Humans Who Read Grammars

We're big fans of open access publishing and other ways of distributing knowledge in a fair and accessible way. We're also big fans of lists: we've got a list of resources on linguistic terminology , free online linguistic databases  and now also one for  open access publishing in linguistics . If we're missing something in our lists,  let us know . Also: check out our posts tagged with " free PDF " for tips on interesting articles in linguistics that are freely available. What's the deal with Open Access you ask? Commonly, tax payers pay for universities and other institutions to do research through funding bodies like the NSF or DFG . Researchers partially communicate with each other and document their research through scholarly publications. These publications are often edited and distributed through large commercial publishing houses. These publications are later bought by university libraries so that other researchers might read it. Uni...

While we're on the topic of language innateness (which is what much/most of the "war" is/was about), Annabelle Lukin, a linguist at Macquarie University in Australia, just wrote a very good article on a site called "The Conversation" about language innateness and being a parent.  You should tots go read it now. Not only does it contain videos of cute babies but also summaries of different schools of thought and implications of these philosophies on actual parenting.  It also contains this cute and interesting video from  Colwyn Trevarthen's  research  in the 70's.

In recent days, old flames from the great generativist-vs-functionalist-war have flared up again with this post and reactions to it (and it's not the first time this author creates this kind of debate). I'll refrain from writing a longer serious post right now, but in the meantime I can recommend this more sensible and interesting post here by another generativist and this more functionalist paper here comparing different schools of thought. Needless to say, I'm very tired of these kinds of debates (particularly when they derail into ad hominem,  inaccessible and very theory-internal arguments). I grew up functionalist/typologist, but I've also had generative teachers and I can see the point of that kind of theory building and testing (and I think non-generativists need to discuss how to produce testable hypothesis more) - while at the same time, I see how it can pollute the primary data I need for my cross-linguistic comparisons. I have young researcher friends...

I like digging around in censuses, especially of language use. I was just poking through the one from the US of A. I've just learned that in their census they collapse all the languages of the world into 382 categories. I thought this was rather interesting and that maybe you would be interested too. In the census of citizens and residents of the USA they basically ask: Do you speak a language other than English at home? Which? How well do you speak English? I'm guessing the 382 language categories is due to practical purposes, it seems that interviewers mostly have been using and probably still are using pen and paper.  I tried to figure out if it still is the case and will be for 2020, but I couldn't find that information on census.gov.  I could find out that you can answer by mail, phone or interview, probably meaning that it's all still on paper. Collapsing the 7,000 plus languages of the world into 382 categories makes sense if you have limited resou...

Magnus Enquist, evolutionary biologist from the Centre for the Study of Cultural Evolution at Stockholm Univeristy Earlier, I blogged about the  Nijmegen Lectures by Russell Gray on language evolution . If you want even more lectures on language evolution, then why not watch the lectures from the Symposium on Language Acquisition and Language Evolution at The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and Stockholm University form 2011? They're all up and freely available  here ! If you're keen on these things, I recommend having a look through these videos and proceedings. I quote from the preface of the proceedings for the symposium: The symposium was intended as an opportunity for scientists from different research areas to interact and discuss complex dynamic systems in relation to the general theme of “Language Acquisition and Language Evolution”. Complex dynamic systems are characterised by hierarchical and combinatorial structures that can be found in quite di...

I happen to have a little collection of human heads in profile that are interesting linguistically. I don't have that much to say about them, but I think they're very nice so I'd like to share them with y'all. 1) Illustration of conversation in Ferdinand de Saussure's Cours de linguistique générale. This book was not written by Saussure and was published after his death.   It was compiled by his students Charles Bally and Albert Sechehaye from lecture notes. This image is from the English edition, but I think it's the same in the French original. It's basically getting at the core of language, having an idea in one brain and then trying to transmit that same idea to another brain whilst lacking telepathy. There are more things language does, and most conversations are not only about transmission of information, but it is still at the core and this is one of the first illustrations of it. 2) The cover of Tage Danielsson's book Grallimmatik. T...

We've posted here before about sites online where you can listen to audio samples from the worlds languages, see part 1 and part 2  (or check the tag listentotheworldslanguages ). Go have a look, there are plenty of exciting sites where you can have a listen to the diversity of our planet! This time: The Algonquian Linguistic Atlas! On the site of the Algonquian Linguistic Atlas you can listen to audio samples from different categories (greetings, feelings, at the store, etc) from many different algonquian languages. The idea is similar to the Sound Comparisons site that we covered before where you can listen to European languages. What is so great about this site is that you can pick a word or phrase, say "I'm Lazy", and listen to how it sounds in the different languages and see how they are similar and different. You can see the chains of contact and shared genealogy and what changes and what is more stable. Each audio sample is accompanied with a tran...

Did you know that the brilliant journal of satirical linguistics - The Speculative Grammarian  also features a very entertaining podcast  ( iTunes link here )?  The podcast includes readings of articles (my current fav is the one on vampire linguistics, listen to mp3 here ), the occasional musical number or dramatical piece and also a talk show called "Language Made Difficult". The talk show is hosted by the LingNerds (and editors of SpecGram): Trey Jones ( whom I "cyber-stalked" once ), Keith W Slater, William Spruiell and Sheri Wells-Jensen. It's a fun show, you should tots start listening. Also.. I'll be appearing in future episodes of that show in a segment called "Lies, Damned Lies and Linguistics". All the way from Australia you can hear me trying to tease apart which one out of three facts is a lie. Won't tell you how I did, you'll have to tune in. It's all free and online, start up your fav web browser and/or podcast clie...

Go get your first taste of linguistics with this nice new free online course! There's a new course on coursera (online platform for good free distance courses) in linguistics! The course is led by prof Marc van Oostendorp and is called "Miracles of Human Language: An Introduction to Linguistics"*. It's from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands and very interesting! It takes 5 weeks of 4-6 hours per week, it's free (no fees anywhere), all material and readings are provided online for free and in general it looks like a very well organised and interesting introductory course. The course will also feature videos from informants speaking foreign languages which you will analyse! If there was ever a good opportunity to try out a little bit of linguistics for the first time - this is the one! As all y'all probably know there are also linguistics lectures that you can watch online. For example: the NativLang-channel , Ling Space,   MIT linguistic...

I think that data on linguistic diversity should be in  the amazing online tool Gapminder . Gapminder aims to spread a fact-based world-view on matters concerning social, economic and environmental development at local, national and global levels. I believe that data on linguistic diversity has a place in that discussion and can be included relatively easily. I'd like to ask for your assistance in spreading the word so that this might happen, please do so by sharing this post or this link . There is a brilliant project called Gapminder that aims to make statistics about the development of our world more accessible. They are fighting against ignorance and trying to bring hard facts into world political discussions on economy, health, birth rates, gender biases in education and much more. They've made tons of educational and fun videos, see them here  and you yourself can also play around with tons of interesting stats here . It's easy and extremely interesting. Warning: m...

Every year the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics and the Radboud University of Nijmegen invite one or several prominent scholars to give a series of talks on a current topic of their research. This is a great way to learn about important contemporary research in linguistics and the cognitive sciences. I just realised that I had not informed you about the fact that one can now find free online videos of these lectures online. In particular, I'd like to recommend last year's talk, which was on language evolution, a hot topic that I think will interest many readers of this blog. In 2014, they invited Russell Gray and he gave three talks on the topic of No Miracles! A Darwinian view of the evolution of cognition, language and culture Photo of Russell Gray at the Nijmegen lectures, taken from Seán Roberts post on the excellent blog Replicated Typo. In this lecture series Professor Gray argues that the research fields of animal cognition, language evolution and c...

Здрасти! If you're in secondary school you can participate in linguistic olympiads. It's a great way to get a first taste of what linguistics is like. Secondary school can also be called "high school", "gymnasie" "college" etc depending on where you live. This years international contest takes place in Bulgaria - land of roses. I've been to the international olympiads as the team leader for Sweden since 2008, when it was actually also in Bulgaria. I highly recommend participating, you'll learn lots and meet great people! Down below are some useful links, follow them to learn more about the arrangements of each country. These are the countries that I know are hosting contests this year, there's even more here . Some of the countries have already had their first national rounds, but some have not yet.  If you got any questions, contact the IOL here . If you're not a student of secondary school, spread this onwards so that it ...