London Language

how disgust has changed

Not sure about this image but here's a discussion of the history of the word disgusted from BBC news

Billy

 

Up the Garden Path!

So-called ‘garden path’ sentences are often cited as evidence by people studying and working on language.   The idea is that in examples such as (1) and (2), the reader is ‘led up the garden path’ towards an incorrect interpretation.  However, when they reach the end of the sentence, they find that their interpretation doesn't make sense, and they have to go back and construct a completely different interpretation.

(1)    Fat people eat accumulates

(2)    The horse raced past the barn fell

So, for example, consider the sentence in (1).  If I write the first three words of this on a board and ask my students what they think will come next, they invariably say some something like ‘cake’, ‘chips’ or ‘too much’. 

This is strong evidence that we process language ‘on-line’.  It seems clear that when processing (1), we have already begun to build a syntactic representation before we get anywhere near the end of the sentence.   We have decided that ‘Fat people’ is the subject of the sentence, and that ‘eat’ is the main verb, and so we are expecting to find an object coming up next.  This process of assigning a structure and syntactic roles to a sentence is called parsing, and garden path sentences provide strong evidence that our parsing systems are predictive. 

Just like predictive text messaging, we try to anticipate what we think is coming next, and just like predictive text messaging, we sometimes get this wrong!

‘Accumulates’ is not a noun, and so once the complete sentence is revealed, we are forced to go back and build a different structure and assign different roles.

The trouble with garden path utterances is that the same old examples tend to be given and discussed again and again, and at times they can seem quite artificial. Do people really ever write or say sentences such as (1) and (2)?  With this in mind,  I was intrigued this morning to find myself genuinely garden-pathed by a sentence I read on my twitter feed.  It was a tweet from the science writer Dr Simon Singh, and is given in (3) below.

(3)          Citizens Advice report falls victim to libel threats

When I read the first four words in this sentence, I found myself expecting the preposition ‘in’ to be the next word.  I had parsed ‘report’ as a verb, rather than as part of a noun phrase, and so was expecting something like, ‘Citizens Advice report falls in complaints’.  I was genuinely confused when the next word I read was ‘victim’, and it took me a good few seconds to go back, reanalyse what I’d read and find an interpretation which fitted.

So, whilst garden path sentences might be interesting data to discuss in the class room, they can be genuinely occurring phenomena as well!  Always keep an eye out for interesting examples!

Nushu: a secret 'language'?

There is an article in today's Guardian with the headline 'China's Secret 'Women Only' Language'.  As a linguist and a woman, this immediately caught my eye for obvious reasons.  How amazing to find a language that was only spoken by half of a community!  Immediately a multitude of questions popped into my head.  How did it develop?  How do the women pass it on without the men picking up on it?  How different is it to the other languages spoken by that community? 

However, on reading a little more closely, it becomes clear that all is not as it seems! 

The subject of the article is 'Nushu', which literally translates as 'women's writing', and this translation, it seems, takes us a little closer to the truth. Nushu is a script that was used exclusively by women to write things down in the Xiangnan Tuhua dialect of Southern China.  Whilst the social factors that led to the development of this script are, in themselves fascinating, I think the article itself raises some important issues about the everyday use of the language we use to talk about language.

So, despite the claims of the headline, Nushu  is not a language at all.  It is a writing system.  Writing systems are a kind of code used to represent a language, and are interesting in their own right.  However, there is no suggestion that the spoken form of the dialect was restricted to women only. 

When studying language, it's important to able to separate linguistic ability from literacy (generally and in a particular language).  There are millions of people in the world who speak a language or languages that they are not able to read or write.  They are still linguistically competent, and their intutitions as native speakers of their language(s) are still just as valuable to those of us studying language as those of the most learned scholar.

We start acquiring our native language(s) almost effortless from the moment we are born (perhaps even before!), while the process of learning to read and write typically happens much latter and takes careful study and practice to become competent in. Learning to speak and learning to read and write are qualitively different processes and abilities, and so with this in mind, perhaps the headline for this article should be edited slightly.  Moving the quotation marks might be enough. I suggest: 'China's Secret Women Only "Language"'

 

Chomsky on Twitter

 

 

Salon — why Chomsky is wrong about Twitter

Here's Nathan Jurgeson developing a bit more than the usual 'grumpy old Chomsky' argument based on his views on twitter

B--)

 

 

Chomsky at UCL

I was lucky enough to attend a talk by Noam Chomsky at UCL recently. It was very enjoyable. I agreed with his main points but I wouldn't adopt his question-handling techniques in class B--)

Project Nim

Finally saw Project Nim during the summer. It was fascinating but deeply traumatic. I thought I was already on the side of the apes after Rise but this was really shocking. I think it might be too disturbing to show to students, but we'll definitely talk about it in class this year.

One thing it demonstrated was how far linguists have come in understanding how to organise research and to consider the ethical aspects of what they do. I don't think there's any chance that this research project could have happened today, But, of course, it makes you wonder how crude current research practice will look in 30 years time or so.

Billy

Stephen Fry's Planet Word

Stephen Fry's Planet Word is a must-watch for anyone interested in language. He's in that difficult area, though, where he's almost guaranteed to annoy at least some language specialists with at least some aspects of the show. I think I'd vote it a hit just because he's obviously fascinated by language and is genuinely trying to communicate what's so fascinating about it. I'd love to hear comments from others on the programme. What do you think?

Billy

 

 

 

 

Deaf Not Dumb

This short film won an award at the Young Voices Abode ceremony (South Bank).
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0PQAtko8Cc

 

Sign language and bilingualism

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/life-bilingual/201103/sign-language-and-bilingualism

 

'Feeling the meaning' presentation

 

 

Lesley Jeffries visited today and gave an excellent talk on syntactic iconicity. She has agreed that we can make her presentation available here:

Download — Making the reader feel - Middlesex

Post a comment below if you have any thoughts or questions about the talk.

Billy