Just read that animals use icons and signs to communicate but not symbols. I guess the first question would be whether ‘use’ also implies ‘understanding’, but, aren’t the words we use for commands symbols? I am not saying animals use ‘language’ but I wouldn’t say they don’t use any symbols…heeelp!! @linguistics@anthropology#linguistics#language#animals
Hey #linguistics folks — is there a word for, and if not can someone coin a word for, things whose functionality is dependent on their existence in the plural?
Some examples:
Telephones — Alexander Graham Bell was initially disappointed with the apparent uselessness of his first telephone, until the Ghostbusters quote “Who you gonna call?” fell through a rift in time and he realized he needed to invent the second telephone too.
Train stations — Congratulations! You’ve built the world’s first train station. Where do the trains go?
"In applied linguistics generally and bilingualism research in particular, psychological variables remain a much under-investigated sub-category of individual differences compared with cognitive ones. To better understand the under-researched psychological effects of bilingualism, this study investigated well-being, a psychological construct, based on a big-data survey."
American English first and second person pronouns (2023):
I/me - first person singular
We/us - first person plural
Us all - first person plural inclusive
You - second person singular
Y'all - second person plural
All y'all - second person plural inclusive
Chat - second person, excluding the listener
"The present article is then concerned with the standardisation of the apostrophe in the English orthographic system in the period 1600–1900 and pursues the following objectives: (a) to study the use and omission of the apostrophe in the expression of the past tense, the genitive case and the nominative plural in the period; (b) to assess the relationship between the three uses and their likely connections; and (c) to evaluate the likely participation of grammarians in the adoption and the rejection of each of these phenomena in English."
Die zweite Folge des #Register -Podcasts ist online! (created by @sfb1412 ).
In dieser Folge erklären Manfred Krifka und Tonjes Veenstra ihre Forschung zu Kreolsprachen und Register!
"The Syriac language has, among all the Aramaic varieties, by far the largest number of terms for ‘comet’ or ‘meteor’. Is there a simple explanation for this fact?"
A #Linguistics question prompted by "Crime Wave at Blandings", the first story in "Lord Emsworth and Others, which I currently #AmReading. PGW has Lord Emsworth saying "dooce" a lot. In my quasi-literate ignorance, that seems like an Americanism, the sort of thing PGW might have picked from living there. Would a very English Earl of the era have said "deuce" as "dooce" , or would he have been more like to say /djuːs/ ? @bookstodon
> There are thousands of languages in the world, 1,000 to 2,000 of them in Africa alone: it’s estimated that the continent accounts for one-third of the world’s languages. But though native speakers of English make up just 5% of the global population, the language dominates the web—and has now come to dominate AI tools, too.
One last gem from "Borrowed Words: A History of Loanwords in English" - Having come to love the flexibility and specificity afforded by the equivalent words in Hindi, I say " BRING 'EM BACK" #AmReading#ebooks#Linguistics@bookstodon
A fun read from Philip Durkin's "Borrowed Words: A History of Loanwords in English" - an extract from a 1403 letter written in a mix of English and Anglo-French. Franglais has a LONG history indeed. Somehow I don't think extracting the ALT text from the image will be much help here 🤣 #AmReading#Linguistics#History#NonFiction#ebooks@bookstodon
"Following" up a bit of paper book reading with some real fun - a whole page on the origin of "procession" from "Borrowed Words: A History of Loanwords in English" #AmReading#ebooks#Linguistics#etymology@bookstodon
The book provides overviews of the state of the art as well as new research on multilingualism in Britain and its surroundings during the medieval period, highlighting something linguists have always known: England, and English, were never an isolated island. #linguistics@linguistics (1/3)
"elephants were hardly central to Anglo-Saxon society" - Philip Durking showing a dab hand at droll understatement in "Borrowed Words: A History of Loanwords in English" #AmReading#ebooks#linguistics@bookstodon
It's a good day when you learn something new, and Philip Durkin's "Borrowed Words: A History of Loanwords in English" has already surprised me. The attached graph shows loanwords listed in OED3 as of November 2012 from the letters M-R and A-ALZ, and it was a surprise to me to see Māori contributing more than Hindi in that dataset. #AmReading#ebooks#linguistics#TeReoMāori#Aotearoa@bookstodon
TFW you realise a book you thought would be popsci is pretty much all sci and no pop - and you're STILL excited to read it. While also being VERY glad to be reading it on your Kobo Sage - the content is heavy enough in the metaphorical sense, without also being heavy in a more literal sense. 😀 #AmReading#ebooks#Linguistics@bookstodon
A clear case of an indirect #speechact 👉
Me very kindly taking my sister to the station by car, despite having better things to do on a Sunday morning. My sister: “Are you tired? Do you want me to drive?”. Real meaning: “You suck at driving please let me do it” @linguistics#linguistics
A new paper by me and my team has just appeared, in full Open Access. It’s about the project STARFISH, which looks at what happens in the history of languages when people learn those languages as adults. This paper focuses on the project’s methodology and what we stand to gain from a historical corpus approach. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-968X.12275#linguistics@linguistics
I’ve recently received a peer review overall positive and very informative, but critising precisely my use of the verbs “to try” and “to attempt” because, according to the reviewer, “not adequate in academic writing”. Here’s a reminder of why we should value transparency and why framing our methods in terms of attempts and intentions can actually be a good thing. #linguistics#corpuslinguistics@linguistics@academicchatter
I’m seeing a worrying tendency in linguistic theorizing to appeal to the notion of “abduction”. This is unfortunate, as the term is multiply ambiguous, and not hugely coherent or useful. In philosophy of science it’s largely been abandoned in favour of a better-defined and better-theorized alternative, “inference to the best explanation” (as Lipton defines it). (1/2) #linguistics@linguistics