Linguistics

simu

Is anybody else interested in linguistics?

I think it's a fasciniating area of study but I've never seen any posts about it on boards before!

ecksor

Interested, yes. Knowledgeable, no. :dunno:

smiles

Speaking of Linguistics... has anyone ever looked at Lojban ?

<< Fio >>

Dun

http://www.ethnologue.com/web.asp

A bit more commerical than what it was the last time I was there, but interesting nonetheless.

I am interested in Linguistics, but find that things like sci.lang etc. are very off-putting. It would be the kind of thing I would have liked to do as part of my degree (in languages), but oh no, UU reckons European Studies (InOneEarOutTheOther Studies more like) is more relevant. I did a TEFL course, and found the discussion of language fascinating. It's not the kind of thing I would broadcast in everyday life though

simu

Lojban is a carefully constructed spoken, as well as written, language designed in the hope of removing a large portion of the ambiguity from human communication.

(from the site smiles mentioned)

It's quite a common idea that ambiguity in human language is a problem. It is in certain cases like when writing instructions for using nuclear reactors but without ambiguity we'd have no literature, entertainment, silly conversations etc.

I am interested in Linguistics, but find that things like sci.lang etc. are very off-putting. It would be the kind of thing I would have liked to do as part of my degree (in languages), but oh no, UU reckons European Studies (InOneEarOutTheOther Studies more like) is more relevant. I did a TEFL course, and found the discussion of language fascinating.

Yeah, I did a module on linguistics as part of my French degree and was very disappointed with the level of discussion. As a child, I used to read about linguistics and languages in encyclopedias and I probably leared more about the topic that way than at uni! We had the briefest ever discussion of Chomsky (more along the lines of "you'll be able to drop his name at dinner parties and sound smart" rather than real analysis of his ideas), some mention of sociolinguistics (that was presented in so simplified a manner that it never went beyong stereotypes like "women and men talk differently" or "groups use slang to exclude outsiders") and discussion of some of the features of the French language that was interesting but pretty obvious given that everybody in the class was supposed to be fluent in French.

When we were doing Chomsky, we were doing tree diagrams and the lecturer said "I know it's a bit mathematical and I hated maths at school but bear with me" or something along those lines. The assumption that if you're studying a humanities subject, you can't stand the idea of something being scientific or mathematical really annoys me and I think it was disgraceful to hear such sentiments from a university professor.

Another thing about Chomsky, his views on deep structures and transformational grammar were presented to us as being graven in stone. No opposing views were offered. I've learned since then that many people believe linguistics has been led astray somewhat by Chomsky's ideas. (BTW, deep structures are basically a universal set of grammar rules that underlie the grammar of all languages spoken by humans and transformational grammar is how the brain produces utterances that are gramatically correct).

First of all, although the idea is that deep structures are embedded in the human brain, the actual physical and chemical aspects are left to neuroscientists while linguists focus on figuring these rules out by examining, say, statements in English and other languages. So, linguists come up with abstract rules and constraints that are said to govern language but the problem is that it's hard to be sure these apply to every possible human language that could ever exist. There's always the possiblilty that a remote tribe whose language defies these rules will be discovered somewhere.

Also, because all the focus is on a universal grammar, linguists are less interested in the quirks of different languages which they consider to be mere surface details. So, it's quite common for linguists to be monolingual and this may narrow their perspectives - the more languages you know (especially if they're not closely related to each other), the more open-minded you are as to what is and isn't necessary in a language.

And, linguists tend to focus on idealised sentences when trying to derive universal grammar. They use sentences like those you'd find in a language learner's book, ignoring the fact that real speech and language as used in conversations is often very fragmented, context-dependent and often breaks grammatical rules. Again, this sort of fragmentation and ambiguity is seen as trivial whereas it could be argued that these features of language are the most complex and those that let language evolve and find new ways of expressing things. (This is why Lojban would probably soon become riddled with inconsistencies if it were actually used by humans)!

So, I guess we're pretty far away from figuring out exactly how language works for some time!