Introduction To Linguistics.docx

Introduction to Linguistics An introduction to language and communication

Language and gesture Gesture and the mind In this video, Dr Winter talks about the gestures we make while speaking, implying they might happen in an unconscious way, as people who are on the phone make gestures even though the other person is not physically there, and even blind people make gestures while speaking to another blind person. He says that linguists are interested in co-speech gestures, which are gestures that are connected to what we are saying. The movement happens at the same time we say what we are thinking. It happens with all humans.

Five types of gesture There are five important types of gestures (though there are several ways in which one could categorize them): Beat gestures: They don’t seem to carry any particular meaning. They emphasize the beat (or way) somebody is talking. Emblems: Gestures that can stand by themselves, but you have to know the meaning of the gesture in the context it is being used in order to understand it (because if could have a different meaning in other cultures, for example), thus, they are somewhat arbitrary. Iconic gestures: Gestures that are quite depictive or representational. They are used to represent something (size, the form of an object (a box), etc.) Metaphoric gestures: They can represent abstract things (time, for example). Pointing gestures: Also called indexical or deictic. Gestures used to indicate where to focus your attention. I realized my family mostly uses beat and metaphorical gestures when having a casual conversation. I saw some other people on the street that did pointing gestures, focusing on buildings or items at shops. It was easy to use the classification because the gestures are very different from one another.

Next Wednesday's Meeting It was interesting to notice how gestures can change our thinking. They are an important part of our day to day speech, but seeing in a more direct how important they are was impressive. The experiment was interesting, however, there’s a considerable number of people who don’t focus on hand expressions, but on the face of the person talking. I don’t know if this only happens with Mexican people, but because of it, most people in my research assumed the meeting was going to be next Friday instead of on Monday. Arbitrariness: Is a linguistic concept that references the fact that there’s nothing in a word itself that gives away its meaning. A word in a language that means “dog” won’t be the same as the word that has the same meaning in another language. Sign: anything that has a meaning. Not all the things that we do to communicate are arbitrary. This is the case of the iconic gestures. Regarding the activity:

A picture of a cat in a children’s picture book: Non-arbitrary. The picture of a cat is representing a cat. It has the image of a cat, there’s nothing more than that. (Unless the text implies that the cat is representing something else). Onomatopoeic words like pop and splash: Arbitrary. The onomatopoeic words can be different depending on the language that is being used. Some of them could be understood between languages, but it wouldn’t be the case with some others. A national flag, like the Union Jack to signify the United Kingdom: Arbitrary. The flag would only represent something for the ones who already know the meaning of it. A rash on someone’s arm to signify an allergy: Arbitrary. It doesn’t only happen when someone has an allergy. Although it could be non-arbitrary because whether you are in Mexico or New Zealand, if someone see that you have a rash, it would represent the same meaning, without taking into account the language or the cultural differences. Compound words like haystack, treehouse, and goldfish: Arbitrary. They still don’t have a direct meaning to the object that they represent.

Myths about Sign Languages It was interesting, especially because I didn’t know sign languages are not a version of the language the people in that country speak. I also didn’t know that sign languages exist because communities of deaf people created them, I thought that they were created in order to help deaf people. Because sign languages were created by communities of deaf people, there are different versions of them across the world. I thought there was a universal sign language before this step. When watching the narrative being told in ASL, I didn’t understand anything. I tried to assume some of the gestures and I even thought I had figured out at least a tiny part of the story, but it sill made no sense whatsoever. The only thing I kind of understood were some of the emotions the story teller was showing. She uses facial expressions and gestures mainly. Dr. Schembri’s commentary really helped me understand many aspects of the video I saw moments before. I didn’t know about the manual and non-manual aspects of sign language, and the way he talked about it helped me understand the basics of how sign language works. Language and ape communication Language and other animals The first steps are an introduction to the topic. They say they will talk about the similarities and differences between humans and apes, focusing on the way humans (and apes) communicate with one another.

Primate vocalization In the first video, Dr Pelman talks about Viki, a chimpanzee who was raised like a human and learned how to pronounce four words and showed us that even though she couldn’t learn how to speak, she had the ability to throw spitballs or suck from a straw. The chimpanzee had a really good control on her vocal tract. He also talked about how the scientists considered the possibility of teaching apes sign language. Koko’s vocalizations This step demonstrates how good Koko was at using her vocal tract. She had great control over it, as she could blow air into his hand or produce grunts whenever she wanted.

Watching her videos made me realize how good Koko was at using her vocal tract. The place of articulation of what she did amazed me, because she basically used everything we use to create sounds. Her lips, her tongue and her throat. She doesn’t seem to completely close up her vocal tract, but she seems to have the ability to make /s/ and /f/ sounds. She doesn’t seem to be able to produce voiced articulations, but it’s impressive how good she is at hissing and grunting whenever she wanted to.

Design features of language Human language is different from communication systems of other animals because: - It’s arbitrary. - It’s culturally transmitted. Our language is shaped by our cultural background. - It involves displacement. We can talk about things unrelated to us, about fictional and hypothetical things, etc. - It’s creative. These seem to be only true in human language, it might happen with some other forms of human communication, such as sign language, but not with the same freedom of choice and easiness. It doesn’t seem to happen with other animals. Only we have this ability. Throughout the week I learned the classification of gestures and how important they are for our communication. I also learned a lot about sign language, from the fact that it is an actual language on its own to the idea that they could even be used with apes to try to achieve some form of communication. I also really enjoyed the information regarding the apes, especially about Koko.

Grammar and psycholinguistics A psycholinguist is interested in the mental processing of language. There are things we know that we probably don’t even know that we know. Professor Dabrowska’s exercise (that lasted approximately 45 minutes) was quite interesting, because even though it looked like it was going to be easy (and was really easy most if not all the time), the length and number of questions each part of the test had, ended up making it quite tedious and tiring. It was interesting, however, reading the questions and realizing there are so much variations and forms of creating a sentence with the same word forms. It’s also interesting that she’s conducting this experiment to have a better understanding of the differences in language processing that exist between natives and non-native speakers.

Are children better language learners than adults? Children, in many ways, are better language learners than adults. But there are things that adults are better at too. It all depends on how we test language learning. Adults learn faster at the beginning and are more goal focused, but children are better in the long run, as children are able to reach almost-native language knowledge because they are just trying to fit in an reach the goals their parents, for example, want them to accomplish, whereas adults are not able to do so. There are lots of variables that we need to take into account when studying how people learn a language. Studies can have quite different results, as they use different tasks and test different aspects of linguistic knowledge. Decorative and functional grammar Decorative grammar doesn’t add much to the meaning. Functional grammar contribute in a more direct to the meaning.

Eye-tracking and fixed expressions Eye tracking can help identify which parts of a text someone is reading is more difficult for this person. It offers lots of different measurements and can also help to identify how such person processes individual words and phrases, syntactical structures, etc. This is really helpful because eye tracking can also help identify which words a person has to read again or had more difficulty processing. It helps to identify all about the reading a person does. There are some specific terms for this kind of study. Fixations refers to the movement and position of the eye while reading a text; the way a word is read but also how much time did it take to understand it In context, etc. Saccade is the movement of the eye from one point to another. Regressions refers to the action of re-reading any part of a text. It makes easier to spot the complexity of a text for a person. Regarding the sets of sentences, it was pretty obvious that the ones with the less known words were the most difficult to read.

Binomials expressions They are paired constructions usually with an and in the middle, like fish and chips, or spick and span. As we usually use these words in the same order they are relatively fixed. But it’s just a matter of convention. Some examples are: up, up and away! (trinomial), step by step, black and white, etc. These conventions help people read them faster, therefore, if you change its order, it’ll be more difficult for them to process it.

Big data dialectology Dialectology studies the variation of languages from place-to-place. This is usually measured by using surveys. Big data dialectology uses a different approach, as it uses information that’s now available in huge quantities thanks to the new technologies regarding social media. Nowadays it’s even possible to analyze changes over time or the way a certain word that it’s used by everyone, is used in a specific place. This big data dialectology can also be used to do research on new words and track where they start to be used and how they begin to spread. It can also analyze the changes of words and even why they are changing and the impact of such words in certain places. I couldn’t do the activity FutueLearn suggested because the webpage they linked (Quartz) wasn’t working properly. Zipf’s law says that a small number of frequent words make up a very large proportion of the total number of words used in any kind of corpus.