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Lara Cowell

'Another way to reawaken the language': Word game Wordle adapted for Indigenous languag... - 0 views

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    The Gitxsan Nation, an indigenous tribe, is located in northwestern British Columbia. Victoria software developer and linguist Aidan Pine used open source code to adapt the virally-popular online game Wordle for Gitxsan. While Pine recognizes that games like Wordle can support language learners, Pine said he's it's important to remember that technology is not what keeps languages alive. "People revitalize languages through hard work and determination. And if small games like this can help or make it easier, that's great." Stay tuned--word has it there's an `Ōlelo Hawai`i version in the works, and other coder linguists can find Pineʻs code here (itʻs adaptable to any language): github.com/roedoejet/AnyLanguage-Wordle
Lisa Stewart

Niche Construction - 1 views

  • An important insight from NCT is that acquired characters play an evolutionary role, through transforming selective environments. This is particularly relevant to human evolution, where our species appears to have engaged in extensive environmental modification through cultural practices. Such cultural practices are typicaly not themselves biological adaptations (rather, they are the adaptive product of those much more general adaptations, such as the ability to learn, particularily from others, to teach, to use language, and so forth, that underlie human culture) and hence, cannot acurately be described as extended phenotypes (1). Mathematical models reveal that niche construction due to human cultural processes can be even more potent than gene-based niche construction, and establish that cultural niche construction can modify selection on human genes and drive evolutionary events (2-4). There is now little doubt that human cultural niche construction has co-directed human evolution in this manner (5)
keamyers-rosa15

Dual Adaptation in Deaf Brains - 0 views

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    The brains of people who cannot hear adapt to process vision-based language, in addition to brain changes associated with the loss of auditory input.
Lara Cowell

Thereʻs Craft, Conflict In Creating New ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi Words | Hawaii Public ... - 0 views

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    Languages often adapt naturally to the world around them. Speakers create new words to communicate new concepts. But when a language isn't spoken widely enough to adapt on its own - as with Hawaiian - it may need help to move things along. The Hawaiian language has nearly 30,000 words. But up until the late 1980s, the language didn't have words for subjects like soccer, computer or recycling. So a group of linguists and language advocates formed a lexicon committee in 1987 to invent new words. The committee has created at least 7,500 new words since its inception. Many of the committee's entries have been published in a modern Hawaiian language dictionary called Māmāka Kaiao. Much of the group's work helped to make Hawaiian teachable in language immersion schools. But some are skeptical of the committee's work. One interviewee noted that there is a small group creating words that we "need" now, but it's unclear why that word was chosen or how. Even the pronunciation of new words can be confusing, she adds. Disagreements among Hawaiian speakers may seem like bad news for spreading the language. But Larry Kimura, UH-Hilo Hawaiian language professor, says it's a sign that the language is growing. He said the lexicon committee helps speed up what would have been an otherwise natural process of ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi adapting to the world around it.
aching17

From busuu to Babbel, language-learning startups adapt to thrive - 0 views

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    This article was about the struggles and successes of several language businesses. A lot of these businesses had started out as a website and had to adapt their business to fit the time periods and society by turning into apps. Several of these businesses also had to use their own funds to support themselves in the beginning because of the economy at the time wasn't the best.
Lara Cowell

Native English speakers are the world's worst communicators - 1 views

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    Ironically, native L1= English speakers are worse at delivering their message than people who speak English as a second or third language. Non-native speakers, it turns out, speak more purposefully and carefully, typical of someone speaking a second or third language. L2=English speakers generally use more limited vocabulary and simpler expressions, without flowery language or slang. Consequently, their language tends to be shorter, clearer, and more direct. Anglophones, on the other hand, often talk too fast for others to follow, and use jokes, slang, references, and baffling abbreviations specific to their own culture. "The native English speaker… is the only one who might not feel the need to accommodate or adapt to the others." When trying to communicate in English with a group of people with varying levels of fluency, it's important to be receptive and adaptable, tuning your ears into a whole range of different ways of using English, Jenkins says. "People who've learned other languages are good at doing that, but native speakers of English generally are monolingual and not very good at tuning in to language variation."
Lara Cowell

Living a Whole Life With Half a Brain - Stanford Children's Health BlogHealthier, Happy... - 0 views

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    Ozzy is a child who had half his brain removed, due to severe epileptic seizures. Interesting fact: the brain is so adaptable that even when an entire hemisphere is removed, if the patient is young, the other hemisphere can adapt to take on the functions of the hemisphere that was removed.
faith_ota23

AI writing is here, and it's worryingly good. Can writers and academia adapt? | Euronews - 2 views

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    AI is not completely developed enough to overthrow writers yet. AI is able to produce full paragraphs by comparing and applying similar patterns across Wikipedia pages and other writings found on the Internet. The future of AI writing includes mixed media. For example, creating pictures or videos out of a text prompt. But AI will be seemingly integrated into day-to-day word processors and possibly become the "norm."
Lara Cowell

How Intel Gave Stephen Hawking a Voice - 0 views

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    Theoretical physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking, ALS patient, uses an Intel microprocessor which enables him to speak. Hawking irreversibly lost speech function in 1985 as a result of a tracheotomy. Since his hands are too weak to type, Hawking uses a single cheek muscle to control the device. The device uses an adaptive word predictor from London startup SwiftKey which allows Hawking to select a word after typing a letter. Intel worked with SwiftKey, incorporating many of Hawking's documents into the system, so that, in some cases, he no longer needs to type a character before the predictor guesses the word based on context. The new version of Hawking's user interface (now called ACAT, after Assistive Contextually Aware Toolkit) includes contextual menus that provide Hawking with various shortcuts to speak, search or email; and a new lecture manager, which gives him control over the timing of his delivery during talks. It also has a mute button, a curious feature that allows Hawking to turn off his speech synthesizer.
Lara Cowell

Language Driven By Culture, Not Biology, Study Shows - 0 views

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    Language in humans has evolved culturally rather than genetically, according to a new study. By modeling the ways in which genes for language might have evolved alongside language itself, the study showed that genetic adaptation to language would be highly unlikely, as cultural conventions change much more rapidly than genes. Thus, the biological machinery upon which human language is built appears to predate the emergence of language. Professor Nick Chater, University College London Cognitive, Perceptual and Brain Sciences, says: "...although we have appear to have a genetic predisposition towards language, human language has evolved far more quickly than our genes could keep up with, suggesting that language is shaped and driven by culture rather than biology. The linguistic environment is continually changing; indeed, linguistic change is vastly more rapid than genetic change. "
kkarasaki17

Vanishing Languages, Reincarnated as Music - 1 views

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    A whistling language like that quoted in "Tree of Codes," she said, speaks to "how we humans adapt to and interact with our environment, not being separate, but really being in a merged relationship with everything around us." That positive attitude sets Ms. Lim apart from some of the other musical-linguistic ventures.
efukumoto17

Speaking More Than One Language Helps Stroke Recovery - 1 views

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    There are ways to reduce your risk of having a stroke - for example, you can exercise more and not smoke. But should a stroke occur, you might also be able to reduce your risk of losing brain function if you are a speaker of more than one language.
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    Dr. Thomas Bak, one of the study's authors, posits that language learning helps brains build "cognitive reserve": a rich network of neural connections - highways that can can still carry the busy traffic of thoughts even if a few bridges are destroyed, as via a stroke. "People with more mental activities have more interconnected brains, which are able to deal better with potential damage," Bak says. He likens language learning's effect on the brain to swimming's ability to strengthen the body. Learning a language at any stage in life provides a thorough workout, but other cognitive "exercises," such as doing puzzles or playing a musical instrument, might also benefit stroke recovery, he said. The research applies to the larger concept of neuroplasticity, in that the brain is dynamic and can adapt to new challenges when properly conditioned,
Jonathan Kuwada

Does Language Shape the Way We Think? - 2 views

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    In 2010, two articulate powerhouse linguists, Lena Boroditsky, of Stanford, and Mark Liberman, of U. Penn., squared off on the above topic. Boroditsky advanced the Neo-Whorfian position that language does indeed shape thought. Liberman countered, noting that thought also shapes our language we speak, and the way we live shapes both language and thought. When we encounter or create new ideas, we can usually describe them with new combinations of old words. And if not, we easily adapt or borrow or create the new words or phrases we need. As Edward Sapir once put it, "We may say that a language is so constructed that no matter what any speaker of it may desire to communicate … the language is prepared to do his work."
Chris Agluba

Cross Language - 0 views

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    How English words became part of Japanese vocabulary
Lisa Stewart

Figures of Rhetoric in Advertising Language - 9 views

  • the discipline of rhetoric was the primary repository of Western thinking about persuasion
  • The principal purpose of this paper is to contribute a richer and more systematic conceptual understanding of rhetorical structure in advertising language
  • Rhetoricians maintain that any proposition can be expressed in a variety of ways, and that in any given situation one of these ways will be the most effective in swaying an audience.
  • ...33 more annotations...
  • the manner in which a statement is expressed may be more important
  • a rhetorical figure occurs when an expression deviates from expectation
  • With respect to metaphor, for instance, listeners are aware of conventions with respect to the use of words, one of which might be formulated as, words are generally used to convey one of the lead meanings given in their dictionary entry. A metaphor violates that convention, as in this headline for Johnson & Johnson bandaids, "Say hello to your child's new bodyguards," accompanied by a picture of bandaids emblazoned with cartoon characters (from Table 2)
  • listeners know exactly what to do when a speaker violates a convention: they search for a context that will render the violation intelligible. If context permits an inference that the bandaid is particularly strong, or that the world inhabited by children is particularly threatening, then the consumer will achieve an understanding of the advertiser's statement.
  • every figure represents a gap. The figure both points to a translation (the impossibility in this context of translating "Say hello to your child's new petunias" is the key to its incomprehensibility), and denies the adequacy of that translation, thus encouraging further interpretation.
  • metaphors that have become frozen or conventional: e.g., the sports car that "hugs" the road.
  • an important function of rhetorical figures is to motivate the potential reader.
  • Berlyne (1971) found incongruity
  • (deviation) to be among those factors that call to and arrest attention.
  • "pleasure of the text"--the reward that comes from processing a clever arrangement of signs.
  • Berlyne's (1971) argument, based on his research in experimental aesthetics, that incongruity (deviation) can produce a pleasurable degree of arousal.
  • Familiar examples of schematic figures would include rhyme and alliteration, while metaphors and puns would be familiar examples of tropic figures.
  • Schemes can be understood as deviant combinations, as in the headline, "Now Stouffers makes a real fast real mean Lean Cuisine."
  • This headline is excessively regular because of its repetition of sounds and words. It violates the convention that sounds are generally irrelevant to the sense of an utterance, i.e., the expectation held by receivers that the distribution of sounds through an utterance will be essentially unordered except by the grammatical and semantic constraints required to make a well-formed sentence. Soundplay can be used to build up meaning in a wide variety of ways (Ross 1989; van Peer 1986).
  • Many tropes, particularly metaphors and puns effected in a single word, can be understood as deviant selections. Thus, in the Jergens skin care headline (Table 2), "Science you can touch," there is a figurative metaphor, because "touch" does not belong to the set of verbs which can take as their object an abstract collective endeavor such as Science.
  • For example, a rhyme forges extra phonemic links among the headline elements.
  • "Performax protects to the max," the consumer has several encoding possibilities available, including the propositional content, the phonemic equivalence (Performax = max), and the syllable node (other words endin
  • Because they are over-coded, schemes add internal redundancy to advertising messages. Repetition within a text can be expected to enhance recall just as repetition of the entire text does.
  • The memorability of tropes rests on a different mechanism. Because they are under-coded, tropes are incomplete in the sense of lacking closure. Tropes thus invite elaboration by the reader. For example, consider the Ford ad with the headline "Make fun of the road" (Table 2). "Road" is unexpected as a selection from the set of things to mock or belittle. Via
  • This level of the framework distinguishes simple from complex schemes and tropes to yield four rhetorical operations--repetition, reversal, substitution, destabilization.
  • s artful deviation, irregularity, and complexity that explain the effects of a headline such as "Say hello to your child's new bodyguards," and not its assignment to the category 'metaphor.'
  • The rhetorical operation of repetition combines multiple instances of some element of the expression without changing the meaning of that element. In advertising we find repetition applied to sounds so as to create the figures of rhyme, chime, and alliteration or assonance (Table 2). Repetition applied to words creates the figures known as anaphora (beginning words), epistrophe (ending words), epanalepsis (beginning and ending) and anadiplosis (ending and beginning). Repetition applied to phrase structure yields the figure of parison, as in K Mart's tagline: "The price you want. The quality you need." A limiting condition is that repeated words not shift their meaning with each repetition (such a shift would create the trope known as antanaclasis, as shown further down in Table 2).
  • the possibility for a second kind of schematic figure, which would be produced via an operation that we have named reversal. Th
  • rhetorical operation of reversal combines within an expression elements that are mirror images of one another.
  • The rhetorical operation of destabilization selects an expression such that the initial context renders its meaning indeterminate. By "indeterminate" we mean that multiple co-existing meanings are made available, no one of which is the final word. Whereas in a trope of substitution, one says something other than what is meant, and relies on the recipient to make the necessary correction, in a trope of destabilization one means more than is said, and relies on the recipient to develop the implications. Tropes of substitution make a switch while tropes of destabilization unsettle.
  • Stern, Barbara B. (1988), "How Does an Ad Mean? Language in Services Advertising," Journal of Advertising, 17 (Summer), 3-14.
  • "Pleasure and Persuasion in Advertising: Rhetorical Irony as a Humor Technique," Current Issues & Research in Advertising, 12, 25-42.
  • Tanaka, Keiko (1992), "The Pun in Advertising: A Pragmatic Approach," Lingua, 87, 91-102.
  • "The Bridge from Text to Mind: Adapting Reader Response Theory to Consumer Research," Journal of Consumer Research,
  • Gibbs, Raymond W. (1993), "Process and Products in Making Sense of Tropes," in Metaphor and Thought, 2nd ed
  • Grice, Herbert P. (1989), Studies in the Way of Words, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  • Leigh, James H. (1994), "The Use of Figures of Speech in Print Ad Headlines," Journal of Advertising, 23(June), 17-34.
  • Mitchell, Andrew A. (1983), "Cognitive Processes Initiated by Exposure to Advertising," in Information Processing Research in Advertising, ed. Richard J. Harris, Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 13-42.
Lisa Stewart

Mishearings - NYTimes.com - 0 views

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    Speech must be decoded by systems for semantic memory and syntax. Speech is open, inventive, improvised; it is rich in ambiguity and meaning. There is a huge freedom in this, making spoken language almost infinitely flexible and adaptable - but also vulnerable to mishearing.
Ryan Catalani

Gestures Offer Insight: Scientific American Mind - 4 views

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    "Various language families differ in how they distribute components of meaning between speech and gesture--at least when referring to directional kinds of information. [...] De Ruiter is examining in greater detail the presumed interaction between speech and gesture for pointing motions. He has recorded dialogues between two people telling each other stories and has found that an extended gesture--such as when someone points up toward the sky--tends to delay the verbalization to which it refers ("the plane ascended at a steep angle"). Gestures also adapt to speech; when a storyteller has misspoken and stumbles momentarily, a preprepared gesture appears to be held in abeyance until the speech component is running smoothly again."
Ryan Catalani

Essay - The Plot Escapes Me - NYTimes.com - 4 views

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    "I described my "Perjury" problem - I was interested in the subject and engrossed in the book for days, but now remember nothing about it - and asked her if reading it had ultimately had any effect on me. "I totally believe that you are a different person for having read that book," Wolf replied. "I say that as a neuroscientist and an old literature major." She went on to describe how reading creates pathways in the brain, strengthening different mental processes. Then she talked about content. "There is a difference," she said, "between immediate recall of facts and an ability to recall a gestalt of knowledge. We can't retrieve the specifics, but to adapt a phrase of William James's, there is a wraith of memory. The information you get from a book is stored in networks. We have an extraordinary capacity for storage, and much more is there than you realize. It is in some way working on you even though you aren't thinking about it.""
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    Love it! People keep mentioning "Proust and the Squid" to me, and it's high time I read it.
haleycrabtree17

Linguistic Society of America - 0 views

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    Download this document as a pdf. Yes, and so is every other human language. Language is always changing, evolving, and adapting to the needs of its users. This isn't a bad thing; if English hadn't changed since, say, 1950, we wouldn't have words to refer to modems, fax machines, or cable TV.
lmukaigawa19

The Language of Body Language | Psychology Today - 0 views

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    Body language can say a lot about people by what their words don't cover. The reason why people can detect these signs is because body language was primary way of communication before verbal language was adapted. Like most mammals, humans are extremely sensitive to picking it up.
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