Baby Babble

This factoid came up in one of my non-linguistics classes last week and this seems like a good place to talk about it:

Babies are born able to make every sound in any human language, but lose this ability as they learn their native language.

I didn't say anything at the time.  I've learned by experience that it's usually not worth it to correct a professor and, in this context, the mistake is harmless anyway.  I just thought it would be something interesting to write about this week.

When you think about this (especially if you've tried to talk to a toddler) it doesn't make sense.  If it were true, then we would see babies make all sorts of wild noises and their parents wouldn't know where all these clicks and strange vowels came from.  Instead, babies go through defined stages where they experiment with sounds.  Further proof is all of those kids who have to see speech therapists in elementary school.  Many of them have trouble producing an /r/ and have to be taught how to make the sound.  Otherwise, most of those kids are just as articulate as any of their peers.

The real fact is this:

When babies are born, they are able to distinguish every sound in any human language, but they lose this ability as they learn their native language.

So, babies can distinguish between very similar sounds that an adult wouldn't necessarily hear.  For example, I taught ESL to a group of ladies whose native language didn't have a "th" sound.  Instead, they would make an "f" sound.  They couldn't even hear the difference until I pointed it out and practiced with them because never before in their lives did they need to make two distinct sounds.  Because they are trying to learn English later in life, they will probably always struggle to make that distinction.  In contrast one of them had a young granddaughter who was born in the US.  That little girl will not have trouble making a distinction between the two sounds because she will learn English while she still has an innate ability to hear the difference.

So, how do we ask babies who can't talk if they think two sounds are different?  The method I've seen involves a binky attached to a computer.  When a baby hears the same sound over and over again, he or she will suck the binky in a relaxed, rhythmic way.  But, if the sound changes, the baby reacts by sucking faster.  In other words, the baby is reacting to the new stimulus.  So, while an adult may not hear the difference between two similar sounds, a baby will react to the difference.

So, next time, impress your friends by getting this fun fact right.

Update about text messaging

I was doing some cutting edge research on Wikipedia* when I found this article: Internet Linguistics.  I was trying to find a list of linguistics sub fields when this came up.  Those in the field of internet linguistics study new language styles that have arisen from use of the internet and related media (such as text messaging).  Internet linguistics could be used to improve media technology usability.  And it's fun to study how language is evolving in the new communication media.

This fit so well with my post on text messaging that I had to talk about it.  It was so exciting that it needed its own post.  Based on what I read in the article, this is a very new field.  I'm guessing that most of the research ideas I brainstormed are still up for grabs.

*I wasn't really doing cutting edge research on Wikipedia for those of you who are worried

Some Cautions on Meeting a Linguist

If you've ever met a linguist (and I think most of my readers have met me) you don't need to worry about whether or not you're pronouncing words right or being grammatically correct or whatever.  It's not our business to pass judgement on others for the way they speak.  More likely, if you say something in an unusual or nonstandard way, the linguist will be thinking, "Wow!  That's fascinating!  I wonder how I can explain this deviation."  I know I'm certainly not perfect.  As I write this blog entry, little squiggly lines keep drawing my attention to the spelling mistakes I make as I type.

Also, I speak one language fluently.  I'm glad that the one language I speak fluently is used globally and is the language I'm most interested in.  If I suddenly found myself in Mexico City or Moscow I could get by though.  In the case of Moscow, I would probably know just enough to get back to the US Embassy.  Maybe if I wasn't studying linguistics, if I wasn't so well aware of how much more there is to Spanish and Russian, I would inflate my language abilities a bit more.  "What languages have you studied?" will get you a better answer from a linguist than "What languages do you know?"

Sometimes linguists are like language spies.  This has to do with what I was describing in the first paragraph.  When people find out they're talking to a linguist they get self conscious and don't talk as they normally would.  Therefore, linguists sometimes have to be sneaky.  There is a variety of ways in which linguists have tricked people into talking naturally, for research purposes.  I'm not going to reveal them to you, just in case.

Grammar Textbook Issues

I was in the School of Education department today when I noticed some language arts textbooks on the free book table.  So, of course, I stopped to look at them for just a minute.  I found them inadequate, woefully so.  I was reminded that one of my goals in life is to remake the primary school grammar textbooks so that they reflect all of the great syntax research that's been done in the last 50 years.  This, I feel, is a noble goal and I would like to explain why.

From what I can tell, the way we teach English grammar to elementary schoolers hasn't changed since I was in elementary school (I checked the dates on those textbooks in the school of ed.  and they were recently published).  I suspect it hasn't changed for much longer than that.  Now, to make an analogy, the modern science of molecular biology has its roots in the 1950s with the discovery of DNA structure.  A responsible school board would never choose a science textbook meant to cover biology that didn't, in some way, address the role of DNA.  I remember making a model of a cell in 5th grade, complete with DNA strands in the nucleus.  Yet, these discoveries are relatively recent.

To contrast, Chomsky's revolutionary book on syntax, Syntactic Structures, came out around the same time.  I have yet to see the impact of these discoveries on the grammar textbooks.

Here is an example of how far behind the textbooks are:

Most grammar textbooks would have students diagram a sentence like this:

The cat slept on the carpet.

A syntactician would diagram the sentence at least like this:

The cat slept on the carpet.

If not like this:

The cat slept on the carpet.

Okay, the second one might be a bit complex for grade school students, but the first syntax tree makes the point.  Using this method shows how the phrases work together in ways that the traditional sentence diagram doesn't.  The phrase structure is more transparent in this type of diagram.  Why aren't we teaching this way?  Why are we holding students back?

P.S. I made these trees from memory.  If any of my lingistics friends finds a mistake (especially with the second tree) please let me know so I can fix it.

Strunk/White

I love xkcd.  Here I was, in a writing slump.  Do I have things I could write about?  Sure, but I just didn't feel like it.  And then, with perfect timing, this comic is posted:

I see two things in this comic.  One, I find it really disturbing that someone would write a slash fic about two men who are most famous for writing (Strunk) and editing (White) a popular style manual.  I like to think of myself as a language geek, but that's going a bit far.

Second, I find it interesting that fan fiction pairings have their own naming conventions, two names separated by a forward slash.  Furthermore, such pairings are also known as slash pairings for the same reason (so named for the forward slash).  It's a good example of how language evolves to meet the needs of the speakers (or in this case, the typers).

Update: Someone did try to write Strunk/White slash fiction.  You can find it here: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3260#more-3260.
I stopped reading quickly.  The weirdest thing is that this site is mostly contributed to by professional linguists. Good job guys, you are definitely more dedicated to being language geeks than I am.

why text messages are fascinating ;)

Someday there should be an area of linguistics dedicated to text messages.  Or, there could be a slew of theses about text messaging.  It could be referred to as the time when everyone was studying text messages.  This may be going on already, but I haven't seen a linguistics paper on text messages yet and I'm years away from writing a doctoral thesis.

Anyway, hopefully after reading this post you will never see text messages the same way again.  Here is a list of interesting linguistic things about text messages:

-Different people have different texting styles.  Some always add emoticons (like the one in the title of this post).  Some use perfect standard American English grammar.  Some use a strange grammar that doesn't look like a grammar at all and yet has very methodical rules.*

-Even the people who start out with the perfect standard grammar will usually use more of the texting grammar as time goes on.

-Is there a texting grammar?

-Some people feel the need to open up conversations.  I know at least two people who preface their first text in a conversation with "hey girl" or "hey ladies."  I tend to jump right in.  Is there some kind of pattern to this?  Would people from a particular dialect group prefer one way over another?

-How does one end a conversation in texts?

-When is it inappropriate to call someone vs. text someone?

-"Text" can be a verb.

And this is why text messages are fascinating.

*Linguists define grammar as the set of rules which govern the structure of a language.  It encompasses so much more than what was in the elementary school grammar book.  To fully explain the concept of grammar would take another post.  For the sake of this one, I need to leave you with this concept:  all natural human language is governed by grammar rules.  This means that even something like a rural dialect has structural rules which would be called a grammar.  Therefore it would be interesting to uncover the grammar underlying text messaging when it deviates from the grammar of standard American English.  If anyone would like me to expand on this concept of grammar, please let me know.  I will try to make it less tedious and technical than this explanation.

Pygmalion

I meant to post this weekend, but I found myself in an epic battle with my computer on Saturday over its functionality.  I eventually won, but there was much loss on both sides.

Anyway, as I waited for my computer to run diagnostics and fail to boot yet again, I read all of the play Pygmalion by Bernard Shaw.  For those of you who aren't familiar, it's a play about a professor of phonetics, Higgins, who decides to pass off a lower class Cockney girl, Eliza Doolittle, as a duchess by teaching her how to speak like one.  If this sounds familiar, you may have seen My Fair Lady, the musical based on the original play. It was made into a movie starring Audrey Hepburn as Eliza.

The play was less about linguistics than I thought.  The setup of a phonetics professor teaching a Cockney girl to speak as if she were upper class is a vehicle for a critique of the upper class which Eliza is striving to imitate.  It does, however, highlight the way our language is not always the thing that most defines us.

In a previous post, I talked about the way people subconsciously judge people by the way they speak.  The linguistics community tends to make much of this connection.  While the way we speak is one of the main ways we are judged, it is not always the most important way.  Eliza offers us a counterexample.  Higgins can teach her how to say vowels and consonants like a duchess; he can even tell her which phrases mark her as a member of the lower class.  However, it is Pickering (an expert in Indian dialects and a friend of Higgins) who really teaches Eliza to be a duchess, and she says as much in the final act.  Pickering teaches Eliza self-respect by treating her like a duchess from the first rather than a low class woman.  In the final test, it is that air of self-respect that truly marks Eliza as upper class, not the phonetics lessons.

Word of the Day

I subscribed to Merriam-Webster's word-of-the-day service a few months ago to improve my vocabulary.  I'll be taking the GRE in August and every bit of vocabulary practice helps.

Merriam-Webster has not been very helpful in improving my vocabulary.  It has been much more entertaining.

Very few of the words are useful for vocabulary building.  Most of the words are either obscure or common.  I've managed to build up a fairly large vocabulary, so common is a relative term here.  The definitions are what one should expect from a professional dictionary.  They are succinct and helpful.  The best part is the etymology (or word history).  I think they're informative and funny, and that's not just because I'm as much of a language geek as the lexicographers.

Appropriately, the word of the day for today is lexicographer, or someone who writes dictionaries.  I used to think writing a dictionary would be a boring job.  That was back in the day when I scribbled poems all over brightly colored notebooks.  Now I think being a lexicographer would be fascinating.  I could pour through modern literature and the internet, searching for new words and new uses of words.  I could find out where those words come from, digging deeper into the ever-evolving English language.

Anyway, I would recommend Merriam-Webster's word of the day to any lover of words. 

Coming Soon...

I'm only a chapter away from finishing You Are What You Speak.  It's kind of petered out towards the end so I'm not going to stay up late just to get that last bit.  So, coming soon: book review of You Are What You Speak.

Also, I would like to revise my previous posting goal.  It is now reduced to one post per week.  Two seems excessive and with summer classes starting soon, it may be difficult to keep up with.

Since this is a short post with no linguistic tidbits, I will at least provide a list of possible future posts:
-What can you do with a degree in linguistics, Elizabeth?
-What do linguists study? (these are related questions)
-The Philosopher's Stone of Linguistics
-Language Geeks and their behavior
-More about Ukrainian

Telephone Pictionary

This is a little bit late but better late than never.

My friends and have have started playing this game called Telephone Pictionary in the last month or so.  I recently had the idea that this game could be used in a linguistics study somehow.  I'm not sure how exactly, and even if I did know, it would probably be outside my area of interest.  It would have something to do with how people interpret and describe symbols in a picture.  Anyway, it's great fun.  Here's how you play:

1. Get together a group of people.  The game is best played with 5-10 people.  Each person needs a stack of papers about the size of an index card.  They will need as many pieces of paper as there are people playing the game.  We usually assign a number to each player and put that number on each of the cards in case they get mixed up.

2. Each person writes down a phrase on their first piece of paper.  This can be a movie quote, a cliché, song lyrics or a made up sentence.  Your group can put limits on this as you see fit.  You'll see why in a minute.

3. Everyone then passes their entire stack of paper to the person next to them.  It doesn't matter whether you go clockwise or counter-clockwise, just make sure everyone passes the same direction every time.  

4. Everyone has one minute to draw the phrase on the next paper (someone will have to time this).  At the end of that minute, put the first paper behind the stack and pass it to the next person.  A picture should now be on the top of the stack.

5.  Everyone now has one minute to guess what phrase describes the picture and write it down on the next piece of paper.  At the end of the minute, put the picture on the bottom of the stack and pass the stack to the next person.  A phrase should now be the top paper of the stack.

6. Continue in like manner, alternating between pictures and phrases, until everyone has back their original stack of paper.

It's hilarious what you end up with at the end.  Take turns sharing what each person got with the rest of the group.  Everyone wins.

Shibboleth

"The Gileadites seized the fords of the Jordan before the Ephriamites arrived.  And when any Ephriamite who escaped said, "Let me cross over," the men of Gilead would say to him, "Are you an Ephriamite?"  If he said "no," then they would say to him, "Then say 'Shibboleth'!"  And he would say "Sibboleth," for he could not pronounce it right.  Then they would take him and kill him at the fords of the Jordan.  There fell at that time forty-two thousand Ephriamites." Judges 12:5-7 NKJV

I never came across this Bible story in Sunday School.  I didn't even come across it in Christian Scriptures class in college.  I have to credit the book I'm currently reading, You Are What You Speak, for bringing this particular gem to my attention (even if the author didn't quite cite it right.)  In the book, the author, Robert Lane Greene, uses the term "shibboleth" to refer to any linguistic cure that a person can use to differentiate between an insider and an outsider.  And he comes up with quite a few modern examples.

I don't mean to pass judgement on people who use language to categorize people.  "Shibboleth" was a useful term from the Gileadites' standpoint.  It helped them to differentiate between fellow tribesman and tribal enemy.  It was a useful tool of war, even if we are supposed to be rooting for the Ephriamites (they were a tribe of the people of Israel).

It's a very extreme example, but the story shows us how defining our idiolect (the way each individual speaks, like a dialect for one person) can be.  Whether they know it or not and whether they mean to or not, other people are constantly putting you and I into categories based on the way we speak.  And it can be based on something as small as how we say a single sound.

Update:  Just read a post in Language Log where the author uses the term "shibboleth" in the same way.  Apparently, this term is more widespread than I thought.

Messages to Nobody in Particular

In Moody Memorial Library at Baylor University, there are places where students go to hide themselves away from the world.  As the student moves through the labyrinth of shelves, the isolation becomes more and more complete.  In theory, this isolation should lead to better studying, but the study carrels show the psychological cost of this study habit.

On the sides of the study carrels, one can find messages to nobody in particular.  On them are written everything you need to know about the reputations of every sorority on campus.  Many of the messages talk about studying.  Someone wrote on one carrel "this is the original twitter."

These messages are only one example of the human need to communicate, even when we think no one will listen.  They are an outcry, an attempt to break the isolation.  Blogging is like the messages on the carrels in that way.  Most blogs have few regular readers, but people continue to write them.  As I write this post, I have no way of knowing how many people will actually read it.  It's a message to nobody in particular.

But, high readership isn't the point for me.  I have something I want say; I need to see it typed out on the computer screen.  If I can hold myself to my goal of two posts per week, then I will have done something to break my personal silence, even if nobody hears.  

How to get to Ukraine: step 1

I decided about a month ago that I would try to get a Fulbright Fellowship.  Fulbright Fellows travel to a country outside of the US for about ten months where they do research.  They also have a program where students go to a foreign country and teach English.  That sounded perfect for me.  I found out about this program from a friend who was applying at the time.  She was recently accepted to go to Scandinavia     

Anyway, this seemed like a great opportunity to travel and learn about other languages/cultures.  After much research, I determined that the best country for me to visit would be Ukraine.  I want to go to Eastern Europe and Ukraine has the benefits of a large program without the drawback Russia has: a strict language requirement.  The best part is, the US government will pay for it, if I can get in.  That's the hard part.

Technically, step 1 would be to start filling out the application, but that wouldn't make for an interesting blog post.

Step 1: begin to learn Ukrainian

The Teach Yourself Ukrainian book is sitting on my bed right now.  The UPS guy literally delivered it as I was starting to write this post.  Opening the package will be my reward for finishing this post.

One of my goals this summer is to learn basic Ukrainian.  I currently have two semesters of Russian completed.  This could be a big help or a big hindrance, I don't know which yet.  Russian and Ukrainian very similar languages.  I have trouble keeping Spanish and Russian strait.  They mix in my head.  It's like my brain has a section for English and then a section for other languages.  So, if I randomly speak Ukrainian in Russian class next fall this will be why.

Now to open the package and begin.