Group items tagged

This article discusses the linguistics of schizophrenia. Schizophrenia diagnoses are typically made on one or more of the following 3 symptoms: hallucinations, delusions, and disorganized speech. Traditionally, none of these symptoms are associated with language, but the article suggests linguistic dimensions to each. Another aspect of schizophrenia manifests as Formal Thought Disorder, which is clearly linked to language and speech production. The article goes on to provide a language profile for schizophrenia and discuss the linguistics of psychosis. As someone who has OCD, I've noticed many instances where an obsession or compulsion has strong linguistic elements. I found it interesting that this linguistic influence can be found in schizophrenia and it strongly suggests that what we believe about language's effects on cognition are true!

"Computational Linguistics became an open access journal, freely available to all online readers. ... Computational Linguistics is the longest running publication devoted exclusively to the design and analysis of natural language processing systems. From this highly-regarded quarterly, university and industry linguists, speech specialists, and philosophers get information about computational aspects of research on language, linguistics, and the psychology of language processing and performance."

This article discusses the psychology behind how each individual's linguistic style might influence those whom we build friendships with. Specifically, this article focuses in on how relational "echo chambers" are common in both online and in person conversations. From a study done to determine more about how linguistics relate to relationships, it was found that "In addition to linguistic similarity driving tie formation, friendship ties will also induce increases in linguistic similarity."

A linguistics researcher at the Macquarie University in Australia has discovered that the language, known as Burushaski, which is spoken by about 90,000 people who reside in a remote area of Pakistan, is Indo-European in origin. Prof Ilija Casule's discovery, which has now been verified by a number of the world's top linguists, has excited linguistics experts around the world.

Twitter is awash with trolls, spammers and misanthropes, all keen to ruin your day with a mean-spirited message or even a threat that can cause you genuine fear. It seems all too easy to set up an account and cause trouble anonymously, but an emerging field of research is making it easier to track perpetrators by looking at the way they use language when they chat.

All the technology in the world can't stop you from leaving a trail behind you when you broadcast your thoughts online or via text message. We all have individual writing styles and habits that build to create a linguistic identity. Forensic linguistic experts can penetrate technological anonymity by interrogating the linguistic clues that you leave as you write. Everything from the way someone uses capitalisation or personal pronouns, to the words someone typically omits or includes, to a breakdown of average word or sentence length, can help identify the writer of even a short text like a Tweet or text message.

"Welcome to Popular Linguistics Magazine, the monthly online magazine that brings language- and linguistics-focused stories and research to the masses!"

Ryan, thanks! What would I do without you?! Keep posting!

This is the official linguistic code for Hawaii Creole English, which is documented by an international linguistic mapping system as a "living" and "individual" language, separate from English but sharing a lot with English. Research shows that people who speak one but not the other can hardly understand one another. Hawaii Creole is not considered by linguists to be a subset or dialect of English.

Copied from Youtube description: "How did humans acquire language? In this lecture, best-selling author Steven Pinker introduces you to linguistics, the evolution of spoken language, and the debate over the existence of an innate universal grammar. He also explores why language is such a fundamental part of social relationships, human biology, and human evolution. Finally, Pinker touches on the wide variety of applications for linguistics, from improving how we teach reading and writing to how we interpret law, politics, and literature."

Columbia University linguist and cultural critic John McWhorter asserts that texting, rather than being a scourge, is a linguistic miracle. Texting is not so much written language, as it is speech. McWhorter argues that people benefit from texting, because fluency in spoken language, written language and writing-like-speaking language expands humans' linguistic repertoire.

Read this full article: "seems" is the operative word, as linguists are NOT in agreement that language definitively shapes how we see the world. If you want to learn another language and become fluent, you may have to change the way you behave in small but sometimes significant ways, specifically how you sort things into categories and what you notice. Researchers are starting to study how those changes happen, says Aneta Pavlenko, a professor of linguistics at Temple University. If people speaking different languages need to group or observe things differently, then bilinguals ought to switch focus depending on the language they use. That's exactly the case, according to Pavlenko. For example, she says English distinguishes between cups and glasses, but in Russian, the difference between chashka (cup) and stakan (glass) is based on shape, not material. One's native language could also affect memory, says Pavlenko. She points to novelist Vladimir Nabokov, who was fully trilingual in English, French and Russian. When Nabokov started translating his first memoir, written in English, into Russian, he recalled a lot of things that he did not remember when writing it in English. Pavlenko states that "the version of Nabokov's autobiography we know now is actually a third attempt, where he had to recall more things in Russian and then re-translate them from Russian back into English." Lena Boroditsky, an associate professor of cognitive science at the University of California, San Diego, has studied the differences in what research subjects remember when using English, which doesn't always note the intent of an action, and Spanish, which does. This can lead to differences in what people remember seeing, which is potentially important in eyewitness testimony, she says. However, not all linguists agree that language affects what we notice. John McWhorter,, a linguist at Columbia University, acknowledges such differences but says they don't really matter. The experim

Linguistic scientists have now identified the most confusing sayings in the British-English language. Most of these phrases come from historical events and military slang.

Language is common to all humans; we seem to be "hard-wired" for it. Many social scientists and philosophers say it's this ability to use language symbolically that makes us "human." Though it may be a universal human attribute, language is hardly simple. For decades, linguists' main task was to track and record languages. But, like so many areas of science, the field of linguistics has evolved dramatically over the past 50 years or so. Today's science of linguistics explores: -the sounds of speech and how different sounds function in a language -the psychological processes involved in the use of language -how children acquire language capabilities -social and cultural factors in language use, variation and change -the acoustics of speech and the physiological and psychological aspects involved in producing and understanding it -the biological basis of language in the brain This special report, compiled by the National Science Foundation, touches on nearly all of these areas by answering questions such as: How does language develop and change? Can the language apparatus be "seen" in the brain? Does it matter if a language disappears? What exactly is a dialect? How can sign language help us to understand languages in general? Answers to these and other questions have implications for neuroscience, psychology, sociology, biology and more.

Jennifer Sclafani, an associate teaching professor in Georgetown University's Department of Linguistics, has been studying the way Trump speaks. She notes that the way Trump speaks, he speaks was a commoner rather than a president, who is usually someone that sounds more educated, and more refined than an average American. She has noticed that through hyperboles and directness from his words, he creates a feeling of strength and determination that he can get the job done. Trump also omits the word "well" which makes him come across as a straight talker and not someone that tries to escape a question.

This article discusses a recent branding trend in which companies drop vowels from their names with the intent of appearing more modern. Following companies like Flickr, Scribd, Grindr, and Tumblr, Standard Life Aberdeen recently announced a name change to Abrdn. This move has been met with criticism by the public and linguists alike who've deemed it a failed attempt to be use youth language and appear "edgier." Linguists have brought up that dropping vowels can only be effective with certain words. Since Abrdn drops two vowels, it makes it much more difficult to pronounce, which could lead to brand unfamiliarity. On the other hand, other linguists argue that it simply feeds off a modern language trend, and could indeed be accomplishing its goal.

Over the past few months, the online word game Wordle has skyrocketed in popularity, with cryptic grids of gray, green and yellow squares appearing on social media.The game is challenging, but simple: Once a day, players have six guesses to identify a new five-letter word (all players receive the same word on a given day). Each guess provides color-coded hints: a letter turns green if it is in the correct spot, yellow if it is part of the word but in a different spot, and gray if it is not in the word at all. In Wordle, the process of intuiting a target word from color-coded clues provides a window into our subconscious understanding of how language works, according to UChicago linguist Jason Riggle. In effect, it turns everyone into a linguist, forcing us to wrestle with sound fragments and stitch them together according to probability distributions.

Article looks at the linguistic shift away from the older generation "you're welcome" to "no problem" or "no worries." The article notes that formal language is unquestionably falling by the wayside, likely due to the increasing use of digital technology. Instant messaging and texting have compelled many young people to forgo punctuation altogether, since receiving a message with a period or question mark at the end of it can induce anxiety for some. This is because punctuation is now considered "formal," which roughly translates to "serious."The same is true for "you're welcome," according to linguists, and it might explain why younger generations are using less formal phrases when someone thanks them. While some people might mistakenly think that doing so suggests that the service was irksome or inconvenient, the linguists cited in the article contribute this phenomenon largely to linguistic mirroring. This basically means if the people you interact with on a day-to-day basis often say "you're welcome" or "no problem," then you'll likely mirror whatever phrase is more frequently being used around you. "I believe that this is just part of the evolution of language," adds Saccardi. "The majority of speakers will not intellectualize the connotative meanings of their utterances. Rather, they are more likely to just use particular phrases instead of others because that's what they have grown into." Interestingly, the phrase "you're welcome" has acquired a new meaning for younger generations, as many use it sarcastically to point out that another person forgot to thank them, as in Maui's song in _Moana_.

Konglish is the term used to describe the variety of English unique to Korea. It is just one of many varieties of the English language that exists far beyond the borders of so-called "inner circle" Englishes - those spoken in countries such as Britain and the US, for example. The author takes umbrage against those who argue that Konglish is incorrect. From a linguistic standpoint, deeming only one variety of grammar and vocabulary usage as correct is, nonsensical. Rather, Konglish reflects cultural identity, connects with linguistic diversity and above all, is already used to communicate in Korea, which is the ultimate purpose of language.

linguistics blog

The meaning of words, and the way we used them, change all the time - and that's OK with linguist John McWhorter of Columbia University. He writes about how the English language has evolved in his new book, Words on the Move: Why English Won't - And Can't - Sit Still (Like Literally). This is a terrific book, by the way, with lots of entertaining examples of language shift, semantic drift, linguistic blending and contracting: perfect read for Words R Us. Highly recommended!

This article talks about a study of the effect of language used during debates and its effect on the polls. It was written right before the last of the 2016 presidential debates. "Linguist style matching" is a trick that linguists have studied, and it focuses on how candidates state their points, not what their points are.