Blog 8 - Children's Language Acquisition

Children's Language Acquisition

The page I found goes into detail about what the language process is for children. For instance, all children acquire language in the same way. "All children acquire language in the same way, regardless of what language they use or the number of languages they use...Children must learn the rules of the language game, for example how to articulate words and how to put them together in ways that are acceptable to the people around them." Children do nor learn language perfectly and there are a lot of errors made on the way to language acquisition.

Language learning occurs whenever a child is being conversed with or to. The article also goes to tell the difference between speech and language. Speech is the physical capacity we have for language, and language is the intellectual communication of men. It is not unusual for children to exhibit problems with certain sounds, or parts of language. During this time, they are mentally sorting out what has been shown to them. They might omit things from their speech that they aren't comfortable with.

The more children experience language, the faster they are likely to learn it. Just like in any subject in school, children learn at different rates, in different ways. The article also stresses not putting too much pressure on the child when learning language. They have no idea that parents agonize over when their child will say their first words or learn to read. Look for what the child has accomplished, not what they are lacking.

Vowel sounds are normally the easiest for children when developing language. Consonants are more challenging and may take more time to learn and pronounce correctly. Children will also generalize when faced with similar objects or people.

I thought it was really interesting to see what children have problems with in their development and language. I also thought it was very nice that the author reminds parents not to put too much pressure on their children learning language at a certain time. Parents do agonize over what their first word will be, what their first sentence will be, but some children might not even say their first word until they reach two years of age! I also found it interesting to have speech and language differentiated. I don't think I realized before that they refer to two totally different aspects of language.

Blog 7

Vanishing Voices

One language dies every 14 days. By the next century nearly half of the roughly 7,000 languages spoken on Earth will likely disappear, as communities abandon native tongues in favor of English, Mandarin, or Spanish. What is lost when a language goes silent?

By Russ Rymer

 

 I love NatGeo articles so when I came across this one on our topic for the blog this week, I thought it would be perfect! I talks about several languages at varying degrees of endangerment, and the people who speak them. The most touching story for me in the article was about the boy whose father was a priest and his father before him. The boy cannot continue the tradition of this because his father died before teaching him the ritual chants. A whole way of life is lost the generation starting with this boy.

 

Something I also found interesting was that, 'The Pirahã, an Amazonian tribe, appear to have no words for any specific numbers at all but instead get by with relative words such as “few” and “many.”' This may mean that a number system is not inherent to every language.

 

It also talks about a nomadic people in Mexico called the Seri (yes the same spelling as Apple's Seri, but completely different). They are the last remaining group from a time when languages like theirs were more abundant. The article also charges the longevity of these endangered languages with the language speakers themselves. It says that pride will be the savior of these languages. If people have pride in the uniqueness of their language, then they will endure.

 

The article is ended with a beautiful line: "the tongues least spoken still have the most to say."

 

 

 I thought this article was very interesting. I completely agree that just because some of these languages may not be spoken on a large scale, that does not mean that they are not worth keeping alive. All of these languages have a unique view of looking at and describing life. If that language dies, all of the knowledge contained in that language dies along with it. It was really profound to think about.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blog 6 - What is Semantics?

Blog 6 - Semantics Explained

What is Semantics?

Above is a link for a document written by Richmond H. Thomason. This article, or document as he calls it when you read through the entry  is all about semantic language, something talked about in Chapter 5 of our textbook.  Thomason defines semantics as the the study of the meaning of linguistic expressions. Arrangement of words plays a large role in semantic language. Semantic rules are not the same across all languages, but all languages have semantics.

He also talks about something that is more and more prevalent in our society today: something called natural-language semantics. Basically this has to do with computers and the language they use and the language we use. The majority of the population today knows that computers operate in written code and have little to no knowledge of this code, so computers and programs have a natural language interface that allows us to type or drag and drop things exactly as we want them without dealing with the artificial language of computers. Because of the ambiguity of our languages, this natural language interface is becoming a very studied part of human and computer interaction.

I thought this article was very interesting and covered a lot of material from chapter 5. I also liked that it explained some things in a different way than the book. It helped me with some understanding, so I thought it would be the perfect thing to talk about if some other people were struggling with any of the covered concepts.

Blog 5

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/29/magazine/29language-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Does Your Language Shape How You Think?

I found this article on the NY Times website, and picked it because the title intrigued me to start with. It starts off by talking about an article that was published 70 years ago that stated that your native language limited the capacities in which you can think. Ever since the publishing of that article, people have been sensationalizing the topic and have continued to expound on this until it was decided that the idea was ridiculous. Now, the subject has been revived and new research has come to light to open up the topic once again.

I thought the most interesting thing is that just the structure of language has limitations that it imposes on how we think about what we say and hear. I agree with the article that you can't really help how you think if your native language has groomed you to assign genders to objects, etc. I do want to learn more about the topic. What makes English speakers think the way they do, and how is that different from someone speaking German or Italian? The topic applies to the whole world because it sites the differences we have in our thought and speech patterns are inherent depending on the language we learned as children.

Blog 4 - Nonverbal Language

    


     This is a shorter summary video of the full presentation by Amy Cuddy, so if you're interested in seeing the whole thing, look it up. I picked this video because I think nonverbal or body language is certainly a form of language and it also affects the way we behave and even the way we perceive others. What I found the most interesting is that our body language can cause chemical changes in the body that can make us feel a certain way. I thought the information was really cool. I don't know if this is true, simply because I haven't ever thought to pose a certain way to improve my attitude or behavior but it will certainly be something I think about after seeing this lecture. I know I'm going to watch the full lecture at my first opportunity to learn more, because I found that the video had fresh information in it that I had not heard before. If everyone posed a certain way to elevate their mood, the world might be a happier place, who knows?

Blog 1 - Words, words, words!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImQrUjlyHUg

I picked this video to post because it focuses on what I find really fascinating about language: it's evolution. It talks specifically about how language changes humans as a species.

This is a long video but it sure is interesting! (Twenty minutes is about ten minutes more than I expect anyone to sit through, so I understand if you want to jump through it.)

Again, I chose this video because it focuses on what I find so fascinating about language: how did it first come about, and how has it changed our lives as humans? I really wish it were possible to know what the first word ever spoken was.

I think Mark has a very valid point. We reached a point in human evolution where we needed a standard for communication. Language is then born.

If the video hadn't been so long, I would have looked for the video of closest relation and just kept going! I think I'm going to be posting plenty of videos from TED Talks.

Language not only affects the world, it is the world in a sense. Can you understand something you can't communicate? I say no. So language is our world in the sense that everything understandable for us is within the sphere of our language.