Tonight, my daughter asked me the question that every parent dreads.

“Daddy?” she asked from her bedroom.  She had just climbed into bed and I was in the bathroom getting a load of laundry ready to take to the washing machine.  I expected her question to be a simple one, like what time she had to be up tomorrow or if she could watch TV before going to Grandma’s house.  I had no idea of the conundrum that I was in for.

“Yes, sweetie?”

“Is ‘ain’t’ a word?”

I froze, arms full of dirty clothes.  My pulse quickened. My heart raced. My brain jammed.  It was the question that every parent dreads – every parent that gives a damn about linguistics, anyway – and here it was, staring me right in the face and opening its unholy maw, threatening to devour my daughter’s sense of proper English once and for all time if I didn’t slay The Horrific Ain’t Question Beast quickly.

How could I answer that question?  All my life I’d been told that “ain’t” is not a word, by English teachers with drawls so thick that four-letter words had no less than three syllables and who also used the “word” unsparingly in their off hours.  If I said it was a word, I was giving my daughter free license to use it and have others think less of her.  I could imagine her in adulhood, saying “ain’t” and her friends laughing behind her back at her use of “ain’t” like she might as well have been wearing a Confederate flag t-shirt and drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon on the back of pickup truck with 44-inch tires to overcompensate for her three-toothed boyfriend’s bedroom deficiencies.  On the other hand, if I said it wasn’t a word, I gave her license to look down on perfectly good people who just didn’t have parents as concerned with language as her, which of course is no reason in and of itself to look down on someone. . .unless they drink Pabst Blue Ribbon as well.

And what about “ain’t”?  It’s such a versatile construction!  It can replace any number of contractions, like “can’t,” “won’t,” “didn’t,” “don’t,” “haven’t,” “hasn’t,” “isn’t,”. . .the list would be endless, except that I just ended it right there.  Was that the reason that it has been so shunned by the literati?  Because of its chameleon ways, sneaking in and replacing words that no doubt someone long ago sweated and slaved over to construct, only to have the Almighty Ain’t saunter in like it owned the place and knock those hard-earned constructions into a cocked hat?  Was “ain’t” simply the victim of Literary Elitist persecution?  Or was it a deliberate, perfidious attempt at dumbing down the English language enough that people could no longer recognize when a string of words make sense or not?  (If you watch certain political speeches, you will see that this has already happened.)  Was “ain’t” a good word ninja or a bad word ninja?

I could have simply asked myself, “What would the Oxford English Dictionary do?”  But at any given time, I only believe in five things greater than myself, and the OED’s turn isn’t until next week, so that was right out.

Suddenly, a flash of inspiration.

With a confidence I did not actually feel in my quivering bones, I replied, “Well, technically it’s not a word, but some people use it anyway.”

A pause.  Silence.  Was my daughter thinking this over?  At 9 years of age, was she losing faith in her father’s infallibility as I waited, instead of losing it at 14 like every other child?  Was she picturing me in a tweed robe with leather-patched elbows, a God of Language decreeing forever which words were worthy? Or was she picturing me wearing a rebel flag t-shirt and drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon?

“Okay,” she said, a satisfied tone in her voice.  “Goodnight, Daddy, love you.”

“Love you too,” I replied, wiping my suddenly-damp brow.  Tweed robe it was, and “ain’t” had been sent to languish in literary limbo.

For the nonce.

VS – 11/25/09

And so it begins again. This is my new blog. It’s a new start !

I will try to be better at blogging. More interesting things.

For example today Jóna and I went out to the post office to finally get my birthday present from my dad. It’s a cd and a USB key with music, a whole bunch of music he’s taken from the vinyls – a few of them I recognized, I used to sit by our turn table and listen to a few tracks over and over again, especially Sunday Bloody Sunday by U2 (way before they started sucking).

Tonight we had the most amazing poutine, which we called Bepoutine. We bought some pepper seasoned oven fries, a lot of Béarnaise sauce and Kotasæla (Icelandic cottage cheese). It was all put together into something closer to a soup than a poutine. But it as greasy, thick, saucy, heavy and fat as it may sound, it was absolutely delicious. Heavy like a brick, but delicious.

But it’s okay, we’ve been eating very good food. Loads of coriander (which I used to dislike).

Also !

Yesterday I had my job interview at Mímir. It went very well. This is the story: Jón Simon, who I know through Kael, is a Brit who teaches Icelandic at this institute (where Erla used to work and where her mother teachers, too). However, for the month of February he’ll be in Luxembourg, so they need a replacement. He told them about me and asked me to go and talk with Sólborg, the woman who could hire me. We did, went there (it’s in Skeifan), and I spoke with Sólborg, had some christmas cookies (here there is christmas milk, christmas malt, christmas beer, even christmas chocolate milk).

So it looks like I will be TEACHING Icelandic to foreigners for all of February, and will get quite well payed for it (roughly it should double my money for the month, get about 120.000kr extra, which is all going into my now quite sizeable savings for the new Canon 7d. I should get it in March ! AND I CAN’T WAIT !! ).

It’s not only a very exciting opportunity but it would be an amazing achievement for me, to be able to say that after just over a year in Iceland, I started teaching Icelandic to foreigners – plus I would be teaching level 3 (of 5). I was just about to take off my clothes and start a bonfire of happiness in the office. Sólborg seemed very pleased and she even hinted at the fact that we probably wouldn’t need me to apply for a (complicated) work permit, because it’s so little.

Also !

I have been working on mastering the Leipzig glossing rules, and so for fun I’ve been glossing a couple of phrases in Alopian, just to give an idea of what the inner workings of the language are. Here is an example:

teikis takevamami suvi

t-eųi-ki-s ta-keva-ma-mi-Ø suv-i

3sg.unag.ina-carry.away/past-transloc-punc 3sg.unag.ina-float-1pl.unag-actnom.unag.trans-dat flow-nom.ina

it carried away [it floats us] current

‘Our boat was carried away by the current’

This phrase shows off what is called “action nominals”, or in simple terms a noun which has all the characteristics of a verb, yet acts as a noun. In the case of the example above, the action nominal is takevamami, which literally means ‘it floats us’, but it is used as a noun (means “our boat”).

So this is it for now. A new blog !

Listen to this song !

Today is Wednesday, November 25, 2009.  It is the 329^th day of the year with 36 to go.

Today’s History

In 1963, the body of President John F. Kennedy was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery.
In 2002, President George W. Bush signed legislation creating the Department of Homeland Security.

Today’s News

Daddy Daycare
An Indianapolis man has been arrested after he left his son in a tractor trailer while he went into a strip club to have a drink.  The child is five years old.  The man left the boy in the cabin of the tractor trailer watching cartoons so he could go inside and have a couple.  When he left the strip joint, he was so drunk that he couldn’t find his truck so he thought someone had stolen it.  He called the police to report the truck and his child missing.  The police informed him that the truck was still in the parking lot where he had left it.  They charged him with child neglect for leaving the child unattended in a high crime area and public intoxication. 

What do you tell your kid when he grows up?  “Hope that didn’t traumatize you, kid, sitting in the parking lot of a strip club while daddy gets his rocks off.”  The report states that the mother came to pick up the child and the husband.  I’m wondering why he didn’t just take his kid home, or call his wife and tell her to come get the kid.  Actually, I’m wondering why she just didn’t leave the husband at the jail, get her kid and just go home.  I hope she doesn’t intend to stay married to someone that would leave her child in the parking lot of a strip club.

Wanderlust
A 13-year-old boy with Asperger’s Syndrome, who had been missing for 11 days, was found wandering the subway.  Asperger’s Syndrome is similar to autism.  The boy had been at school when he ran away because he thought he was in trouble.  When the mother called the police to report him missing, they blew her off stating that many teenage children run away from home.  She tried to explain about her son’s condition.  Children with Asperger’s have difficulty socializing and communicating; they generally won’t ask for help because they are too shy to approach someone they don’t know.  The kid had a few dollars in his pocket and survived by eating lollipops and bags of chips he bought from vending stands.  When authorities found him, he was still in the same clothes he’d been wearing the day he went missing.  The mother says the police didn’t even try to help her until the boy had been missing five days because they thought he was just another runaway.

That’s messed up.  What if something had happened to that boy?  Yeah, a lot of teenagers do run away but the mother told the police that he was retarded and they pretty much blew her off.  Retarded kids run away too but mostly because they are scared and don’t know what to do.  Luckily he wasn’t too retarded because he knew enough to buy himself something to eat and he stayed in the subway system so he wasn’t exposed to the cold.  I know I couldn’t survive 11 days on the streets. 

F– Me Up, Facebook
Authorities believe a posting on Facebook encouraged some bad ass schoolchildren to beat up a boy because he had red hair.  Police found a Facebook posting declaring Friday to be “Kick a Ginger Day,” in which people were supposed to go around and kick redheads.  The red-headed boy at a middle school in California was beat up in two separate occasions on Friday.  It is possible that the Facebook posting was derived from a South Park episode.  The boy was not seriously injured and no one has been arrested.

Kick a Ginger Day…yeah.  That’s all I’ma say about that.

F– My Life, Facebook
A Canadian woman is taking her employer to court after they revoked her benefits due to some pictures she posted on Facebook.  The woman had been on extended leave because she was diagnosed as clinically depressed.  She was relying on sick leave benefits to help pay her bills, but the company stopped paying the benefits when she started posting pictures of her at parties and on vacation.  They said if she was feeling good enough to go to a party then she was feeling well enough to go back to work.  The woman claims that her shrink told her to help battle depression she should treat herself and take herself out.  The photos included Chippendale dancers, a birthday party and a beach holiday. 

More than ever people are using our social networking sites to spy on us.  I’ve recently read a story where a woman was denied her degree after she posted a picture of herself drunk at a party.  The woman was getting her teaching degree.  The school contended that the woman wouldn’t be a good candidate to be a teacher since she was getting trashed.  I completely disagree with the fact that people are using our business against us, but until there’s some kind of legislation against it, we have to protect ourselves.  Although there’s ways around everything, make your social sites private.  I guess whoever “they” are thinks we should be sitting in our houses with the lights off in order to fit into this neat little square of morality “they” have created for us.  A party is a perfectly reasonable place to be drunk, but if there had been children present, than maybe this isn’t somebody you would want to have as a teacher.  There’s a difference.  This woman was depressed, so she should probably get out, get some fresh air, enjoy life to bring her spirits up.  Or maybe, according to the insurance company, she should have sat in the house and slit her wrists, proving that she really was depressed.  People are so stupid.

Fighting Fat
Peruvian police have arrested several members of a gang that have been going around killing people for their fat.  They were using the fat for cosmetics.  The gang confessed to killing at least five people for their fat.  Two were arrested with about $60,000 worth of liquid fat in bottles.  Even though fat has a cosmetic use, there isn’t a huge black market value for the stuff.  The gang would attack a victim, kill him, and then cut off his head, arms and legs.  The organs would then be removed so that they could drain the fat into tubes.  The police are continuing to investigate the disappearance of 60 other people who may have been victims of this fat-snatching gang.

Well, there’s certainly a new way to lose weight:  have a gang member kill you and suck the fat out of your body.  All the Hollywood stars will be jumping on this one.  In the old days, they used to steal your teeth, now they want your fat.

Daddy Daycare, Part 2
A Minnesota man admitted that he spoke only Klingon (a fake alien language from Star Trek) to his child for the first three years of his life.  He said he was interested in whether the boy would acquire it like any other human language.  He said he wanted to understand how children learn languages better.  The wife spoke to the child in English.  The boy is now in high school, but the father had long since stopped speaking to him in Klingon because it was obvious the kid didn’t like it and wouldn’t respond.  He said he didn’t want to make it into a problem.

Uhm.  It already is a problem.  If I was the wife I would have been like, “Either speak a real language or I’m divorcing you.”  What if he had messed up the child’s language learning abilities?  What if the kid never learned how to speak English (or any other language) properly?  What if he developed some other mental issue?  When the boy starts swinging from the rafters pretending he is a Klingon then what?  People just don’t think.

Today’s Thought

Self is the only prison that can bind the soul. ~Henry van Dyke

Πρόσφατα μιλούσα με έναν φίλο, του οποίου ο Κύπριος γείτονας έβαλε καταλάθος φωτιά στο διαμέρισμά του. Ο τύπος έντρομος είχε βγει το πρωί στο μπαλκόνι και φώναζε κάτι για τον “τζισβέ” του (δηλαδή το μπρίκι του). Ο φίλος μου αφού μου αφηγήθηκε το περισταστικό, αναφώνησε “Τι γλώσσα κι αυτή ε;!” κι όταν του απάντησα “Δεν είναι άλλη γλώσσα, αλλά ελληνική διάλεκτος, σαν τη δική σου τη θεσσαλική!” έμεινε να με κοιτάει…

Η Κυπριακή ανήκει στα νότια ιδιώματα της ελληνικής και μάλιστα στη νησιωτική ζώνη του ίντα *. Οι Κύπριοι στην καθημερινότητα τους μιλούν τη διάλεκτο, όμως στο σχολείο διδάσκονται την κοινή νέα ελληνική (την ίδια με εμάς!), την οποία χρησιμοποιούν επιπλέον σε επίσημες περιστάσεις στο γραπτό και προφορικό λόγο. Η κυπριακή διάλεκτος απ’την άλλη δεν διαθέτει γραμματικές και λεξικά, ούτε καν ορθογραφία. Ωστόσο για τους Κύπριους η διάλεκτος τους είναι η φυσική τους γλώσσα, ενώ η νέα ελληνική (η νόρμα) τους φαίνεται τεχνητή μιας κι απέχει πολύ από την καθημερινή γλώσσα επικοινωνίας τους.

Δυο βασικά χαρακτηριστικά της κυπριακής είναι η διατήρηση του τελικού -ν σε πολλά ονόματα και ρήματα, π.χ. τραπέζιν, τραυούμεν αλλά και η σίγηση των β, γ, δ όταν βρίσκονται ανάμεσα σε φωνήεντα, π.χ. φοούμαι=φοβούμαι. Στο λεξιλόγιο της κυπριακής συναντάμε πολλούς αρχαϊσμούς, π.χ. ορτσούμαι=χορεύω (από το αρχαίο ορχούμαι), αλλά και δάνεια:  παλαιά γαλλικά -μιας κι η Κύπρος από το 1911 ήταν φραγκικό κρατίδιο-όπως το κουφουρκιάζω=παρηγορώ (από το coumfortar), ιταλικά και βενετικά-λόγω της Ενετοκρατίας που ακολούθησε- όπως κουρτέλλα=μαχαίρι (από το coltella), τουρκικά -λόγω Τουρκοκρατίας- όπως καΐσ̌ιν=παγίδα (από το kayış) και τέλος αγγλικά -λόγω της παρουσίας των άγγλων από το 1878- όπως σέντερ=αποστολέας (από το sender).

(Αsterix στα Κυπριακά)

*όπως κι οι Κρητικοί, αντί για “τι” ρωτάνε με το “ίντα”.

Hi There Internet land! Vallancey here from Ireland. The original Vallancey was always regarded as a bit of an eegit, but he was one of the first people in the 17th century to suggest that the ancestors of the Irish of his time built the amazing megaliths like Newgrange and Lough Crew etc. He used a wild imagination to infer connections between native American languages, Phonecian, and Irish. Most of the time Monsieur Vallancey was wrong, but in the process of being wrong he kicked off lots of the theories of modern linguistics. So – in the spirit of Vallancey, here goes. The topics in here will vary widely. Hope I can find time to keep up regular contributions. Comments, input, debate always welcome. This is my first attempt at a blog, so I am sure I am doing lots of things wrong. I don’t have a category, for instance. But hopefully I’ll sort this out as I go. Any advice, suggestions are welcome, too!

This is definitely not about Greek, but I do know that there are readers out there who would be quite interested in this:

A COMPREHENSIVE INPUT METHOD FOR CLASSICAL SANSKRIT

It’s currently available for Mac & Windows.

So if you’ve desperately wanted to type in Sanskrit, but haven’t had the tools, now’s your chance!

Country: India

Language: Hindi

Genre: Comedy / Thriller / Suspense

Released: Nov 20 2009

As the title says but the movie is not like that.

The story revolves around the character of Neil who starting from the scratches emerges as the winner of a dance competition with its protagonist Vikram, who’s a three years champ. He is able to do so with the encouragement of Professor Siddhant and his newfound love for Mahi. Therefore the movie inspires all age group, and has got excellent music & good dance sequences.

But the movie lacks the direction, got a loose storyline, and a lot of actors. Director Shankar Mondal, who has tried to direct too many actors Hitesh Agarwal, Mansi Dovhal, Sudesh Berry, Nasir Khan, Vivek Shauq, Charu Sharma, Rajiv Verma, Adi Irani, Atul Kinagi, Vedita Pratap Singh, Praveen, Singh Sisodia, Vishwajeet Pradhan, Rakesh Shrivastav and Aslam Khan, is able to produce only a confused masala for the viewers.

It has been non-recommended by one and all.

In my daily Japan blog trawl, I’ve come across Néojaponisme many times but for some reason or other never clicked over to it. Well, a blog post (via @Japan_Blogs) by one of their founders/compatriots/revolutionaries finally led me round to it.

No-sword author Matt Treyvaud is a ridiculously intelligent translator, linguist and thankfully, blogger. [He's also composed some 8-bit versions of Madama Butterfly, and therefore assumed a level of rarefied cool in my eyes.] His level of accomplishment and knowledge of Japanese is food for inspiration when the daily rote of memorisation gets this student of 日本語 downhearted. I started my slow-paced tread down this road because of the hints given by translators at the hit-or-miss-ness of translations into English. Even at their best, a translator will lament the futility of squeezing a trim, elegant Japanese expression into a lengthy, detailed English sentence.

Living in Britain has taught me well how much can be said, without saying the thing itself. Example: “I’m not being funny, but…” is a red flag that the person is about to say something they fear will offend the listener or alienate them in some way. “I’m not being funny, but she will not stop talking about Japan all the time” And of course, the blessed cockney slang. Absolutely indispensable to following casual conversations, and even some business colleagues. Some that have snuck into my everyday vocabulary:

“These blokes had a complete barney outside the bar last night”

barney = Barney Rubble = “trouble”, but implies any sort of confrontation or troublemaking.

“Have a butcher’s at this shop further down the highstreet…”

butcher’s = Butcher’s Hook = “look” (used more if you know a lot of people from London)

Anyroad (there’s another one), Néojaponisme proves to be a far more ’singular’ website, complete with Manifesto. I’ve selected a couple of choicey segments:

…keeping in the spirit of exploratory re-imagination, let us no longer construe Japan in such a literal sense, solely as the island nation lying off the Eastern coast of the Asian continent. Japan is bigger than just Japan. Japan is metaphor and allegory, successful case study and cautionary example, tragedy and comedy, Eden and the Land of the Lotus Eaters. All these multiple narratives cannot possibly be correct at the same time, unless we remove Japan from its strict geographical denotation and explore a more abstracted Japan in conjunction with our normal surveillance of reality

Now, this I really like. It embraces the outsider’s perspective, but with sensitivity to the subtlety and romance of Japan.

This next excerpt has obviously been felt necessary to address real critics, but I personally don’t see how a visitor to the site could doubt the first sentence:

Oh, we do like Japan! There has been much controversy over this issue, but we proudly proclaim again that our criticisms come from a hope to see Japan protect its strengths and maximize its potential. We feel sorry for a conception of love hollowed out to command unambiguous and unconditional acceptance of the status quo. We certainly appreciate specific strengths of the Japanese system: excellent transportation, healthy food, public civility, product diversity, and visual proficiency. The question is whether these system outputs fully justify the less desirable elements running behind the scenes — monopoly, duopoly, oligopoly, organized crime, statism, patriarchy, feudalism, or worse. More importantly, are these dark forces integral to producing desired outputs or can they be cleanly removed like vestigial organs?

Maybe it’s because I’ve recently read The Learners, but the authorship of the site reminds me of Chip Kidd novels. Stylish and self-aware, but also good-humouredly bombastic and philosophical. Especially in the 1920’s pamphlet-esque closing bytes, which I decided to answer for my own interests:

Who will sit down and read an essay when the Internet Gods provide hundreds of fragments and gimmicks in its place?

I do! Hence why I’ve binned my old social networking ways – not enough time to read the only articles and posts worth reading.

Do children dream of being linkers or linkees?

Mmmm, well in my case it’s actually to be a linker. I also “no longer want to hear the echoes” of my own voice “bouncing off the cocoon walls”; the difference in my case is that I have very little to offer as a linkee. Yet my purpose of linking and posting is precisely to get out of the safe, staid holding room where so many hopeful Japanese learners stagnate. I’ll risk being seen as a waste of ether to pave my own determined way.

This is an exciting site, and one I’ll be adding to my daily J-Blog reading list. I don’t fit the mould for it’s requested contributors, but I find it refreshing to see their vivid and intelligent approach in writing about Japan. Definitely added to my (occasionally trimmed down tastefully) blogroll.

What Happens If English is Just Your Second Language?
The hardest part of migrating to another place, or to another country is to speak the language that locals in that area speak.
Read More

A recent issue of the Columbia Magazine has an article on Columbia professor Herb Terrace and his work on communication and cognition in chimpanzees. Terrace is best known for his role in the Nim Chimpsky experiments, which sought to settle the question of whether chimps could acquire human language.

From the article:

Terrace, a young Columbia psychologist who already had established himself as an expert in animal cognition, believed apes could learn to communicate, even think aloud, through sign language. All they needed, he thought, was a nurturing human- family environment.

At the time, the ape language wars were raging in academia. In one corner were the Chomskians, those who agreed with MIT linguist Noam Chomsky that only humans have innate syntactical ability. In the other were Skinnerians like Terrace who sided with Harvard psychologist B. F. Skinner, who believed that language is learned, and therefore could be taught to nonhuman primates.

Originally excited by the way that Nim Chimpsky (cheekily named after a certain venerable linguist) seemed to be able to produce real, novel sequences, Terrace came to realize that his evidence did not support that conclusion. In 1979, he published a paper in Science, publicly acknowledging that the Chomskians were right. “Apes can learn many isolated symbols (as can dogs, horses, and other nonhuman species),” Terrace wrote, “but they show no unequivocal evidence of mastering the conversational, semantic, or syntactic organization of language.”

Terrace continues to lecture and do research on cognition in primates. Although he does not believe that primates are capable of mastering the complexities of human language, he has a theory about how language acquisition might work. In keeping with the theory that language learning is highly tempered by environmental conditions, it has a lot to do with early intimate socialization:

Those who don’t get it, as was the case for thousands of Eastern European children orphaned during World War II, struggle to speak. The longer children are deprived of human interaction, the harder it is for them to talk. Terrace asks the question: if a baby were left on a deserted island with food and shelter, would it eventually on its own utter a word? The evidence suggests he wouldn’t.

This is the same problem autistic children face. Infants acquire language by watching their parents mouth sounds. Babies begin uttering monosyllabic words by the time they are about a year old. By 18 months, a child can point to an object, and name it: something he learns by following the eyes of his parent. Humans have a white sclera surrounding a dark iris, unlike all other animals, making it easy for babies to see where adults are looking. One of the early symptoms of autism is the inability of a baby to see where someone is pointing; instead, they often look at the gesturing hand.

It is clear that the acquisition of language has a profound effect on the way our minds function, and Terrace’s current research focuses on how animals can process information without the faculty so central to our own cognition.

Advances in Human-Computer es un diario interdiciplinario  que publica  documentos teoricos y aplicativos en el area de la interaccion con  los sistemas computacionales. Este es interdisciplinario  y su original busqueda ha sido en  los campos de computacion, ingenieria, inteligencia artificial, psicologia , linguistica y  sociales ademas de la organizacion del sistema, esta aplicado al diseño, la implementacion, aplicacion , analisis y evaluacion de  la interaccion de los sistemas.

Esta revista esta mas dedicada a los ingenieros en sistemas computacionales ya que aqui es donde   se  dedica a la interfaz entre el usuario y la computadora, aunque tambien esta dirigida a  cierto tipo de carreras que estudien el comportamiento del individuo en cuanto a la computadora.

Se publica cada 5 dias

aunque publican cada 5 dias publican muy pocos documentos 

calificacion 3

http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ahci/

Advances in Human-Computer Interaction  
ISSN: 16875893 
EISSN: 16875907 
Subject: Computer Science 
Publisher: Hindawi Publishing Corporation 
Country: United States 
Language: English 
Keywords: interactive systems, computing, engineering, artificial intelligence, psychology, linguistics 
Start year: 2008 

Cuando hablamos de sincronía (en un tiempo concreto, simultáneo) y diacronía (evolución, tiempo sucesivo) estamos hablando del tiempo, de cronos. Cuando nos referimos con estos términos a la lingüística, la analizamos desde ese punto de vista. Y aquí entran en juego la lengua -langue- y el habla -parole- como partes del lenguaje. Al reflexionar sobre si el tiempo modifica o no el lenguaje nos damos cuenta del diferente comportamiento de la lengua y del habla. A grandes rasgos podemos decir que la lengua es un hecho diacrónico y que el habla es un hecho sincrónico. Y se puede afirmar que estos cambios que se producen con el tiempo en la lengua son producto del habla, del uso que hacen los hablantes en cada momento.

Voy a tratar de explicarlo. En el habla se haya el germen de todos los cambios. Cada uno de estos cambios empieza por ser una práctica exclusiva de cierto número de personas antes de hacerse su uso generalizado. Cuando es aceptado por todos, la lengua se modifica con ese cambio. Por lo que se puede decir que todo cuanto es diacrónico en la lengua lo es solamente por el habla. Y si bien es cierto que el uso de la lengua, el habla, es la que produce en el tiempo la evolución, podemos afirmar que el hablante, que vive en un tiempo concreto, no percibe los cambios. El está en un estado concreto de la lengua. Para él el uso de la lengua, su habla, es un hecho sincrónico, la sucesión en el tiempo de los hechos lingüísticos es inexistente.

Podemos también afirmar que la lengua es un sistema, en la cuál todas sus partes, sus términos son coexistentes y sincrónicos. Los cambios que el uso de la lengua, el habla, producen no cambian el sistema; sólo se modifican elementos aislados. Los términos diacrónicos son sucesivos y se reemplazan unos a otros, pero no llegan a formar sistema.

Habrá una lingüística sincrónica que se ocupará de las relaciones lógicas y psicológicas que unen términos coexistentes y que forman sistema. Y habrá una lingüística diacrónica que estudiará las relaciones que unen términos sucesivos (no percibidos por la conciencia colectiva) y que se van reemplazando unos a otros sin formar sistema entre sí.

Como conclusión se puede afirmar que la lengua funciona sincrónicamente (mediante su uso, habla) y se constituye diacrónicamente. Y si no fuese así dejaría de funcionar, una lengua que no evoluciona, que no se usa, va muriendo.

Bibliografía: F. SAUSSURE, Curso de Lingüística General. Texto de Bally, Sechehaye y Riedlinger. Ediciones Akal Universitaria; Toledo, 2006.

A new study sheds light on the origins of language

// According to new research funded by the national Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), your ability to make sense of Groucho’s words and Harpo’s pantomines in an old Marx Brothers movie takes place in the same regions in your brain.

Researchers have shown that the brain regions that have long been recognized as a centre in which spoken or written words are decoded are also important in interpretting wordless gestures. This suggests that these brain regions may play a much broader role in the interpretation of symbols than previously thought. For this reason, it’s plausible that this could be the evolutionary starting point from which language originated.

To learn more about this amazing study, read on.

All the latest and greatest anthropological discoveries.

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In this part of California, we get lots of tourists. In addition, there are so many Spanish speakers that one may as well be living in a Hispanophone country. I have to remind people now and again that this is actually the USA and not Mexico. I was in the drugstore the other day and I made an official complaint to the manager. There were two aisle signs saying something about products being on sale. Only the Spanish side of the sign was visible. The English side of the side was leaning up against a row of shelves.

I complained and said that both languages should be visible. If the sign’s in Spanish, you ought to be able to walk around to the other side of the sign and read the English. They indulged me, but it’s an uphill battle around here. I think most of these damned Hispanics around here would be pleased as Punch if everything in town was in Spanish and nothing was in English. The majority of them are illegals anyway, and they are basically Mexicans first and Americans second, if at all.

Getting on to the accents.

The first one I heard was in the mountains. It was a group of tourists going to Yosemite. Some of them looked sort of Black (more like the sort of “mulattos” you see more in Latin America than in the US), others seemed sort of like Mediterranean Whites, but they didn’t look like they were from Europe.

They were speaking a Romance language that at first I thought was Portuguese. I heard these Spanish words, but lots of Romance languages sound Spanish. Thing is, if you hear Spanish words with a weird accent, you don’t think it’s Spanish. You think it’s another language. I asked them if they were speaking Portuguese. They laughed and said they were speaking Puerto Rican Spanish. It was very different!

The mulatto-looking man was a Dominican, and he was a very handsome, quiet, polite and dignified fellow in a particular manner that not many US Blacks are.

A while later, I heard another strange language. Once again, I started hearing some Spanish words, but something said it wasn’t Spanish. It sounded more like…Italian. There were a group of them, and they looked somewhat like Mediterranean Whites from Europe. They had a very “European” air about them. I asked them what they were speaking, Was it Italian? They laughed and said they were speaking Colombian Spanish.

They were from all over Colombia, Barranquilla, Bogota, and they had a very sensual, friendly, warm manner that one often finds in Mediterranean Europeans. The young woman in particular was almost seductive, but I wondered if it were more her nature than a personal thing.

I once knew an upper class woman from Bogota who spoke the strangest yet most beautiful Spanish. It almost sounded like French or Catalan. It was one of the most sensual, seductive and sexy accents I have ever heard. I also spoke with some of her friends and relatives, and they were incredibly polite, and they also spoke with this odd accent. They showered praise and honorary adjectives on me that I don’t deserve. Upper class Colombians are some of the politest and most dignified people on Earth. What’s fascinating is that the nicest people around seem to spend most of their time slaughtering each other.

And just the other day, at the ATM, I heard another Romance language. An older couple, who looked a lot like Mediterranean Whites, were talking at the teller. The guy even wore a beret or fisherman’s cap like such men wear in Europe. I could not place the language, but once again it sounded like Portuguese or Italian, but I hadn’t the faintest idea what it was. I asked them what they were speaking, and the guy said Argentine Spanish. This is probably the weirdest Spanish or all. It sounds like Italian but with Spanish words!

Once again, the guy was effusive, friendly and warm in a way that we cold Nordics are not. He came over and put his hand on my shoulder and we had a nice talk.

Lots of funny Spanishes out there! All you have to do is open your ears.

It’s sad our children don’t get to read Saradindu Bandopadhyay. My daughters know of Byomkesh Bakshi, courtesy Doordarshan, but they haven’t read his fascinating adventures.

When I was a boy and rushed home to Orissa on vacations, days began early with four to five hours of studies.

After 11, we were expected to sit with books. Mom was particularly proactive in insisting we packed as much of reading as possible in those months away from school — Somerset Maugham, Dapne du Maurier, Pearl Buck, even Alistair MacLean, James Hadley Chase.

I routinely sat in the verandah with two to three books piled on a table. These I had to finish within a stipulated time. Saradindu I found particularly engrossing. I had fished out an omnibus of his historical writings from an old cupboard that stood in the bedroom and had begun reading. I remember the titles: Jhinder Bandi, Tumi Shondhyar Megh, Kaaler Mondira , Gour Mollar, Tungabhadrar Tirey and more.

Each of these was a racy read. The writer’s laudable ability to recreate the feel of the past and sketch his protagonists on a canvas of historical happenings transfixed me. Sadly, Saradindu is more popular now for his Byomkesh thrillers. I found the man’s meticulous research and eye for detail amazing.

Another writer who was part of the regulation read was Bankim Chandra. Unlike Saradindu who was lucid and easily understood, Bankim was old style and I stumbled on words, progress was slow. I’d read paragraphs and pages over and over again to get a drift of what was being said.

After all, you never used words like naidaghjhotika or kujjhotika in everyday conversation. You weren’t worth talking to if you hadn’t read Durgeshnandini, Anandamath or Kamalakanter Daptar.

We always had guests at home and particularly annoying were the smart Alecs who tried to stump us with quiz sessions on these tomes. One of them, I remember, was very pesky. If I stumbled on an answer, he chuckled, swayed his head from side to side and said “hopeless” making me feel like a disgraceful worm. The idea was never to get caught and hence the frantic reading sessions.

After I finished one book, mom and I had a quick review session and she handed over more classics, but always after a short introduction. Syed Mujtaba Ali, for instance. She teased me with fascinating promos of the writer’s travels to Kabul, Berlin and Paris, his fantastic bus ride across the Khyber and encounter with Kabulis who had mastered the art of wearing their smelly salwaar suits and shoes for years.

So enticing were these trailers that you felt compelled to pick up a copy of Deshe Bideshey, Joley Dangaye or Chacha Kahini and race through from cover to cover.

Then a cousin came visiting one summer break. Sarat Chandra Chatterjee overwhelmed her and she was inconsolable after reading of Devdas’s tragic life. I can’t forget the sight of her shedding silent tears in a corner of the expansive verandah one lonely afternoon. She had cried for hours before she was found out with swollen eyes and puffed up face.

That incident made me read Sarat Chandra. I must confess my Devdas experience was similar and even I was left with a lump in the throat.

Rabindranath, though, appeared infinitely more daunting. Mom had handed me a copy of Chelebela, which I found interesting and later Rajorshi and Gora. Nonetheless, Rabindra sangeet was a must. She sang well and taught us Gurudev’s songs which in a way exposed us to his poetry.

My grandfather, Atulbabu, was another slave driver in these matters and insisted that we read Dickens. “Must read A Tale of Two Cities,” he once pronounced “or you’re good for nothing.”

Demanding elders and the need to be on a par with the peer group kept us on our toes. We were forced to read.

.. or nein or nee. Dearest daughter mentioned at lunch she would like to learn Dutch beside German and English. I said two languages might be more than enough for now, but she insisted I tell her the Dutch for table (tafel), fork (vork) and knife (mes), making the astute observation it all sounds a bit like either German or English, so it would be easy.  I thought she was getting a bit blasé already and tried to change the subject to Peppa Pig (link not safe for adult viewing), which prompted the polite query what pig was in Dutch (varken). That perked her up again, noting how different and funny varken sounded. She ensued to point at random objects in the room for their Dutch names (bank, stoel, muur, boek, bloem, etc.) until she got bored (two minutes later). Then she finished her Nudeln mit ketchup und cheese, drank up her applejuice and went to the bathroom to wash her Gesicht. Despite reading no arguments against raising a child trilingually, I think two are more than enough. I hope she agrees.

Katzenkindergartenerzieherin n., definition pending, as coined this morning by a Mutterkatze of my acquaintance. I guess you had to be there for this to make any sense. I’m merely curious if this will add any traffic from google searches.

Slate ran an article a few days ago on an interesting linguistic problem: how do we communicate with distant future generations?

The problem is simple enough: every country in the world that has the resources and the expertise to harness the power of the atom (whether to produce energy or to build bombs) is churning out radioactive waste. The stuff is toxic and not terribly useful, and ultimately, it all has to be sequestered somewhere. For now, we can tuck it away in secure places like Yucca Mountain and forget about it. No one is going to wander into the site, through the barbed wire and heavy signage, a century from now and inadvertently expose themselves to radiation.

But what if the encounter takes place not 100 years from now, but 1000 or 10,000? Assuming that any written symbols would still be intelligible at all, what could you possibly write that would unambiguously indicate danger?

The Department of Energy hired 13 linguists, scientists, and anthropologists to devise a conceptual plan for a 10,000-year marker system. The report  that came out of this project (Expert Judgment on Markers To Deter Inadvertent Human Intrusion Into the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant) presents a plan that the author calls “as elaborate as it is futile”.

From the article:

The report’s proposed solution is a layered message—one that conveys not only that the site is dangerous but that there’s a legitimate (nonsuperstitious) reason to think so. It should also emphasize that there’s no buried treasure, just toxic trash. Here’s how the authors phrase the essential talking points: “[T]his place is not a place of honor … no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here.” Finally, the marker system should communicate that the danger—an emanation of energy—is unleashed only if you disturb the place physically, so it’s best left uninhabited.

As for the problem of actually getting these essentials across, the report proposes a system of redundancy—a fancy way of saying throw everything at the wall and hope that something sticks. Giant, jagged earthwork berms should surround the area. Dozens of granite message walls or kiosks, each 25 feet high, might present graphic images of human faces contorted with horror, terror, or pain (the inspiration here is Edvard Munch’s Scream) as well as text in English, Spanish, Russian, French, Chinese, Arabic, and Navajo explaining what’s buried. This variety of languages, as Charles Piller remarked in a 2006 Los Angeles Times story, turns the monoliths into quasi-Rosetta stones. Three rooms—one off-site but nearby, one centrally located, and one underground—would serve as information centers with more detailed explanations of nuclear waste and its hazards, maps showing the location of similar sites around the world, and star charts to help intruders calculate the year the site was sealed. According to 1994 estimates, the whole shebang would cost about $68 million, but that’s just a ballpark figure based on very incomplete data.

There is also talk of creating “artificial myths” around the sites to discourage future explorers:

In the early 1980s, the semiotician and linguist Thomas Sebeok wrote a paper for the U.S. Office of Nuclear Waste Management titled “Communication Measures To Bridge Ten Millennia,” which proposes a folkloric relay system to pass along information: “The legend-and-ritual, as now envisaged, would be tantamount to laying a ‘false trail,’ meaning that the uninitiated will be steered away from the hazardous site for reasons other than the scientific knowledge of the possibility of radiation and its implications; essentially, the reason would be accumulated superstition to shun a certain area permanently.” Sebeok further suggested a Dan Brown-like “atomic priesthood” of physicists, anthropologists, semioticians and the like who would preserve the “truth.”

Clearly, this approach has its problems, but so do all the other ones. So what should we do? The author closes by advocating a different plan: leave the sites blank and unmarked, and hope that the future takes care of itself.

The article is here.

Reading Andrew Robinson’s fascinating book Lost Languages: The Enigma of the World’s Undeciphered Scripts (2002, McGraw-Hill), I recently learned the amazing story of the decipherment of the Linear B script by amateur philologist Michael Ventris in the 1950s.

The story brings home some important lessons about innovation:

• Be willing and eager to collaborate
• Take advantage of cross-fertilization by bringing in perspectives and skills from diverse disciplines
• Fight against your personal prejudices and keep yourself open to new ways of looking at things

Linear B is a script discovered on the island of Crete by archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans. Evans never deciphered Linear B, as he had fallen too much in love with certain precious ideas, chiefly his belief that the culture he had uncovered through his excavations at Knossos was a great noble civilization (which he called “Minoan”) that had dominated the Aegean in ancient times.

As it turned out, Linear B was a syllabic script used to write ancient Greek. However, the decipherment of the script was delayed by many decades because Evans was reluctant to share the inscriptions with other scholars.

When death finally wrested the inscriptions from Evans’s hands in 1941, other scholars were able to begin a concerted effort at decipherment.

Although it was Ventris’s genius primarily that cracked the script, he didn’t do it alone, which is a crucial point.

Although a brilliant scholar with a lifelong fascination for Linear B, Ventris was in fact not a professional philologist or linguist.

Ventris was an architect, and I think his architectural training, discipline, and practices were an important contributing factor in his success with Linear B.

It’s interesting to note that Ventris’s grid-based system for decipherment is reminiscent of the schedules architects use to lay out information in their drawings.

But more important for Ventris’s success with Linear B was his value of collaboration, also an important architectural practice.

Robinson quotes classicist Thomas Palaima describing Ventris’s practice of “group working, hypothesizing and brainstorming” and adds that

In other words, he did not believe in the idea of the genius who works solo and finally solves a problem by his own sheer unaided brainpower …

Ventris explained in writing and in tremendous detail each stage of his attack on Linear B, and then circulated these neatly type “Work Notes” (Ventris’s name for them) to other scholars for comments and contradictions.

Much of what he hypothesized turned out to be irrelevant or wrong, but this did not stop him from showing it to the professionals. And it appears that he did take this whole approach from his work as an architect.

To me this stresses the immense value of multi-disciplinary teams, cross-fertilization, and collaborative approaches in all kinds of innovation work.

Also important was Ventris’s humility and willingness to recognize his own errors, in contrast to Evans’s stubborn insistence on his Minoan theory.

Ventris and other scholars had for a time favored the idea that Linear B was used to write the Etruscan language. However, after it became evident that the Linear B language was Greek, writes Robinson,

… in a measured and slightly diffident voice [Ventris] announced his discovery on BBC radio, publicly renouncing his long-cherished Etruscan hypothesis … As John Chadwick much later said of Ventris: “The most interesting fact about his work is that it forced him to propose a solution contrary to his own preconceptions.”

This is a worthy example for all experts, who are far too inclined to hop on a particular hobby-horse and just keep on riding it for their entire careers.

These lessons bring to mind some research that we have done at the Institute for Innovation in Large Organizations in the area of cross-functional teaming, a valuable process for innovation work.

(Most of our reports are limited-circulation and confidential. However, we do sometimes quote them as I will do here, and a few of our reports are available on request.)

Here are some points on the value of team diversity in product design from one of our reports:

Bringing people from many disciplines and functions together in design teams offers great potential as a strategy to produce innovative products. However, such diversity also lays the groundwork for conflict. Thus team leaders and company management need to manage team diversity so all members can be effective and make their contribution.

Mitzi Montoya, Zelnak Professor of Marketing at North Carolina State University (NCSU) and executive director of the Services and Product Innovation Management Initiative at the school, says that companies need to recognize the likelihood of conflict and miscommunication and “put processes in place that will manage that inevitable consequence.” The problems that arise from team diversity “have to do with how the organization is structured, who those people report to. It often has nothing to do with the project itself.”

Bob Pagano of Red Sky Insights points out that diversity can bring value to the product design process by putting blue-sky innovators in the same room with more hard-nosed practical players.

You’re going to have some people around the table who are really creative and are going to look at the assignment with a really open mind. You want to have some very creative people early on who might see something outside the normal way of doing things. If they say something really bizarre, we don’t necessarily want to discourage that.

But you also need some enforcers, the ones who are going to put up the barriers, the ones who will push back, but trying to reach a common ground. They might say, ‘Well, that’s interesting. Let’s see if we can do that within the rules on the retail end.’ It’s kind of a give and take to see that nothing gets overlooked.

We also found that, aside from their contributions from a functional perspective, individual team members contribute different personal qualities to the life and work of a product design team. These different characteristics can offer value in unique ways and can come into play at different stages in the process:

Innovation consultant Stephen M. Shapiro, previously an Accenture consultant, believes that it is important to “understand the various innovation styles of team players” to make use of their distinctive strengths.

Speaking with ILO researchers, Shapiro explained how he classifies these styles:

Analytical people tend to be more focused on intellectual activities and often find flaws in everything.

Structured people want to know the plans and how things will be carried out. They also are a bit more critical but are more action oriented.

Creative individuals are cerebral yet like to think broadly. They are enthusiastic and generators of new ideas. But they are often poor at implementation.

Relationship-oriented people are needed to get anything done as they can engage the organization. But they often are too focused on consensus, which is a barrier to innovation.

Shapiro believes that “once people understand their styles and the associated strengths and weaknesses, they can be more effective in how they work together.” In his view:

The innovation process goes from analytical—define the problem . . .

to creative—define solutions . . .

to structured—define plans . . .

to relationship-oriented—engage the organization.

Thus, the various players’ personal styles can come to the fore at different stages of the group’s work.

But do team diversity and cross-fertilization translate into financial results?

Our work on this report suggested that that less diverse teams tend to produce better financial results overall than highly diverse teams. However, if the company is seeking high-value breakthrough results, it is more likely to achieve those through greater diversity in design team membership:

Lee Fleming, business administration professor at Harvard Business School, writes in Harvard Business Review that highly diverse, cross-disciplinary innovation teams introduce certain risks (“Perfecting Cross-Pollination,” September 2004). After researching 17,000 patents, he believes that

The financial value of the innovations resulting from such cross-pollination is lower, on average, than the value of those that come out of more conventional, siloed approaches. In other words, as the distance between the team members’ fields or disciplines increases, the overall quality of the innovations falls.

However, he adds a big but:

But my research also suggests that the breakthroughs that do arise from such multidisciplinary work, though extremely rare, are frequently of unusually high value—superior to the best innovations achieved by conventional approaches.

Fleming comments that “when members of a team are cut from the same cloth,” as with a group of all marketing professionals, “you don’t see many failures, but you don’t see many extraordinary breakthroughs either.”

However, as team members’ fields begin to vary, “the average value of the team’s innovations falls while the variation in value around that average increases. You see more failures, but you also see occasional breakthroughs of unusually high value.”

AB — 21 Nov. 2009