February 06, 2007
Linguivangelism
The last two weekends have been fun because I've gotten to see friends in different corners of the country for different wonderful events (namely, the World Harvest prayer day for East Africa in Philadelphia and the wedding of Heather and Troy in Dallas). I've been trying to make up for the fact that I haven't done much homework by talking to all of my friends about how much I love linguistics.
Picture this-- sitting in a living room, lots of people, conversation swirling around, and someone jumps in during a lull to explicate the social functions of compliments and cultural differences in compliment giving and taking. This is then followed by some discussion of Universal Grammar, Noam Chomsky, and while the unconverted start looking at their watches, phonological rules in Luganda. Maybe one skill it's important for lovers of a subject to cultivate is knowing when to leave everyone hanging. I'm working on it.
No worries, though-- my only goal is for seeds to be planted. Maybe someone will be inspired to change their career later or learn an African language. I think I just want everyone to know how fun it is to think about language. Plus all of my friends here in Muncie are fellow students in my program or international types who speak lots of languages anyway, so it's all we talk about. Daily patterns are hard to break.
Maybe someone here, reading this post, has had an interest in linguistics for some time but hasn't pursued it. I'm here to tell you to go for it, while it is still called today-- you won't be sorry!
| By Becca N | 09:11 PM | Comments (0)
October 18, 2006
The Observer's Paradox
Wise words from William Labov (1972), my new hero:
"the aim of linguistic research in the community must be to find out how people talk when they are not being systematically observed; yet we can only obtain these data by systematic observation."
Here's a situation-- you are a linguist, and you want to study when [r] is included and when it's left out in NYC dialects. You might conduct lots of interviews with people and find out stuff about their parents and where they grew up and finally have them read a list of words. Or a couple of paragraphs. Whatever.
Or, you might go to three different huge department stores and ask every salesperson you see where to find the ladies' shoes. When they tell you they're on the fourth floor, you could act like you didn't hear and ask them to repeat the answer. So these salespeople, one at a time, would help you the customer and tell you to look for the ladies' shoes on the FOURTH FLOOR. After you have this conversation with a salesperson, you could walk away, whip out your notebook, and write down the pronunciation of the two words along with a guess as to the salesperson's age and sex. Then you could repeat the process with other workers at the store. If you're William Labov, you could write a classic paper about this study and discover some surprising trends about when people use [r] and when they leave it out. Amazing.
| By Becca N | 11:28 PM | Comments (0)
October 16, 2006
to an unknown nieto/a
First of all, this letter and the situation it's about are "terible," según mi profesora de español:
http://www.legacy-project.org/index.php?page=lit_detail&litID=12
Secondly,
In the exciting world of linguistics, we learn that what we hear and say might not really be what's going on in our heads. So when we're talking fast and we say "sum-n" to mean "something," we have no problem recognizing it as the same word-- it doesn't even cross our minds that it could be anything else. When little kids learn language, one thing they learn is how sounds change when they are next to certain other sounds and which differences in sounds are important and which aren't.
Right now we're mired in this world of underlying forms, the mental reality behind all the pronunciation, and I feel like a detective looking for these shadowy things that might be imaginary. When all you hear is sum-n, how do you decide what it comes from? Lots of theory, that's how. The stuff we're talking about now involves relationships called feeding, bleeding, counter-feeding, and counter-bleeding. Sometimes there's even mutual bleeding.
I hope I'm not the only one whose mind wanders and imagines what a counter-bleeding relationship might look like-- two underlying forms jabbing each other with their forward slashes, maybe. And a feeding relationship might involve a potluck. Maybe each underlying form brings some crumpets. Mutual bleeding? Blood brothers. That's what we need in phonology to help make humans of us students-- more faces and personal stories. Any ideas for counter-feeding?
| By Becca N | 02:10 PM | Comments (0)
October 11, 2006
last five minutes
So today I was hanging out with my grammar students, thinking about the difference between this and that, and there were five minutes left in class to explain the homework assignment. These five minutes will hereafter be described as two sequential occurrences: The Outburst and The Epiphany. Necessary background info: we have six men and five women in the class, all but three being native speakers of Chinese.
The Outburst
I handed out a sheet with three situations on the top, situation #1 being "one friend telling another about a problem." Two men volunteered and were told to act this situation out. Frank, who might have had a bit of stage fright, asked what sort of personal problem he should talk about.
Onésimo suggested that he talk about sexual problems because that's what most personal problems are anyway, and pandemonium ensued. Of course Onésimo is from Latin America and has advanced degrees in psychology and is also a fair bit older than everyone else, but it was shocking nonetheless to our Asian students. I think maybe he enjoys being shocking... After lots of embarrassed laughing we were back on track.
The Epiphany
Frank did eventually come up with a problem.
Frank: Zhang, could you help me-- I have a problem. I really want to ask out a girl, but I feel so shy and I cannot ask her to date me.
Zhang: You should just be brave and ask her out.
We had two women volunteer and do the same thing, and here's what they came up with--
Hiroko: I have this problem-- ever since I came to America, I haven't been able to eat very much. I have lost 4 kilos.
Hui: I have the opposite problem. Since I came here, I've gained weight!
After this endeavor in brief drama, we read a short generalization about differences between men's and women's communication styles. While men often offer advice, women like to commiserate and share experiences of similar problems. Most students noticed that hey! That just happened! At least in our class, the hypothesis was proven. Now I just need to figure out a nice indirect way of suggesting that we keep our comments on the G-rated side to respect those from more conservative cultures...
| By Becca N | 11:07 PM | Comments (2)
September 12, 2006
...and safetybelts
Now the proud owner and driver of....
| By Becca N | 12:35 AM | Comments (0)
mucho instinto
So, studying and talking about language all day rewires your brain into something strange and nerdy. It's is bound to make you say things like, "ooh, could you say that again? And--hang on-- do you have a pencil? I gotta transcribe this vowel you have! Where did you grow up again?"
It also makes you pretty excited when your grammar students can use -ing verbs to complain: "The Ball State football team is always losing, *#$!" Well, not quite. We don't really teach expletives in grammar class, although, hmm...
It probably contributes to the irony of studying language acquisition and knowing that it's important to try in language classes but still feeling muy estúpida en la clase de español. Last week la profesora called on me to answer a vocab question. Here's what it was: "A person who is very smart and has lots of instinct." The answer was perspicaz (acute, sagacious). My answer was embarazada (pregnant). I mean, pregnant women have lots of instinct, right? And I'm sure lots of them are really smart. But my profesora did not see this obvious connection.
Right now my Spanish homework is asking me to describe the different kinds of love in the cortomentraje we watched last week. I would like to say something profound, but the closest I can get is, "the peasants feel love (or fear!) for the Virgen and Jesus." Sigh.
On the bright side, though, a student in writing class this morning, upon being asked what sorts of information we can include in summaries, said: "Summaries.... WOW!" It was quite the moment of reflection.
| By Becca N | 12:27 AM | Comments (0)