasia are:
Broca's aphasia: There is damage to the frontal lobe of the brain; those affacted by Broca's aphasia often omit small words such as "is," "and," and "the." For example, a person with Broca's aphasia would say, "Eat food" when they mean "I'm eating food" or "They want to eat food now." Individuals with Broca's aphasia are generally able to understand the speech of others to varying degrees.
Wernicke's aphasia: This results from damage to the temporal lobe. Affected individuals may speak in long sentences that have no meaning, add unnecessary words, and even create new "words." Individuals with Wernicke's aphasia generally have great difficulty understanding speech and are therefore often unaware of their mistakes.
Global aphasia: Results from damage to extensive portions of the language areas of the brain, and severely limits the communication and comprehension skills of affected individuals.
[http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/voice/aphasia.htm]
However, while these are the broad categories, each aphasia is unique. There are multiple types of language disorders grouped under the title 'aphasia' that vary subtly; for example, by afflicting certain word fields in contrast to others. However, the reasons for these subtle differences are not yet clear; despite the fact that there at least 1 million people in the US suffering from aphasia, we still have a very limited knowledge of the mechanisms of aphasia.
The article I read specifically details the case of John Hale, who was diagnosed with aphasia after suffering a stroke. His intelligence was unaffected, but he lost the ability to speak or write correctly. Although he partially recovered his writing after some years, his spoken repertoire consisted of sounds coming close to 'woah dawoah'. His aphasia was strange in that he didn't realize that he was making senseless sounds. He thought he was uttering meaningful sentences while pronoucing gibberish. This special condition in which the person is blind to his own failure in performing usual tasks (like uttering sentences) is called anosognosia. Ultimately, John Hale participated successfully in conversations by use of prosody (stress and intonation) and gestures, but nobody could understand the sentences he believed to had said. The article states, "It seems that the modules of the mind/brain which are responsible to self-monitoring became decoupled from those responsible to control of voluntary speech, respectively speech recognition...In John Hale's case, evidence was also found that -- as was the case with him -- loss of 'inner voice' (accompanying or slightly preceding speech as monitoring process) might be responsible for loss of speech, although read or heard words could be understood by him, and he supposedly could conceptualize what he wanted to say."
More than anything, reading this article makes me realize how much more we still have to learn in the field of neurology and linguistics. (Although in-depth testing of the language ability of individuals with the various aphasic syndromes will be very helpful in helping us achieve a more detailed understanding.) But this article brought up some really interesting points. For one thing, the fact that damage to a specific part of the brain can literally affect what kinds of words we are able to say--or not say--suggests that words register a certain way in our brain. That is, it's not just that we think about certain ideas with the left side of our brain, and certain ideas with the right side, but even the individual words we speak carry some sort of geographical weight in our brain. (Does that last sentence make sense?)The article also brought up the issue of anosognosia, which I'd never heard of before. I think it's so strange the way our brains will perceive something in a way that is so removed from reality. It's the same type of phenomenon that takes place when we hear our own voices; what we hear is different from what others hear when we speak. (Have you ever heard your own voice on an answering machine and not recognized it at all?)
[http://www.uzh.ch/neurol/psychologie/associates/maurer/landis.htm]
[http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=3850&cn=396]
Monday, October 1, 2007
Learning a new language
A high percentage of students enrolled in public schools today aren't native English speakers; the No Child Left Behind program addresses the length of time states can test students in academic subjects in their native language. Right now, this length of time is three years; however, the House is considering extending this time period to five years.
This amendment seems logical, considering that research suggests that "an average of five to seven years is required to attain parity with native speakers" (Collier, 1995; Hakuta, Butler, & Witt, 2000; Cummins, 1981). And this is assuming that the ELLs (English Language Learner) have had some instruction in English before attending school here! If they have not had any instruction previously, the average number of years necessary to attain parity rises to about ten.
In analyzing how long it takes students to become proficient in English, another question arises: what is the most effective method of teaching a language?
The four most popular methods are:
Submersion: ELLs are placed in ordinary classrooms where only English is spoken; the minority home language is not used at all.
English as a Second Language (ESL): ESL students are placed in regular submersion instruction for most of the day. However, they are also placed in separate classes based on a special curriculum designed to teach English as a second language.
Structured Immersion: Instruction is in English, but the immersion teacher understands the student's native language, and students can address the teacher in their native language.
Two-Way Bilingual Immersion: Students are taught in both their native language and English; initially, classes are taught in 90% native language and 10% in English. As children progress through the program, the amount of English language instruction is increased until the two languages attain parity.
[http://www.umich.edu/~ac213/student_projects05/be/alternatives.html]
Interestingly, research has shown that programs of submersion prove least effective; these students end up lagging behind the others, and generally require a greater length of time to become proficient. This seemed counter-intuitive to me, seeing as I always hear about people going to different countries to immerse themselves fully in a language in order to really learn it. Maybe it has more to do with the fact that kids who are being taught completely in a different language lose interest or are discouraged by the fact that there is nothing comprehensible to them?
[http://www.nwrel.org/nwedu/winter_95/page32.html]
...On another note, did anyone else read the article titled "Language: Translating the lingo of adultalescence"? I think the articles written by adults attempting to capture the "cool" words of the day always end up sounding silly. I've never heard anyone use the expression "stella" or "starlike" or "nose wide open." Is that just an East Coast thing or what?
This amendment seems logical, considering that research suggests that "an average of five to seven years is required to attain parity with native speakers" (Collier, 1995; Hakuta, Butler, & Witt, 2000; Cummins, 1981). And this is assuming that the ELLs (English Language Learner) have had some instruction in English before attending school here! If they have not had any instruction previously, the average number of years necessary to attain parity rises to about ten.
In analyzing how long it takes students to become proficient in English, another question arises: what is the most effective method of teaching a language?
The four most popular methods are:
Submersion: ELLs are placed in ordinary classrooms where only English is spoken; the minority home language is not used at all.
English as a Second Language (ESL): ESL students are placed in regular submersion instruction for most of the day. However, they are also placed in separate classes based on a special curriculum designed to teach English as a second language.
Structured Immersion: Instruction is in English, but the immersion teacher understands the student's native language, and students can address the teacher in their native language.
Two-Way Bilingual Immersion: Students are taught in both their native language and English; initially, classes are taught in 90% native language and 10% in English. As children progress through the program, the amount of English language instruction is increased until the two languages attain parity.
[http://www.umich.edu/~ac213/student_projects05/be/alternatives.html]
Interestingly, research has shown that programs of submersion prove least effective; these students end up lagging behind the others, and generally require a greater length of time to become proficient. This seemed counter-intuitive to me, seeing as I always hear about people going to different countries to immerse themselves fully in a language in order to really learn it. Maybe it has more to do with the fact that kids who are being taught completely in a different language lose interest or are discouraged by the fact that there is nothing comprehensible to them?
[http://www.nwrel.org/nwedu/winter_95/page32.html]
...On another note, did anyone else read the article titled "Language: Translating the lingo of adultalescence"? I think the articles written by adults attempting to capture the "cool" words of the day always end up sounding silly. I've never heard anyone use the expression "stella" or "starlike" or "nose wide open." Is that just an East Coast thing or what?
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Intro
I love words. I love the fact that every single word has a specific connotation and denotation, and changing a single word in a sentence can communicate a very different and unique idea.
I'm especially interested in this course because I grew up in a house filled with a variety of languages. My first language was Spanish, and since then, I've learned English, Hebrew, French, and some Italian. Although I feel most comfortable speaking Spanish, I've found that there are certain expressions, ideas, emotions that I have to express in the other languages; there's a certain gap in translation that occurs because each language is so different. It's literally impossible to ever translate a phrase perfectly from one language to another; each language is supplemented with the flavor of its culture, encompassing so much more than dictionary definitions. I'm fascinated by this richness of language!
I'm especially interested in this course because I grew up in a house filled with a variety of languages. My first language was Spanish, and since then, I've learned English, Hebrew, French, and some Italian. Although I feel most comfortable speaking Spanish, I've found that there are certain expressions, ideas, emotions that I have to express in the other languages; there's a certain gap in translation that occurs because each language is so different. It's literally impossible to ever translate a phrase perfectly from one language to another; each language is supplemented with the flavor of its culture, encompassing so much more than dictionary definitions. I'm fascinated by this richness of language!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
