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Lisa Stewart

Language Log: May 2005 Archives - 0 views

  • Language Log like list Cristi Laquer at Invented Usage has recently posted "on like usage". She cites a number of blog posts on the various innovative uses of like (the hedge, the quotative and so on), including a Language Log post, and asks "If anyone knows of anything else out there, please let us know!" The classic (non-blog) reference is Muffy Siegel's paper "Like: The Discourse Particle and Semantics" (J. of Semantics 19(1), Feb. 2002). In thinking about other references on our site, I came to three conclusions at almost the same time. There have been quite a few Language Log posts that are relevant to the use of like; it's hard to find them; and none of them summarizes the epic panorama of that protean word's patterns of usage. To start with, here's a reasonably complete list, in chronological order, of Language Log posts relevant to like: It's like, so unfair (Geoff Pullum) Like is, like, not really like if you will (Mark Liberman) Exclusive: God uses "like" as a hedge (Geoff Pullum) Divine ambiguity (Mark Liberman) Grammar critics are, like, annoyed really weird (Mark Liberman) This construction seems that I would never use it (Mark Liberman) Look like a reference problem (Eric Bakovic) Seems like, go, all (Mark Liberman) I'm like, all into this stuff (Arnold Zwicky) I'm starting to get like "this is really interesting" (Mark Liberman) This is, like, such total crap? (Mark Liberman)
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    Has a list of entries on the word "like"
Lara Cowell

Westerners Aren't Good At Naming Smells. But Hunter Gatherers Are : Goats and Soda : NPR - 0 views

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    For decades, scientists thought perhaps smell was a diminished human sense and less valuable than other senses - like our glorious eyesight. "In the West, people came to this conclusion [through] the fact that we don't seem to have a good ability to talk about smells," says Asifa Majid, a professor of language and cultural cognition at Radboud University in the Netherlands. But Majid found that isn't universally true. Certain language speakers can name odors as easily as English speakers name colors, and the key difference may be how they live. Majid worked with speakers of four different languages: English and three from the Malay Peninsula. Two of these languages, Semaq Beri and Jahai, are spoken by hunter-gatherer groups. The other one, Semelai, is spoken by farmers. In order to test the ability of these language speakers to classify odors, Majid and her colleagues gave asked them to smell pen-shaped contraptions each filled with a different scent like leather, orange, garlic or fish - and then asked them to identify the smell. She also asked the participants to identify colors using different color chips. The farmer Semelai, like English speakers, found colors relatively easy to name and agreed with one another that the red chips were, indeed, red. When it came to identifying odors, the Semelai failed as miserably as the English speakers on the same tests. But both hunter-gatherer groups were much better at naming smells than the Semelai. In fact, they were just as good at identifying smells as colors. "That says something about the hunter-gatherer lifestyle," Majid says. There's a scarcity of English words that objectively describe odors, Majid says. Given that, readers of this article - written in English - may wonder how it's possible to describe a smell without leaning on other senses like taste (words like "sweet" or "sour") or emotional words like "gross." In English, most of our attempts to describe smells come from individual sources. You
Lara Cowell

Gender and verbs across 100,000 stories: a tidy analysis - 0 views

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    Analyzing the verbs that followed male and female pronouns in 100K stories, the following patterns were observed: 1. Women are more likely to be in the role of victims- "she screams", "she cries", or "she pleads." Men tend to be the aggressor: "he kidnaps" or "he beats". Not all male-oriented terms are negative- many, like "he saves"/"he rescues" are distinctly positive- but almost all are active rather than receptive. 2. There's an old stereotype (that's appeared in works like Game of Thrones and Sherlock Holmes) that "poison is a woman's weapon", and this is supported in our analysis. Female characters are more likely to "poison", "stab", or "kick"; male characters are more likely to "beat", "strangle", or simply "murder" or "kill". Men are moderately more likely to "steal", but much more likely to "rob". 3. Based on this text analysis, a fictional murderer is about 2.5X as likely to be male than female, but in America (and likely elsewhere) murderers are about 9X more likely to be male than female. This means female murderers may be overrepresented in fiction relative to reality. David Robinson, the data scientist who ran the text analysis, offers these questions for future research: 1.Is the shift stronger in some formats or genre than another? We could split the works into films, novels, and TV series, and ask whether these gender roles are equally strong in each. 2. Is the shift different between male- and female- created works? 3. Has the difference changed over time? Some examination indicates the vast majority of these plots come from stories written in the last century, and most of them from the last few decades (not surprising since many are movies or television episodes, and since Wikipedia users are more likely to describe contemporary work). 4. I'd also note that we could expand the analysis to include not only pronouns but first names (e.g. not only "she tells", but "M
Alison Antoku

BBC - Voices - Your Voice - 9 views

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    Page 2 of 3 "You just don't listen!" Why do people say 'like' every other word? Isn't 'innit' ungrammatical? Why do people say 'like' when it doesn't mean anything? "I'm, like, really happy that you've come to, like, find out about 'like'. Like, I thought you might not, like, bother.
casskawashima23

Why do people, like, say, 'like' so much? | Language | The Guardian - 0 views

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    This article covers the word 'like' and talks about how the negative beliefs that are associated with using this word such as "it is a sign of stupidity" are inaccurate. I was originally attracted to this article because I tend to say 'like' a lot when I talk, and I've always been told that this is something I want to avoid. However, after reading this article, I no longer think that saying 'like' often is a bad thing.
ldelosreyes22

Why do people, like, say, 'like' so much? | Language | The Guardian - 0 views

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    This author of this article explains that using filler words like, 'like,' can actually be a sign of intelligence
Lisa Stewart

In Praise of "Like" - Figures of Speech - 8 views

  • Even the brightest college students toss in “like” liberally, like a heart patient over-salting his fries. It’s unhealthy. It impacts language wellness. But we shouldn’t banish the place-filling “like” altogether. In fact, let’s call it the Rhetorical Like. Used judiciously, the Rhetorical Like serves many subtle purposes.
Alec LaClair

Tip Sheet: An Admissions Dean Offers Advice on Writing a College Essay - NYTimes.com - 30 views

  • begin contemplating their college essays this summer
    • Jenna Frowein
       
      I think that beginning your essay early will help.
  • it is one of the few things you can still control.
    • Jenna Frowein
       
      This is nice to know, but also makes me a littler nervous too.
  • If you try to cover too many topics in your essay, you’ll end up with a resume of activities and attributes that doesn’t tell me as much about you as an in-depth look at one project or passion.
    • Jenna Frowein
       
      But how do we know which activity, attribute, or passion is the most important or meaningful for the college application essay?
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  • simple things in life that make the best essays.
    • Jenna Frowein
       
      I really like this. I think that when you turn something normal and simple into something unique and interesting, that shows a lot of creativity and is actually really exciting!
  • Tell me something I couldn’t know just from reading the other parts of your application.
    • Jenna Frowein
       
      When the application covers so much, how do we find something that we already haven't shared on the application? Oh! I know, your personality! :)
  • Show me why
    • Jenna Frowein
       
      Show, that's always my problem. How do we show what is inside of us?
  • Don’t rely on “how to” books
    • Alec LaClair
       
      i feel like too many people do this, people tend to rely on other people/things, but i believe that it should just come from the heart
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    This advice is really, really helpful. I agree that it's important to focus on something specific that you're passionate about. At the same time, it's hard to expand on this and be detailed/focused throughout the entire essay. I like the advice of being humble and not showing off because the way you write and your topic can tell a lot about who you are as a person.
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    The two things that I liked the most about this article, was that it told the importance of showing a side of you and not telling it. I think that writing a compelling and vivid story is an extremely effective way to make your essay memorable. Second of all, I liked how the article said not to talk about the things already mentioned in the application. I think that its important to portray a side that the admissions officers would never be able to get out of simply reading statistics (scores, gpa, extracurriculars, etc...).
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    I think this was really helpful. It was really interesting when it said that this college essay is one of the only things you have control over and it made me change my view of this essay. At first, it just seemed like something that the college board reads to brighten up their own day, but now it made me think that this could actually be beneficial for me. I may not have control over what questions go on the SAT or if I can change my GPA, but I have total control over what I write. I also thought it was interesting to read that students shouldn't write to impress the college board. I would think that students would want to write about personal events that make them look good for the college.
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    I think the best bit of information i took from this article, is showing how the struggle of overcoming some great difficulty. On a general sense, if I were to do an essay on some type of failure, I think the best way to continue the essay would be to show how I was able to push past this downfall, and learn from it. It's important to let the reader understand the hardship you went through and show them how you made the best of a seemingly terrible event.
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    I think this tip sheet really summed up most of the other articles into a concise, helpful article. Overall, I learned that, in terms of the essay, colleges don't really care about any particular achievements. Instead, the colleges are looking at your voice to see what type of person you are. You should stray from writing about others and focus more about your own feelings and thoughts. Finally, college essay readers have seen all of the generic essays before, so there are more pros than cons in taking a risk by saying something controversial.
Lara Cowell

'Language Of Food' Reveals Mysteries Of Menu Words And Ketchup - 5 views

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    Dan Jurafsky's book, The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu, explores the history and origin of common food terms like "ketchup." Jurafsky also contemplates how menu wording can reflect the relative upscaleness of a restaurant. "Expensive restaurants are 15 times more likely to tell you where the food comes from - to mention the grass-fed things or the name of the farm or greenmarket cucumbers, but expensive restaurants also use fancy, difficult words like tonarelli, or choclo [large-kernaled corn] or pastilla," Jurafsky says. But they are also generally shorter in length. The really long menus, which he says are "stuffed with adjectives like fresh, rich, mild, crisp, tender and golden brown," are found at the middle-priced restaurants. And the cheapest restaurants use "positive but vague words - 'delicious,' 'tasty,' 'savory,' " he says. If an expensive restaurant used words like "fresh" and "delicious," that "implies you have to be convinced." Cheaper restaurants are also likely to say that the food should be served "your way." "The more expensive the restaurant, the more it's all about the chef," he says.
dhendrawan20

Do I Sound "Asian" to You?: Linguistic Markers of Asian American Identity - 3 views

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    This study from the University of Pennsylvania explores whether or not Asian-Americans have a certain "sound" to their speaking that distinguishes them from their White counterparts. White and Asian-American audio samples were curated for a test group to listen to in order to guess their races. On average, White and Asian-American participants in the study were around 65% accurate in their guesses, suggesting more success than random guessing. Some individual participants had accuracy as high as 85% or 90%. Some audio samples yielded guesses that were accurate upwards of 90% of the time. Asian-American participants were often more accurate in their guesses, but less able to express how they knew. White participants described the "upspeak" often used as a "lack of assertiveness." They also identified "increased pauses between words" and "jerkier speech". They also noted that Asian Americans used more "filler material" in their sentences like "um," "uh," or "like." I thought that was interesting because in Japanese, similar filler words like あのう and ええと are used. In Indonesian, we often hum as a filler, which I found to be different than typical English speakers' hums, and that I as a bilingual person have started to do when speaking English as well.
Lisa Stewart

College essay samples written by teens - 13 views

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    This is a great site for getting an idea of what colleges are looking for in an essay. My idea of a good college essay changed after reading the top voted college essay.
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    Reading the top voted college essay made me think that you do not have to use a story that is extremely special and/or unique. It could be a plain and general story, one that happens to most people, (story about stepping in "doggy poo") connected to something you value in life (connection of inevitability of making mistakes). The most discussed college essay reinforced the idea of humor to add a bit of your personality/voice your essay and keep the reader engaged. But, it also brought up the idea of finding a story that continues through most of your life, so you may add other important stories to add depth to the reader's knowledge of your extracurricular activities and passions.
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    It was very interesting to read a few extremely well written essays. I can see why these essays were voted on as being very well written. It was interesting to see how these people weren't writing so much about an experience that they had in their lives, but more about how the experience made them gain a better understanding of the world.
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    While I began reading the top voted college essay, I was really confused as to why this girl was describing a piece of candy in such great detail. However, she slowly created this metaphor and theme that she incorporated throughout her college essay. This technique she used was very successful, in making me want to read the entire thing and connect the dots back to her candy metaphor. Therefore, maybe it's the parts that was not written about the writer, herself, that really gave me, or the reader, a strong sense of who she is as a person.
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    After reading a few essays from this site I got a pretty good idea on what a good essay sounds like. Before reading this I didn't really know how I wanted my essay to go, I'm still not too sure how I want to write it but now I have some inspiration to look toward when writing. I don't have a backstory like the girl who compared chocolate to her life but I think I could find something else interesting to write about.
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    The top voted essays on this site are amazing. It's obvious why they are so highly ranked, they have well thought out structures, elaborate descriptions of everything, and such beautiful word choice. It's crazy because these people were writing about such simple things in their every day life but they made it interesting to read, they wrote it, probably, better than the actual experience was.
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    I kind of had an idea what I was going to write about in my essay, but after reading this site I know how to write it and what a good essay sounds like and what it conveys in the words. It made me see that you don't need a super great topic in your essay, you just need to write it well.
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    The top essay was a very descriptive piece. It sounded like a short story, and I didn't know you could write about those kind of topics on a college essay. This site really helps me get a better idea of what an essay should look like when the time comes to submit one.
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    It really helps to be able to read examples of good college essays. It gives you an idea of not only what to write about but how to write it. I never would have guessed some of the top voted college essays would be written on such simple, everyday topics. I have a lot of work to do haha.
Alex Cheung

'Some of the More Mundane Moments in Life Make Great Essays' - NYTimes.com - 26 views

  • Here’s an essay that’s sure to make an admissions officer reach for the triple grande latte to stay awake
  • “I spent [choose one: a summer vacation/a weekend/three hours]
  • struck by the number of students rhapsodizing about expensive travel or service projects in exotic locales
    • Shermann Alconcel
       
      Elaborate and fancy isn't always better than simple and concise
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  • On the other hand, Mr. Springall was working at Cornell when an applicant revealed that while waitressing she got angry at a customer and spit in his food before serving it. “Immediate red flag,” Mr. Springall recalled. “She makes poor choices.
    • Alex Cheung
       
      This really exemplified the "fine line" between things, and I'll have to be sure to check my essays to make sure nothing "bad" is revealed, or at least misunderstood.
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    I was surprised by this article and by the fact that sometimes, our seemingly boring moments in life has the potential to transform into a great college essay. This article made me change my views of college essays and reexamine what topics I want to write about.
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    I think this is really interesting because I have never really thought about what an admissions officer would be thinking of as he/she reads a really cliché essay. This really makes me want to work harder to come up with less cliché topics and essays.
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    I feel like the "bad" example that they used was really effective, because it highlighted the fact that the essay itself says nothing about the writer's character or personality. Instead, that essay talked about the misfortune of others and the worldly possessions of the writer. This makes me really want to focus on writing something that displays my personality/mind.
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    I thought that this article was very interesting because it made me realize how critical some of the college admission boards are. They won't accept any "cliche" topics such as service projects, however I feel like community service are indeed one of the most important experiences in life that influence people. This makes me think that the colleges examine not so much the grammar or clarity, but more of who stands out among everyone.
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    This article really makes you think of all the experiences to NOT write about in your college essay. I think it's interesting that humbling experiences (such as helping out the less-fortunate) are not always beneficial to you when it comes to college acceptance.
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    I think that this is a really helpful article because it helps give a new perspective on what they like and that they think the best essays are the ones that make them laugh or cry instead of the cliché college essay.
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    I agree with the statement made in this article that it is harder to think of a specific personal experience to write about than actually writing the essay. But this essay also made me realize that you can shape an ordinary story into something interesting and worth reading to boost your chances for admission.
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    I think that this article explains in depth what kinds of stories shouldn't be told, which is why it is helpful. For example, the essay where the person wrote about torturing frogs when the mascot is a frog. It shows bad examples and explains why they're not so good, such as not writing about being apologetic or epiphanic.
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    This article made me realize the importance of choosing a good essay topic. The examples that were used in the story effectively showed the importance of choosing a topic that is appropriate and unique at the same time. It also highlighted the importance of the essay, as the article mentions some top students that were denied because of an inappropriate essay topic.
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    This article tells what kinds of things to write about and what not to write about. You can write about something inappropriate if you want but it should include some kind of realization. It should be unique to you even if the story was mundane. It would be best if you try to leave the reader feeling an emotion.
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    I'm glad I read this one.... I'd never thought about how many papers admissions counselors have to read... writing concisely and interestingly is much more important than I originally thought.
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    I never thought about how something that you have done that is seemingly daily or routine could be something that astounds other people who live a very different lifestyle then you. You also should be careful of giving off the wrong impression when writing about something bad that you did in the past.
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    I got a huge kick out of reading the user comments on this article, my favorite being one who recommended to screw worrying about essays and worry about sports and ethnicity. This article definitely puts your essay into perspective. One out of thousands. There people have seen it all which is why its even more important to be honest.
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    This article made me realize that because college admissions offices have read thousands of essays, there's a high chance that someone has already written about what you want to write. The first thing that comes to mind when thinking about college essays, is talking about something that will make you look good to the admissions. But what I never thought about before was that it doesn't just have to be something extraordinary, it can be the simplest experience; it just has to be something that is unique to you.
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    I feel like this article stresses how important the college essay it is, and how the topic of your essay can either make or break you, but it doesn't give much advice on what to do. It does give helpful insight on what not to do, but doesn't give any good examples of topics. It was helpful to know how the college admissions directors will be reading the essays to find out who we are.
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    After reading this article I discovered that it's okay to take take risks and writing about a funny experience, but don't take take it too far as to making your essay controversial or an essay that may offend the school mascot.
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    I liked the ideas this essay shared because I realized that if I were to have written my college essay prior to reading this article, my essay would've been similar to the majority of students who submit college essays. This site stresses the importance of being different and that having humility, humor, and personal stories in college essays are attractive. But the article did imply that there are limits and that some things such as torturing animals and showing inconsideration to other people, are inappropriate.
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    It seems more common now for counselors and advisors to recommend writing about everyday things, but with our own personal "flair." So it was helpful to read in this article about how there are some negative everyday experiences that are important to leave out.
Lara Cowell

Maltz and Borker (1982), "A cultural approach to male-female miscommunication" - 0 views

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    Maltz and Borker argue that "American men and women come from different sociolinguistic subcultures, having learned to do different things with words in a conversation, so that when they attempt to carry on conversations with one another, even if both parties are attempting to treat one another as equals, cultural miscommunication results." Their article also provides a literature review of various studies examining male-female miscommunication. Here's the synopsis of the differences discovered in female vs. male conversation. Women generally 1. Display a greater tendency to ask questions. 2. Tend to facilitate and elicit interaction more. 3. Make greater use of positive minimal responses, e.g. "mm...I see", and insert them mid-conversation. 4. More likely to adopt a "silent protest" response to interruption 5. Greater tendency to use the pronouns "you" and "we", explicitly acknowledging the presence of the other. In contrast, men are 1. More likely to interrupt 2. More likely to challenge or dispute their partners' utterances 3. more likely to ignore the comments of the other speaker, that is, to offer no response or acknowledgment at all, or respond reluctantly 4. Utilize more mechanisms for controlling the topic of conversation 5. more likely to make direct declarations.
Lisa Stewart

How English Is Evolving Into a Language We May Not Even Understand - 11 views

  • An estimated 300 million Chinese — roughly equivalent to the total US population — read and write English but don't get enough quality spoken practice. The likely consequence of all this? In the future, more and more spoken English will sound increasingly like Chinese.
  • in various parts of the region they tend not to turn vowels in unstressed syllables into neutral vowels. Instead of "har-muh-nee," it's "har-moh-nee." And the sounds that begin words like this and thing are often enunciated as the letters f, v, t, or d. In Singaporean English (known as Singlish), think is pronounced "tink," and theories is "tee-oh-rees."
  • English will become more like Chinese in other ways, too. Some grammatical appendages unique to English (such as adding do or did to questions) will drop away, and our practice of not turning certain nouns into plurals will be ignored. Expect to be asked: "How many informations can your flash drive hold?" In Mandarin, Cantonese, and other tongues, sentences don't require subjects, which leads to phrases like this: "Our goalie not here yet, so give chance, can or not?"
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  • According to linguists, such words may introduce tone into other Asian-English hybrids.
  • Chinglish will be more efficient than our version, doing away with word endings and the articles a, an, and the.
    • Lisa Stewart
       
      This reminds me of the Vikings' effect on Anglo-Saxon.
Kristen Ige

Admissions Essay Ordeal: The Young Examined Life - New York Times - 14 views

  • filled whole grocery bags with crumpled efforts at expressing his adolescent essence in 500 words or less.
    • Jenna Frowein
       
      This is actually kind of creative and poetic.
  • And though they seem to have more collaborators than ever before
    • Jenna Frowein
       
      It's true! I think that we have so much help! We just need to start and get writing!
  • ''No adult is ever asked to do that.''
    • Jenna Frowein
       
      I think it's cool that they ask us to do this, write about what makes us unique, and adults don't do it. I think it's kind of like a test to find yourself and who you are; when that happens, you are ready for college, I guess.
    • Kristen Ige
       
      But most students going into college don't know who we are yet. We often apply undecided becuase we don't know what we want to be. I think part of the college experience is finding who we are. Maybe writing the essay is the first step.
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  • 'I wrote about racism toward myself
    • Jenna Frowein
       
      Wow, this is a really interesting comment. My first thought was that he thought he was worthless, and maybe the important thing that he wrote about was how he overcame that and realized that he is a valuable and unique person.
  • This is the season of that excruciating rite of passage that requires college-bound seniors to take what has often been a blessedly uneventful existence and transform it into something extraordinary, intriguing, distinctive.
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    "Few students are as lucky as Chris Bail [...] When I was about 11 or so, a group of kids threw stones at me, and that stuck in my head. That was just a big, big experience for me, and I guess I'm really lucky to have that because I know kids that are writing about, like, concerts they went to and stuff like that.'' I am disturbed greatly. What does not kill us will only make us stronger... Scary thought: Students trying to get into college will take extremes for more interesting topics to write about. What if it happens? Pressure. It exists. But don't let it RULE or RUIN your life.
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    Don't we all have some special experience in our lives, it's just that we need to look for them.
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    As many students across the world struggle to individualize themselves on paper in order to get into college, they often write about drastic situations that they often think are unique only to them. This however is not the case as these situations have also happened to thousands of other students and the people reading over the essays probably already have read something like that. The only true way to express yourself in your paper is to just write how you normally would instead of hyping yourself up, using big words that you normally would never use in an attempt to seem smart, or blowing your achievements out of proportion to what they really are. Just be your self and let your voice shine through your paper.
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    I find it quite sad that students will go to the extremes and seek something that they think admissions officers will find intriguing rather than it coming from their gut and what is important to them. In my opinion the best advice I could give to someone writing their college essay is, be yourself. Don't try to be someone you're not.
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    "And though they seem to have more collaborators than ever before, from cooperative English teachers to new Web sites that offer successful essays for sale, the competition seems tougher than ever, now that so many early applicants have whittled the number of available slots." To me the college application is sounding more and more deceptive. By the time you take that raw essay written by purely yourself and it goes through multiple English teachers and websites, and other peers, it goes from your writing to like your teacher's writing. I feel that after all of the processes it goes through, all the people who review it, the finished product really doesn't show the college who YOU are.
Kathryn Murata

The International Journal of Language, Society and Culture - 10 views

  • second language
    • Kathryn Murata
       
      What second languages are most popular among the Japanese? Does learning certain languages pose more benefits than learning others?
  • apply the principles of first language acquisition to their second language learning experience
  • bilingual upbringing
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  • area of the brain
  • second language development in Japan.
    • Kathryn Murata
       
      What about learning second languages in other countries?
  • Broca’s area
  • native like quality exposure
  • six year period
  • how much exposure to a second language should a kindergarten-aged child receive in order to develop native like competency or at least reduce such barriers?
    • Kathryn Murata
       
      Does that mean that we were capable of learning a second language like a native language in kindergarten?
  • English as a second language in Japan
  • motivation to continue studying English throughout the secondary school years will be much higher
    • Kathryn Murata
       
      Maybe this is true for music, sports, etc. too
  • decline in learning abilities from puberty
  • critical period for second language learners
  • it is possible for adult learners to achieve native like performance
  • alternative to the critical-period hypothesis is that second-language learning becomes compromised with age
  • children growing up without normal linguistic and social interaction
    • Kathryn Murata
       
      Reminds me of the Forbidden experiment
  • 20 months until age 13
  • inconceivable mental and physical disabilities
  • syntactic skills were extremely deficient
  • Genie used her right hemisphere for both language and non-language functions
  • particularly good at tasks involving the right hemisphere
  • 46 Chinese and Korean natives living in America
  • three and seven years of age on arrival did equally as well as the control group of native English speakers. Those between eight and fifteen did less well
    • Kathryn Murata
       
      It would be interesting to replicate this experiment here where we have mixed ethnicities.
  • regardless of what language is used elevated activity occurs within the same part of Broca’s area
  • early bilingual subject
  • For monolingual parents living within their own monolingual society it is possible to raise a child bilingually
  • 95% of people the left hemisphere of our brain is the dominant location of language
  • two specific areas that divide language by semantics (word meaning)
  • People with damage to Broca’s area are impaired in the use of grammar with a notable lack of verbs however are still able to understand language
  • actual development of our language centers begins well before birth
  • supports the notion of speaking to your child before birth
  • Japanese babies can detect the difference between the /l/ and /r/ sounds which proves most difficult for their parents
    • Kathryn Murata
       
      Can Japanese people still pronounce sounds like "L" at any age?
  • survival of the fittest
  • critical period of development is when there is an excess of synapses and the brain plasticity remains at a maximum
    • Kathryn Murata
       
      Connections between science and language, Darwin's theory of evolution (survival of the fittest)
  • importance of experience during sensitive period of language development
  • age related factors may impair our ability in acquiring a second language
  • child’s parent’s own 2nd language ability
ellisalang17

U Can't Talk to Ur Professor Like This - 0 views

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    This article talks about the importance of the level of respect when it comes to a student-teacher interaction. Mark Tomforde, a math professor at the University of Houston who has been teaching for almost two decades, said that he had to draw the line when students started calling him his first name. This article goes over the fact that students should not assume that teachers will reciprocate the same language-use such as speaking casual terms like "LOL" or "SMH." Students should not be contacting teachers through text message-like emails. Students should keep in mind that professors have much more knowledge and wisdom and as their superiors, should be given a good amount of respect. This respect starts by using appropriate language when communicating and not treating them like your friend.
tburciagareyes21

Profanity's Roots in Brain Chemistry? Damn Right - 5 views

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    Over the years, we have found that our words come from different parts of the brain. In addition the part of the brain which we use to formulate thoughts into sentences, we also use the part of the brain that deals with emotion when we swear. Researchers discovered that patients with neurodegenerative diseases like a stroke, were still able to swear. Studying patients with Tourette syndrome have also proved that swearing uses many areas of the brain. Since swearing involves the emotional part of the brain, we know that profanity is used to express intense emotions.
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    Regular speech is generated in the left hemisphere, in an area of the brain close to the surface. The cerebral cortex, or "gray matter," is often associated with higher thought processes such as thought and action. "It's sophisticated," says Bergen, "and comports with the idea of what it means to be human." Swearing, on the other hand, is generated much deeper in the brain, in regions that are older and more primitive in evolutionary terms, says Bergen. These regions are often found in the right hemisphere in the brain's emotional center, the limbic system."These are words that express intense emotions-surprise, frustration, anger, happiness, fear," says psychologist and linguist Timothy Jay, who began studying profanity more than 40 years ago."[Swearing] serves my need to vent, and it conveys my emotions to other people very effectively and symbolically," he says. "Where other animals like to bite and scratch each other, I can say 'f*ck you' and you get my contempt-I don't have to do it physically." Profanity serves other purposes, too. Lovers use it as part of enticing sex talk; athletes and soldiers use it to forge camaraderie; and people in positions of power use it to reaffirm their superiority. Profanity is even used as a celebratory expression, says Adams, citing "F*ck yeah!" as an example. The meaning of a profanity, like any other word, changes with time, culture and context. While swear words have been around since Greek and Roman times, and maybe even earlier, the types of things people consider offensive have changed. "People of the Middle Ages had no problems talking about sex or excrement, that was not their hang-up," Adams explains. "Their hang-up was talking about God disrespectfully...so that was what a profanity was."
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    The left hemisphere of the brain is responsible for emotions like happiness, sadness, and anger. The part of the brain that we use to formulate thoughts into sentences is that part that we also use to deal with emotion when we swear. Different studies done on people found with brain issues/diseases allowed researchers to understand that profanity is used to express the extreme emotions.
rainalun24

Why Saying 'Like' a Lot Is Like, Actually a Good Thing - 0 views

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    This article goes through the 6 distinct ways of using "like" and how society changes their views on filler words based on gender.
Lara Cowell

To Remember the Good Times, Reach for the Sky - 4 views

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    When people talk about positive and negative emotions they often use spatial metaphors. A happy person is on top of the world, but a sad person is down in the dumps. Some researchers believe these metaphors are a clue to the way people understand emotions: not only do we use spatial words to talk about emotional states, we also use spatial concepts to think about them. Researchers Daniel Casasanto (MPI and Donders Institute, Nijmegen) and Katinka Dijkstra (Erasmus University, Rotterdam) ran 2 experiments. In the first experiment, students had to move glass marbles upward or downward into one of two cardboard boxes, with both hands simultaneously, timed by a metronome. Meanwhile, they had to recount autobiographical memories with either positive or negative emotional valence, like "Tell me about a time when you felt proud of yourself', or 'a time when you felt ashamed of yourself.' Moving marbles upward caused participants to remember more positive life experiences, and moving them downward to remember more negative experiences. Memory retrieval was most efficient when participants' motions matched the spatial directions that metaphors in language associate with positive and negative emotions. The second experiment tested whether seemingly meaningless motor actions, e.g. moving marbles up or down, could influence the content of people's memories. Participants were given neutral-valence prompts, like "Tell me about something that happened during high school," so they could choose to retell something happy or sad. Their choices were determined, in part, by the direction in which they were assigned to move marbles. Moving marbles upward encouraged students to recount positive high school experiences like "winning an award," but moving them downward to recall negative experiences like "failing a test." "These data suggest that spatial metaphors for emotion aren't just in language," Casasanto says, "linguistic metaphors correspond to mental metaphors, and activati
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