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
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
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?
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