Linguistics

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Fwd: Vigay.com : Paul Vigay's Collective Nouns Database - Complete List - http://www.vigay.com/nouns... (via http://friendfeed.com/diction...)

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Fwd: The writing on the cave wall by Kate Ravilious | New Scientist - http://www.sott.net/article... (via http://friendfeed.com/diction...)

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via Amira - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

That suggests we might need to rethink our ideas about prehistoric people, von Petzinger says. "This incredible diversity and continuity of use suggests that the symbolic revolution may have occurred before the arrival of the first modern humans in Europe." If she is right, it would push back the date of the creative explosion by tens of thousands of years. - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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Fwd: Youtube: David Crystal: Is texting good for the English language? - http://www.youtube.com/watch... (via http://friendfeed.com/diction...)

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Fwd: Costa Rican Spanish - http://costaricaspanish.blogspot.com/ (via http://friendfeed.com/diction...)

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In rural parts of Costa Rica, people often use a double plural form for certain nouns. That is, they attach an extra plural suffix to a noun where a plural suffix already exists. - To pluralize a word in Spanish you either add an '-s' or an '-es', an 'es' being necessary when the noun ends in a consonant. In Costa Rica I have heard the double plural for 'papases', with an '-s-es' ending. - In this context there is a possible reasonable explanation: If the regular plural form 'papás' refers to one set of parents, 'papases' could conceivably refer to a group of parents. - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

via Marc van Oostendorp - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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Bilingual Babies Learn Language in the Womb : Discovery News - http://news.discovery.com/human...

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"Researchers tested one group of newborns who only heard English in the womb and the others who heard English and Tagalog.The infants exposed to two languages during pregnancy showed an equal preference for each one." - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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Fwd: THE CORPUS OF CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN ENGLISH http://www.americancorpus.org (via http://friendfeed.com/diction...)

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The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) is the largest freely-available corpus of English, and the only large and balanced corpus of American English. COCA was released in 2008 and it is now used by tens of thousands of users every month (linguists, teachers, translators, and other researchers). COCA is also related to other large corpora that we have created or modified, including the British National Corpus (our architecture and interface) and the 100 million word TIME Corpus (1920s-2000s). - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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Fwd: The New Yawk Accent: A Thing of the Past? - Gothamist - http://gothamist.com/2010... (via http://friendfeed.com/diction...)

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To linguists our city is part of what’s known as the "R-less corridor,” because New Yawkas, like South Londonaws before them, drop their “R’s” (My Daughta’s a lawya). But, most language experts agree that the designation is quickly becoming irrelevant. “New Yorkers are more and more 'R'-ful, and the amount of R-dropping is decreasing," says Michael Newman, associate professor of linguistics at Queens College. - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

"or no accents" - - Uhhh, what? I've never heard someone with no accent. - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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Fwd: Internet Archive: Free Download: Atlas linguistique de la France ... - http://www.archive.org/details... (via http://friendfeed.com/diction...)

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The Internet Archive is a 501(c)(3) non-profit that was founded to build an Internet library. Its purposes include offering permanent access for researchers, historians, scholars, people with disabilities, and the general public to historical collections that exist in digital format. Founded in 1996 and located in San Francisco, the Archive has been receiving data donations from Alexa Internet and others. In late 1999, the organization started to grow to include more well-rounded collections. Now the Internet Archive includes texts, audio, moving images, and software as well as archived web pages in our collections, and is working to provide specialized services relating to training, education, or adaptive reading or information access needs of blind or other persons with disabilities - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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Fwd: Borrower's Remorse? - http://www.thenation.com/doc... (via http://friendfeed.com/diction...)

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The singularity of a culture, however, is not just an expendable bit of enrichment, like the elective French you can drop for econ if you have to. What is lost, says Hagège, is a world. Languages are "reflections of the infinite" in at least two ways: they preserve the past for us--something no other animal species has the means to do--and they conjure the hypothetical, a function crucial to poetry and fiction as well as the sciences, philosophy and law. Lose a language, and you lose your history and your visionary capacity. - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

via Isabella Massardo - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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Fwd: World Loanword Database (WOLD) - http://wold.livingsources.org/languag... (via http://friendfeed.com/diction...)

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The World Loanword Database (WOLD), edited by Martin Haspelmath and Uri Tadmor, is a scientific publication by the Max Planck Digital Library, Munich (2009). - It provides vocabularies (mini-dictionaries of about 1000-2000 entries) of 41 languages from around the world, with comprehensive information about the loanword status of each word. It allows users to find loanwords, source words and donor languages in each of the 41 languages, but also makes it easy to compare loanwords across languages. - Each vocabulary was contributed by an expert on the language and its history. An accompanying book is being published by Mouton de Gruyter (Loanwords in the World's Languages: A Comparative Handbook, edited by Martin Haspelmath & Uri Tadmor). - The World Loanword Database (WOLD) 2009 consists of vocabularies contributed by 41 different authors or author teams. When citing material from the database, please cite the corresponding vocabulary (or vocabularies). - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

found thanks to Marc van Oostendorp - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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Fwd: RT @MGrammar: New #grammar post: it's foolish to say that a new meaning is wrong only because it isn't the original one http://motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com/2010... (via http://friendfeed.com/diction...)

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Fwd: Language Log » Language Log asks you (don’t all shout at once) - http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll... (via http://friendfeed.com/diction...)

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Fwd: RT @emckean: lovely blog post on linguistic dreams: http://david-crystal.blogspot.com/2010... (via http://friendfeed.com/diction...)

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Fwd: MEMIYAWANZI discussions of historical linguistics, ancient Indo-European languages, classical philology, ... http://memiyawanzi.blogspot.com (via http://friendfeed.com/diction...)

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Fwd: ON THE 800-WORD MYTH David Crystal says people know and use far more words than they think they do http://david-crystal.blogspot.com/2010... via @langology (via http://friendfeed.com/diction...)

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So, Crystal tells the reporter that the 800 word thing is just plain wrong, yet the reporter goes ahead and makes that the title of the article anyway. Unbelievable. I understand that they need to come up with a grabby title, but in this age of 5 second news bites, I think misleading titles are edging more and more into the territory of dishonest and irresponsible. You have access to a very knowledgeable linguist, but all that 90% of people that see that headline will take away is the title itself and nothing more. It's getting downright shameful. - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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Effects of Drunkenness on Vowels and Style Shifting - http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll...

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The paragraph in blue: This is awesome! Finally a scientific corroboration that my Missouri friend really does sound more southern when he drinks! I guess this means that my long Minnesota Os and Us probably come out when I drink, too. So this serves as a message to anyone that's ever tried to alter their dialect: watch yourself if you've had more then a few. - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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Research to find effects on brain of bilingualism - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2...

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"being bilingual "may provide some protection against age-related memory loss."" - - Interesting. I think bilingualism already has enough demonstrable social benefits, but it will be interesting to see if the positive findings of these studies are replicable. But the more interesting question is: what will the "speak English, dammit!" crowd make of this? - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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Fwd: Welsh poet at Stanford: Small languages make a big difference - http://news.stanford.edu/news... (via http://friendfeed.com/diction...)

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That's because the fate of any language, even if you don't speak it, is important to the whole ecosystem of eloquence. It matters desperately because it covers a certain surface area of experience which no other language can cover. - Nobody is going to speak all the languages in the world, but as a total, it gives the maximum contact with reality possible. Any diminution in that is a serious liability for us as a race. - We should be concerned about these mass extinctions of languages. Too often, it is regarded as a minority interest. It's going to impact us all eventually. - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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Is there a list of basic words (in English) that a primitive hunter gatherer society would use? I have been trying to find one, but to no avail.

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I'm not sure what you mean. There was never a society of primitive hunter gatherers that spoke English (or even Old English or proto-Germanic for that matter), so that's why no such list exists. If you're doing this for some kind of artistic work (book, play, movie etc.) and you want it to be in English and sound "primitive," one suggestion would be to avoid all non-Germanic words (if possible - trust me - it's hard). And, of course, avoid all slang, metaphors etc. If you can tell me what you want this for, I might be able to give some better suggestions. - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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We can only guess at what exact words they used. The closest thing that I know of would be the appendix of Indo-European roots found at the back of many versions of the American Heritage Dictionary. That will give you hypothetical root words, but then you'll still need to pick the most appropriate English reflex of that root. If I understand you right, you're basically looking for a "language" that has a semantic field/vocabulary that is limited to what a society of primitive hunter gatherers would be familiar with, right? If I have the basic concept right, then I would just say that you need to familiarize yourself with the technology they had and avoid words/concepts that did not yet exist for them (I know - easier said than done). I would still recommend trying to use as few non-Germanic words as possible. Also try to limit the number of polysyllabic words you use (these two things actually go together in many instances). Doing these three things consistently, while still using English, should give the desired effect of "primitiveness." But do make them speak with proper syntax. There is no reason to think that pre-modern people could not conjugate verbs, match subjects and verbs for number etc. - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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John McWhorter Says Let Languages Die - http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/2009%20...

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"According to one estimate, a hundred years from now the 6,000 languages in use today will likely dwindle to 600. The question, though, is whether this is a problem." - - Love him or hate him, McWhorter knows how to get an argument going. - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

It's an inevitability, of course, that most languages will end, just like all cultures eventually end. The bad thing about it is that those different languages all have such different perspectives on life in general, and we could learn something from them. Of course, most people learn one language, some two or three, and almost no one learns any language they can't use conversationally, so we're not likely to learn anything from these languages that are going extinct. There was an NPR segment recently where they touched on the process of saving languages which was pretty good: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.loe.org/shows/... ; title="http://www.loe.org/shows/... ;. - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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Fwd: New blog post: observations on etymology and grammar of METHINKS and MICH DÜNKT http://mittani.blogspot.com http://blog.wordnik.com/methink... (via http://friendfeed.com/diction...)

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Fwd: More on Korean linguistic exports – Language on the Move – Blog - http://www.languageonthemove.com/blog... (via http://friendfeed.com/eivindn...)

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shared by Eivind - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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Fwd: REGIONAL ACCENTS THRIVE AGAINST THE ODDS IN BRITAIN http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol... Badges of identity against the homogenising effects of modernity? (via http://friendfeed.com/diction...)

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Fwd: LANGUAGE MAPS DISPLAYING ETHNIC & LINGUISTIC COMPLEXITIES IN PARTS OF THE WORLD http://www.muturzikin.com/cartese... dialects & indigenous minority languages (via http://friendfeed.com/diction...)

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On Language - Why Does Justice Antonin Scalia Hate the Word 'Choate'? - http://www.nytimes.com/2010...

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More etymology and word-formation than I think I've ever seen in an NYT language piece. I understand Scalia's objection because I also understand the origin of the word and understand that the in- is not a negative prefix, but you can't expect everyone to be a Latin/etymology nerd. Given the semantics of inchoate, it's fairly reasonable to assume that in- is indeed a negative prefix. The analogy to insult is a really bad one for the simple fact that no one thinks sult is a word. - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

Excellent comment from Etymology Freak! - friendfeed from FriendFeed - -

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