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Dr. Mitsuhiko Ota, a linguist in the University of Edinburgh Language Sciences department, was the lead researcher in a 2018 study (Ota, Davies-Jenkins, and Skarabela 2018) examining infant-directed speech, a.k.a. baby talk. Across languages, lexical items specific to infant-directed speech (i.e., 'baby-talk words') are characterized by three major features: 1. onomatopoeia incorporated into non-arbitrary, "highly iconic" words, e.g. "quack", "bow wow" 2. diminutives, e.g. "daddy", "tummy" 3. reduplication, e.g. "din din", "easy peasy" These three lexical characteristics may help infants discover the referential nature of words, identify word referents, and segment fluent speech into words. If so, the amount of lexical input containing these properties should predict infants' rate of vocabulary growth. To test this prediction, Ota's team tracked the vocabulary size in 47 English-learning infants from 9 to 21 months and examined whether vocabulary growth was related to measures of iconicity, diminutives, and reduplication in the lexical input at 9 months. The team's analyses showed that both diminutives and reduplication in the input were associated with vocabulary growth, although measures of iconicity were not. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that phonological properties typical of lexical input in infant-directed speech play a role in early vocabulary growth.

Languages a world apart have a similar habit of borrowing elevated vocabulary from other languages. In 1066, because the ruling class spoke Old French, that set of vocabulary became synonymous with the elite. Everyone else used Old English. During this period, England's society was diglossic: one community, two language sets with distinct social spheres. Today, English-speakers pick and choose from the different word sets-Latinate (largely Old French borrowings) and Germanic (mostly Old English-derived words)-depending on the occasion. Although English is no longer in a diglossic relationship with another language, the Norman-era diglossia remains reflected in the way we choose and mix vocabulary. In informal chat, for example, we might go on to ask something, but in formal speech we'd proceed to inquire. There are hundreds of such pairs: match/correspond, mean/intend, see/perceive, speak/converse. Most of us choose one or the other without even thinking about the history behind the split. Germanic words are often described as earthier, simpler, and friendlier. Latinate vocabulary, on the other hand, is lofty and elite. It's amazing that nine hundred years later, the social and political structure of 12th-century England still affects how we think about and use English. The article also discusses a similar historical phenomenon in India, where much of southern India, just like Norman England, was diglossic between Sanskrit (an Indo-European language used ritually and formally by Hindu elites) and vernacular Dravidian languages. Today, that diglossia is gone, but Sanskrit-derived vocabulary still forms an upper crust, mostly pulled out for formal speech or writing.

This article talks about how famous rappers have huge vocabularies to create their music. Eminem has the top number of vocabulary words at a shocking 8,818 words. Having a big vocabulary like that provides him with the use of unique words in his songs and this is one of the reason why he came out with more songs than other rappers.

There are already many language-learning apps, with Duolingo being one of the most popular. A new app, Lingohop, aims to teach people more than just simple vocabulary and grammatical structures; it wants to customize vocabulary and grammar for each person.

The more parents talk to their children, the faster those children's vocabularies grow and the better their intelligence develops. The problem seems to be cumulative. By the time children are two, there is a six-month disparity in the language-processing skills and vocabulary of toddlers from low-income families. Toddlers learn new words from their context, so the faster a child understands the words he already knows, the easier it is for him to attend to those he does not. Dr Anne Fernald, of Stanford, found that words spoken directly to a child, rather than those simply heard in the home, are what builds vocabulary. Plonking children in front of the television does not have the same effect. Neither does letting them sit at the feet of academic parents while the grown-ups converse about Plato. The effects can be seen directly in the brain. Kimberly Noble of Columbia University studies how linguistic disparities are reflected in the structure of the parts of the brain involved in processing language. Although she cannot yet prove that hearing speech causes the brain to grow, it would fit with existing theories of how experience shapes the brain. Babies are born with about 100 billion neurons, and connections between these form at an exponentially rising rate in the first years of life. It is the pattern of these connections which determines how well the brain works, and what it learns. By the time a child is three, there will be about 1,000 trillion connections in his brain, and that child's experiences continuously determine which are strengthened and which pruned. This process, gradual and more-or-less irreversible, shapes the trajectory of the child's life.And it is this gap, more than a year's pre-schooling at the age of four, which seems to determine a child's chances for the rest of his life.

Developing language skills appears to be more important for boys than girls in helping them to develop self-control and, ultimately, succeed in school, according to a study led by a Michigan State University researcher. Language skills -- specifically the building of vocabulary -- help children regulate their emotions and behavior and that boys lag behind girls in both language skills and self-regulation. The researchers noted that while girls overall seemed to have a more natural ability to control themselves and focus, boys with a strong vocabulary showed a dramatic increase in this ability to self-regulate -- even doing as well in this regard as girls with a strong vocabulary.

I chose this article because prior to posting this I was studying my SAT vocab. I was wondering if this would really help me. I found that "increased vocabulary knowledge correlates with increased grey matter density in a region of the parietal cortex that is well-located to mediate an association between meaning and sound (the posterior supramarginal gyrus). Further this region also shows sensitivity to acquiring a second language. Relative to monolingual English speakers, Italian-English bilinguals show increased grey matter density in the same region."

According to Timothy Rasinski, a literacy education professor at Kent State, teaching young students about morphology (the study of word forms) and word patterns improves their ability to gain meaning from unfamiliar words, which helps with reading overall.

List of words that should be eliminated to write more succintly 1. that 2. went 3. honestly 4. absolutely  5. very 6. really 7. amazing 8. always  9. never 10. literally 11. just 12. maybe 13. stuff 14. things 15. irregardless 

Humorous article, courtesy The Economist, which pays homage to a plethora of vocabulary words that will be axed from the SAT verbal section this year. Here's the opening: As he brushed his recalcitrant hair and tried to pick an accretion of egg from his best tie, Joe wondered by what aberration he had been included in this gathering. He was not a demagogue, despot, gourmand, insurgent, reprobate or virtuoso .

It's commonly believed that those who throw swear words around freely are either uneducated, lazy, have a minuscule vocabulary, or all of the above. Now, we can officially say, those who subscribe to that belief are just a**holes. A pair of psychologists from two U.S.

This illustrated video from Mental Floss explores word doubles in English: a phenomenon which springs from Germanic and Latin linguistic influences. The video also explores why Latinate words are often perceived as being more elegant and erudite than their Anglo-Saxon (Germanic) counterparts.

A new speed-reading app, Spritz, premiered in March 2014. Its makers claim that Spritz allows users to read at staggeringly high rates of speed: 600 or even 1,000 words per minute. (The average college graduate reads at a rate of about 300 words per minute.) Spritz can do this, they say, by circumventing the limitations imposed by our visual system. The author of this article argues that your brain has an even more superior "app": expertise, which creates a happy balance between speed and comprehension. In their forthcoming book, Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning, researchers Henry Roediger III and Mark McDaniel (along with writer Peter Brown) liken expertise to a "brain app" that makes reading and other kinds of intellectual activity proceed more efficiently and effectively. In the minds of experts, the authors explain, "a complex set of interrelated ideas" has "fused into a meaningful whole." The mental "chunking" that an expert - someone deeply familiar with the subject she's reading about - can do gives her a decided speed and comprehension advantage over someone who is new to the material, for whom every fact and idea encountered in the text is a separate piece of information yet to be absorbed and connected. People reading within their domain of expertise have lots of related vocabulary and background knowledge, both of which allow them to steam along at full speed while novices stop, start, and re-read, struggling with unfamiliar words and concepts. Deep knowledge of what we're reading about propels the reading process in other ways as well. As we read, we're constantly building and updating a mental model of what's going on in the text, elaborating what we've read already and anticipating what will come next. A reader who is an expert in the subject he's reading about will make more detailed and accurate predictions of what upcoming sentences and paragraphs will contain, allowing him to read quickly while filling in his alrea

Fascinating article on language learning using an app called Memrise. The company's goal: to take all of cognitive science's knowhow about what makes information memorable, and combine it with all the knowhow from social gaming about what makes an activity fun and addictive, and develop a web app that can help anyone memorise anything. Two takeaways for language learning, and acquiring and retaining any subject matter: 1. Elaborative encoding. The more context and meaning you can attach to a piece of information, the likelier it is that you'll be able to fish it out of your memory at some point in the future. And the more effort you put into creating the memory, the more durable it will be. One of the best ways to elaborate a memory is to try visually to imagine it in your mind's eye. If you can link the sound of a word to a picture representing its meaning, it'll be far more memorable than simply learning the word by rote. Create mnemonics for vocabulary. 2. "Spaced repetition". Cognitive scientists have known for more than a century that the best way to secure memories for the long term is to impart them in repeated sessions, distributed across time, with other material interleaved in between. If you want to make information stick, it's best to learn it, go away from it for a while, come back to it later, leave it behind again, and once again return to it - to engage with it deeply across time. Our memories naturally degrade, but each time you return to a memory, you reactivate its neural network and help to lock it in. One study found that students studying foreign language vocabulary can get just as good long-term retention from having learning sessions spaced out every two months as from having twice as many learning sessions spaced every two weeks. To put that another way: you can learn the same material in half the total time if you don't try to cram.

Memrise is a British technology start-up that makes vocabulary learning into a fast, effective, and fun game. A million people are already learning on the platform and, with monthly active users growing at 30 per cent month-on-month, it is one of the fastest growing learning tools in the world. Free online learning and teaching site, with an associated mobile app. The language learning modules combine neuroscience principles, fun online-gaming-style leveling-up and leaderboards, and a social community. You can learn a bunch of different languages--200, in fact--from Chinese to Finnish to Arabic to French (Macedonian or Xhosa, anyone?), as well as content in other subjects: math and science, arts and literature... I'll keep you posted on whether it works by trying to learn a new language or several. I did check out the Chinese language component, and it seems legitimate so far... There's also a unit on "Brain and Mind" that would be of use to WRU students.

(Jump to point 3). Children learn language through hearing, so making sure they have lots of things to listen to is critical. Toddlers whose mothers talked with them have bigger vocabularies.

Wordles of commonly used words in television commercials advertising boy and girl toys.

After a short survey, it gives you an estimate of how many words you know. See also: http://testyourvocab.com/hard.php

"Our results indicate that despite the differences in the structure and vocabulary of the languages analyzed, the impact of word ordering in the structure of language is a statistical linguistic universal."

Ben Zimmer is a linguist