Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with linguistics

Put them on the road to not Dislike Some Linguists

oflinkey — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 10:16:43 -0800

Good linguistics video or interactive links to show to high schoolers. Asking for DH and his foray into linguistics in his HS Anthro class.
I already have a good interactive IPA (Paul Meier's), so that the kids can hear the sounds that aren't used, or used so much, in Standard American English. This has a good British/American diph- and triphthong area, too.
However, my husband is on the lookout for clips he saw on an unnamed show that did some sort of demonstration of variations in phonemes, where they moved in increments from one phoneme (that a speaker of English would recognize) to another, but covered a number of variations in between. I am not really sure what he is talking about. I showed him a clip of the McGurk Effect-- not what he means.
...His main thing here is to show students that, yes, other languages recognize different phonemes that we would all lump together under /p/, for instance.

Any other suggestions for cool things to look at for high school students would be greatly appreciated. Anything at all.

Thanks in advance!

Goog search?

fantasticninety — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 19:02:28 -0800

Can I google search half a word? There is a French-English dictionary that allows you to search the endings of words by adding a * at the beginning.

Is there a similar way to do this with google searches? If not, is there a French word list online that allows you to search words based on their endings and not only by their alphabetized beginnings?

Thanks!

Seeking language experiments!

mossicle — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 14:04:35 -0800

Linguisticsfilter: I'm looking for experiments that reveal something surprising or fascinating about the way we use and respond to language. Here's an example of what I'm looking for: in an experiment by Donald Rubin, undergraduate students were given a short, pre-recorded lecture by a native English speaker. A photograph representing the speaker accompanied the lecture; for half the subjects, the photograph depicted an Asian woman, and for the other half it was a similarly-styled Caucasian woman. The recording played for both groups was identical, yet the students who thought they were listening to an Asian woman rated her accent much stronger than the other students. What's more, they scored significantly worse on a test of lecture comprehension.

There's another experiment I had in mind, where students at a college in a Southern state were given one of two speeches. The content and speaker were the exact same for both groups, but at one the speaker used a Southern accent and at the other he used a standard American English accent. The students were then asked to rate the speaker on a number of qualities, such as articulateness, intelligence, competence, integrity, and so on. Basically they rated the speaker much higher on all qualities when he used the standard accent, with the exception of friendliness. I thought this was surprising because the students themselves spoke with Southern accents and I would have expected them to show preference for their own variety.

If you know of any language experiments that have similarly startling or interesting findings, please share! The examples I used have a sociolinguistic focus, but I'm interested in other areas of linguistics as well.

Thank you!

Source for construction industry lingo?

eliina — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 14:06:47 -0800

Can anyone point me to a resource where I can learn construction industry-related lingo? I'm a defense attorney and I've recently been pulled onto a few cases involving accidents on construction sites. There is a lot of terminology tossed around in the documents I'm reviewing, and I could use some help making sense of it.

(For example, I'd been trying to determine the difference between a pettibone and a lull, only to finally figure out they are two brands of forklifts, not two types of equipment).

Any book or website suggestions would be appreciated!

Yeah once I ordered coffee in Chile in French, but it sounded right at the time.

Anonymous — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:03:56 -0800

I'm very seriously considering the foreign service, but I've never been any good at languages. Will I likely be able to learn a language, with the intense training the Foreign Service provides, without a natural apptitude for languages? I've been doing my research on the Foreign Service and it has become abundantly clear that I will need to learn several languages over the course of my career were I to join. At least one of those would be a "hard" language (not closely related to english). I have little apptitude for languages. I took French for 3 years in high school and got basically straights Bs and then promptly forgot it all. I only got Bs because my high school was easy and I crammed right before every quiz which allowed me to get by. I've lived in Europe and SE Asia and did not pick up either language of my host country. However, I could get by in English (I wasn't put in a situations where I had to learn the language) and I had no training in either language. I took one semester of Spanish in college and found it very difficult. Took the class pass/fail and I passed. Promptly forgot all of it again.

Now on to things I am actually good at! I'll give some background on my education/current career because hopefully (?!) some of those skills are transferable to learning a language? At least that is what I am hoping.

I'm an attorney. I did pretty decent, but not amazing in law school. Passed the NY and CA bar on the first try. Generally speaking I do well (better than I should given my knowledge on any particular subject) on standardized tests. In college, I was an art history major and had to memorize lots of names/places/dates, which I also promptly forgot (I remember the art and all about the art, but names of things are very hard for me to remember along with names of people actually). Also, at one point I was an applied math major and chemistry major. I did well in classes for both, until I switched my major for other reasons. I think that I have good analytical skills.

Can people like me learn a language after intense training and study? Or am I likely to "flunk out" of the foreign service after crying myself to sleep on top of my flash cards for 88 weeks straight?

I am very interested, but do not have my heart set, so to speak, on the foreign service. I think I want to join, but if I joined I would want to be able to work my way up the ranks (as it's up or out). Stories/experience/advice about the foreign service in general also very much appreciated. I also have no idea if it matters but I am a female in my late 20s.

I allegedly don't understand the word "allegedly." Allegedly.

the foreground — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:32:09 -0800

I am confused as to the use of the word "allegedly" and why it is used outside of a strictly legal sense (in the media for example)? For instance, with this most recent shooting in Texas, there are obviously dozens of eye witnesses, only one suspect under consideration, no one is going to argue in court that someone else did it, so why on the news are the anchors still saying Mr. Hasan "allegedly" shot these people? It just seems weird... I understand the term might be more relevant in a case of a burglary, or when there is only circumstantial evidence to tie a suspect to a crime, because then there is a doubt and if you straight out accuse someone and they are acquitted, then you might be liable to be sued. It seems in this case the only thing in doubt is the motivation or mental state of the accused (temporary insanity etc.), there is no real doubt that he actually did it...so why is everyone so noticeably still prefixing the crime with "allegedly?" Also, it seems the media are really selective with this term. If an investigative reporter uncovers something legally dubious about a company for instance, the headline would read "Documents reveal Company x laundered millions" you never see "Documents reveal Company x allegedly laundered millions." Unless I just am not noticing it. Can someone explain the technical issues around this word, when it is appropriate to use and when it is not?

AAVE, AAE, BEV, whatever we call it nowadays, in the movies.

ms.codex — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:32:58 -0800

I'm looking for "black best friend" supporting characters in movies who also come with a black love interest. I'm interested in their language patterns and dialect usage. I'm thinking of writing a paper about the portrayal of African-American English in popular film. When I watched the movie Clueless, I was struck by how the black best friend and her black love interest speak COMPLETELY DIFFERENT dialects: the girl speaks fairly standard English, the boy speaks strong African-American Vernacular English, and this discrepancy goes totally uncommented on. It's as if (pun intended), because they're both black, the linguistic divide that would send very different social signals in the real world is irrelevant. Are there other examples like this where racial identity trumps language? Movies in which black couples speak different levels of AAVE? Clueless is pretty dated, and I'm also wondering if this scrupulous need to give black-best-friends love interests of the same race, language use aside, is still as strong as ever.

crazy little thing called the love that dare not speak its name

Jon_Evil — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 07:16:55 -0800

I need some academically credible synonyms for same-sex erotic activity that are less ambiguous than "gay sex" and less clinical-sounding than "homosexual contact." I'm helping to revise a 30-year-old book about human sexuality for re-publication, and the state of homo-politico-linguistics has changed considerably. The author refers to "gays" as a demographic group, but sometimes he's talking about only exclusively homosexual-identifying men, and sometimes about anyone of any gender that's ever slipped a bit towards the right of the Kinsey scale. He uses "gay sex" in a similarly inconsistent way.

The problem with "Queer" and its derivatives is that it's still a loaded term, and while pretty much everyone under thirty sees it as a positive description, older people (including the author) see it as a slur.

Just to be clear, I'm not looking for names of specific acts, but a generalized term for everything along the spectrum from kissing to fisting, just as long as you keep it gay, keep it gay, keep it gay.

I love listening to people from Northern England

reenum — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 20:39:30 -0800

Looking for podcasts or radio shows with women talking in Mancunian accents or similar Northern English accents. I love Manchester accents and want to listen to more of them. I used to watch 'Frasier' only to hear Jane Leeves speak, and also loved the accent used by the character Betty Slocombe in 'Are You Being Served'.

Podcasts, audiobooks, or any other aural media I can take with me and listen to are wanted. Thanks a bunch.

Nice set of wheels you got there—

whimsicalnymph — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 18:42:34 -0800

Is the use of meronym and synecdoche the same thing? If not, please illustrate. I am confused.

Math? Maths? Mathesises? Mathelesalizes? Mathematisessizes?

fishmasta — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 20:21:17 -0800

When did "Maths" change to "Math" in American English? Or is it the other way around? I'm curious to know more about the origin of the math/maths break in the English language. Growing up in the United States, the shortening of mathematics to "math" has always sounded correct to me. But I know in the UK that "maths" tends to be more common. What I'm wondering is how/when/why this shift happened? Is it based on the long form spelling of "mathematics"? Is it based on the sound when pronounced (and is a teacher of other subjects with the "s" sound treated in a similar manner (e.g. a Sciences teacher rather than a Science teacher))? Or is it just one of those weird differences with no explanation other than that is how it's always been done? Any background you can provide is appreciated. Information on how other slight changes between our English forms happened is also welcome. Not as interested in total word differences (lorry/truck, lift/elevator, etc.) so much as the same word with slight variance.

Of whom are you bored with?

dogrose — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 21:06:01 -0800

PrepositionFilter: When did "bored with" become "bored of"? I'm not being all kids/lawn prescriptivist; "of" and "with" are equally meaningful/meaningless. (Are prepositions equally slippery in other languages?)

Still, it would never occur to me (at my advanced age) to say anything other than "bored with" and thus far "bored with" is publishing industry standard. Yet "bored of" is all over the damn place on the intertubes, which is our future.

I'm just curious about when, where, and why the switch began. Details, please!

What are the most common 20% of words in any language?

jinatrix — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 16:11:11 -0800

What are the most common 20% of words in any language? In the interests of accelerated language learning, it would be useful to know the 20% or so of the words in any language that are used 80% or the time (Pareto's principle).

Trying to find a list of the most commonly used words - either a general list for all languages, or if there are lists for specific languages, even better

Do languages ever shift from analytic to synthetic?

Kosh — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 15:45:18 -0800

Calling all historical linguists: do languages ever shift from being analytic to synthetic rather than vice versa? This is a very non-scientific treatment of the issue--and the presumption that it's probably wrong is why I'm here--but it seems like whenever I read about the history of a particular language, the language has 'lost' a lot of features compared to its ancestral forms. I know that these forms of expression are rarely 'lost' in the sense of being completely gone, rather replaced (prepositions taking over the roles of the declensions in the Latin -> Romance transition, for example) but it seems like complicated inflectional morphology has a tendency to be lost at some point in favor of an analytic, word order- or adposition-based system of expressing these relationships between words. I know that in certain cases you have languages gaining pronouns from other kinds of linguistic expressions ('usted' and 'você' in Spanish and Portuguese, 'a gente' replacing 'nós' in Brazilian Portuguese, etc.), but it seems like the farther back you go in tracing a language's evolution, the more likely you are to find a language with more morphologically-complex forms, a complicated case system with declensions, etc. (This question was sparked by reading about the Iranian elections today, which led to reading about Persian and encountering yet another case where the earlier forms were more morphologically complex than the modern form.)

So, why does it seem like complex inflection is generally lost? I understand that sound change is a volatile process and sometimes word forms fail to maintain phonetically distinctive features, but with that being the case, does anyone have any idea as to how the complex systems they simplified from arose in the first place? Or failing that, are there any examples of a language moving from being primarily analytic to primarily synthetic? The examples I encounter all seem to move almost exclusively in the other direction. Sometimes languages maintain a level of inflection that's higher relative to their sister languages (no one would argue with Spanish being classified as more inflected than English), or they gain new synthetic forms in some isolated cases (the Romance future and conditional) but their morphology is still significantly simplified in comparison with the parent form.

(I know that these examples are all Indo-European languages so I would welcome examples from other language families as well.)

Looking to put together a self-study for Comparative Literature.

elfgirl — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 05:58:57 -0800

I'd like to study about Comparative Literature, but as I've looked around at CompLit university departments it appears that there isn't really anything like an introductory course or textbook. I'm not looking for a program to join, although the possibility exists that I may incorporate CompLit into a future graduate degree. Right now I'd like to learn a little about the foundations of field and the theories that underlie it; I'm particularly interested in translation theory.

Any suggestions of texts or journal articles would be welcome. If there are any course materials available through OpenCourseWare or Berkeley's webcasts (or something similar), that would be fantastic. I've looked through both of those sites, but because of the interdisciplinary nature of Comparative Literature and the fact that there doesn't seem to be a conveniently labeled foundational course, it's hard to know what would be a good starting point.

Loom of Language?

graymouser — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 11:08:00 -0800

How to best use (or not) Bodmer's The Loom of Language? So I've had a copy of this book for a few years, since I found it in a Barnes & Noble. It seems like an interesting book, and the eight languages it embraces (German, Swedish, Danish, Dutch, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian) are all languages I would like to learn or go further in. So I'd like some commentary on the book, specifically:

1. How useful is it, as an overview? I have 3 years of high school Spanish with intermittent self-study thereafter, and a semester each of college French and Italian, and the only Germanic language I've done some self-study on is Swedish. Is this a good book for expanding on those skills in general and picking up a basis in the other languages? Has anyone ever done so?

2. How badly dated is this book? It was written around the time of WWII, and for instance the grammar seems to imply that Swedish conjugates verbs by number, which it no longer does. Would anyone be able to point out any other such outdated grammatical bits?

3. If I do get a good chunk of each of these languages from the book, where can I move to next? What's a good next step for each language? (Or if not, what method would be best for getting further in all these crazy related languages?)

Please help me find some linguistics posters!

iamkimiam — Thu, 28 May 2009 08:37:07 -0800

Looking to purchase some awesome linguistics-related posters. I've searched for hours on the internet and I can't seem to find any family tree posters, IPA posters, or even anything remotely related to linguistics that is interesting and somewhat academic. It would be cake to find something like the "History of Programming Languages" poster, but for Indo-European languages or some other branch of the world tree. I'm tempted to just make a language tree poster myself, but that'd be a LOT of work.

Also, any ideas to spruce up a giant bulletin board and/or small linguistics 'lab' room are welcome.

And what of petabytes? Will they simply be "pets"?

lucius — Sun, 17 May 2009 00:32:33 -0800

In the distant past the megabyte and gigabyte were honorable quantities of storage and we referred to them by their full names; now they are too familiar, and we call them "meg" and "gig." Has a common spoken abbreviation already emerged for the terabyte? Or must we wait until TBs are readily available in larger multiples before the linguistic hivemind of digital humanity collectively determines the spoken shorthand? Sysadmins and data center pros--you know best. What do you call 10,000,000,000,000 bytes?

you, you, you?

mustcatchmooseandsquirrel — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 13:48:40 -0800

In a languages that uses both the formal and informal "you," is there any situation in which people using the informal "you" with each other would ever go back to regularly using the formal "you" with each other? Using French as the example: For instance, if two people got divorced and were on chilly terms with each other, would they stop being "tu" and go to "vous". Or, if between two people working together, one got promoted to a position of authority?

Words that change meaning because they look like other words

hiteleven — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 13:55:25 -0800

Looking for linguistic theories that describe why words change in meaning, particularly because they look and/or sound like other words. I am in the process of writing a PhD disseration proposal (in the humanities) in which words that change meaning over time play a large role. I am looking for theories from linguistics that might explain why such changes take place.

It seems that there are a lot of books out there, both technical and popular, that describe how such changes take place (giving lists of popular and fun examples, etc.) I am looking here for the "why", not the "what" or the "how".

To be more specific, I am looking into words that change meaning because they look and/or sound like other words. To give an example from Latin (the language I'm working with), the verb populare originally meant "to plunder", or "to devastate". Yet in medieval Latin charters, it quickly comes to mean "to settle" or "to populate". It's hard to say exactly why this change takes place, though the close resemblance of the word to populus, meaning "people", is quite obvious, and must have played a role.

The word(s) I'm looking into are less obvious in terms of their connection, and the conlusions I would make would be more contentious, so I'm really looking for some good solid theory to back me up, or at least make my proposal sound more technically sound.

English books would of course be the easiest to work with, but if there is some key text in French, Italian, German, or whatever, please let me know.

I'm kicking around a concept for a theoretical piece I hope to work on in the near future, dealing with the way "femininity" and the "female" category are conceived of linguistically. Help me find some empirical data!

parkbench — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 11:42:00 -0800

I'm kicking around a concept for a theoretical piece I hope to work on in the near future, dealing with the way "femininity" and the "female" category are conceived of linguistically. Help me find some empirical data! Thus, I want to look at everything from--

-1} "benignly" feminine morphemes, like feminine nouns in Spanish or Arabic; to

-2} idiomatic expressions that are ambiguously connotative of "femininity," like the syntactical habit in English (for example) of referring to countries, ships, and organisations with "feminine" syntax (thus "the ship's majesty reflected her righteous purpose," or the "benevolent womb" of "the motherland"--as opposed to the sagacious & stern "protective embrace" of "the fatherland"); to

-3} more directly identifiable conceptual assumptions about "the female essence"--the only case I can think of being the Japanese logograph "姦," meaning "wickedness" or "cunning," which is comprised of the radical signifying "woman" repeated three times, and is commonly known for its presence in the expression, "女三人寄れば姦しい," [おんなさんにんよればかしましい] which roughly means "wherever women gather, it is noisy [literally, "if there are 3 women, it is noisy"].

My purpose in all of this is to take a critical eye to the common-sense argument that such gender constructions in language are purely "neutral"--as they are arbitrary, symbolic constructions--and problematise it by addressing the very real assumptions & power dynamics inherent in any linguistic exchange, which in the face of arbitrary/"relative" symbolism nonetheless manage to actively cathect meaning, perspective, and oppression onto selfsame symbols, and insodoing reinforce (intentionally or unintentionally) broader cultural/ideological conceptions of women and "femininity" (think Althusser, Butler, etc).

As you may have already guessed, then, I want to accomplish this by demonstrating the continuum between the subtle and mostly inconsequential cases (as in case #1) to the more overt and problematic ones (as in case #3) with concrete examples for a robust comparative analysis. And as you can see, I have only a handful at my disposal.

So!

What I'm soliciting the askmefi community for is two things:

-1} compelling examples/cases of different languages which have constructions falling into these categories. Anything goes. Examples of languages that manage to address "femininity" even without strictly "feminine" grammatical structures (like English), or "rare" languages surviving among uncolonised peoples which defy or problematise my thesis with highly unique constructions, are welcome.

My realm of experience is mostly with english, spanish, japanese, arabic, and russian, so any insight into languages other than these will be extremely appreciated--though prominent/interesting/striking examples that I have completely overlooked in said languages are of course still very much welcome.

-2} any existing commentaries, texts, articles, authors who touch on this issue directly or indirectly which I can look into for further research.

Thanks so much for your time & patience. I know that might have been a lot to swallow. For any who are interested, if this ever comes to fruition I'll surely share it with the mefi community.

note: I am not looking for a peer review of my thesis. I'd love to talk about it to anyone who wishes, but if it's not too much to ask, please keep this thread to empirical examples and not a debate as to whether or not women are unfairly treated in society. thank you.

Scriptable speech synthesis?

miniape — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 18:29:20 -0800

Does there exist a piece of scriptable speech synthesis software? Ideally I'd like a python interface, but anything is fine. Google searches look promising, but there's so many fly-by-night "download" pages for various projects its hard to navigate.

I have a oopic chip called a soundgin that is sort of scriptable, but the quality isn't very good and I'd like an easier interface.

Alternatively, is there such thing as a canonical source of recorded phonemes in variations with which one would be able to write his own?

Need a way to train my ear to recognize tones accurately so that I can improve my transcription data.

iamkimiam — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 20:34:12 -0800

Looking for a flash exercise/game or some way to train my ear to recognizing tone so that I can be a better transcriber. I'm currently researching two tonal languages and I need a way to practice/improve on my skills so that my data is more complete. I don't want to devote a lot of time to this, maybe a few hours. Are there any tools out there that can help me? Just to be clear, I'm not really looking for info about what tone is, how it works, etc. I just need to practice in a way that allows me to correct inaccuracies. I'm currently pretty bad at recognizing tones. And I'm fairly sure I'm not tone deaf.

Thanks!!

White Swans?

greytape — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 16:27:17 -0800

What is the term/ help me invent a word for: situations where you take a small hit to avoid the risk of a possible substantially larger hit in future. So I've been reading 'The Black Swan' and the idea really resonated with me that in life it's often useful to take a few little hits along the way to avoid the possibility of a much larger one.

This is essentially the opposite of picking up nickels in front of a steamroller, the profitable activity that is occasionally punished with massive consequences. I've taken this to heart, and have been trying to apply it to my daily life. Example: instead of covering up your mistakes (for a risky, small gain) and possibly being found out of being deliberately deceitful (big risk), admit you've made a mistake (take the small hit) and move on. I think it applies in a lot of domains.

Trouble is, I can't think what to call these small hits that it's generally advisable to take. Any suggestions?

What can I do with my BA in Linguistics?

sanskrtam — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 01:11:20 -0800

I am going to graduate soon with my BA in Linguistics. I am not planning to go to graduate school because of my department's issues and I'm quasi-singled out from the rat race. Other than being a translator, what can I possibly do? It seems that the very "underrated" field of studies called Linguistics (or any Liberal Arts stuffs) is an under-appreciated quality for a safe career.