Answering “Linguistics For Dummies” Questions Without Reading The Book

Take the 2023 Conlanger Census today!
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FA...
Without reading "Linguistics For Dummies," I'm going to attempt to explain why these questions are important enough to apparently be asked in the book.
The article in question: www.dummies.com/article/acade...
The brain part: www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-r...
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[@thevelarnasal]

Wow, I wonder if the song made for this video will be in 10/8 time with a mix of a 3-3-4 cadence and a 4-4-2 cadence, in the key of F Harmonic Minor.

[@arbitrario3845]

I do wonder

[@drfudgecookie5800]

just watched, i think it's in 4/4.

[@The_TinesJathian]

thats always a good question

[@sinom]

8:44 it changing constantly is not even the main issue. Pretty sure the complexity of all natural languages is at least recursive (and probably worse) meaning you would need an infinite recursive algorithm to enumerate all possible sentences (and for at least some languages finding such an algorithm would be impossible because languages are too complex). But basically the obvious answer is because even if languages never changed there would be an infinite number of possible sentences that are not trivially enumerable. Edit: aaand he immediately says most of this after that

[@the_multus]

IMO my opinion, the question about listing the sentences is about generative grammar: you couldn't list all of the sentences, cause you would need to write infinite sentences. Continuum vs Aleph0 moment.

[@BryanLu0]

@5:59 "Official"/"Standard" languages are absolutely conlangs, more specifically, they are auxlangs because speakers will understand the "standard" dialect even if their dialects are not originally mutually intelligible

[@collin4555]

Some speech sounds are just inherently more difficult to produce than others, without respect to the speaker's native language's phonetic inventory. The reason that /g/ is the most likely to be missing from the b d g series of voiced stops is because the further back closure happens, the greater the pressure produced by the concomitant voicing, resulting in greater articulatory effort, which would influence speakers (and therefore languages) to substitute such difficult sounds for easier ones.

[@mollof7893]

My language both lack /ŋ/ (in onset) and /ə/, but I struggle way more with /ə/ than /ŋ/. I never get it right.

[@SBVCP]

About the snetnece one... even if the sentence was literally three words (SVO) and there were only a 100 ones of each nouns and verbs it would still be 100x100x99 which is almost a million (like 2k pages for the list) and even if we take merely 1% of the english dictionary that is still around is like 1.7k, and that the average sentence seems to be like 15 words long at tat minumum, even if we halved it taking anything that is not a noun or verb, heck, lets say a third, that is still like 14.198.570.000.000.000 or more like 28T pages so... yeah

[@DStecks]

12:24 It's not totally fair to talk about Shakespeare as if his writing represents the English of his time. He was writing in verse, and often poetically. Prose writing of the Elizabethan era is a lot more comprehensible (once you modernize the spelling).

[@spuriusbrocoli4701]

Regarding the question of " *Why* can we translate?" & of the broader phenomenon of translation being possible generally, I'm reminded of Thomas Quine's "Gavagai!" research. Quine created a thought experiment of a linguistic anthropologist encountering a people for the first time w/ no prior knowledge of the people's language (incl whether or not their langauge is genetically connected to any neighboring communities). In Quine's thought experiment, the anthropologist enters the community, & the first utterance spoken is of a member of the community pointing to a rabbit by a brush & saying "Gavagai!". Many people, myself included, would be inclined to assume that "gavagai" means "rabbit". But in Quine's analysis, it would be incorrect to make that assumption; that "gavagai" could refer to the brush or to the color of the sky or to how the rabhit was sitting. After all, the anthropologist knows nothing abt this people's language, & languages construct verbal phrases vs nouns very differently, esp if you know nothing abt the langauge's morphology. Quine then follows this train of thought into a whole book called & about the Indeterminacy of Translation. Thing is, examples where translation is impossible or indeterminate are actually quite rare. Humans cross-linguistically & cross culturally have strong biases towards assuming new words describing objects are nouns & new words describing actions are verbs. Moreover, the rabbit is gonna be the most salient visual feature in the scene being poimted to as "gavagai", & most of the time, that's what the speaker is trying to draw attention to w/ the utterance. Another example of this is how speakers of a language with only "basic color words" for "light/white" & "dark/black" were still able to sort colored tiles categorically by colors that approximately match 11 different color categories. (I believe this was Rosch's work on Dani lamguage speakers in 1973, but it's been a *long* time since my langauge & cognition class.) There def were fuzzy boundaries & arbitrariness in specific cases (i.e. "Where's the line between brown & yellow?"), but the hard linguistic deterministic view has been soundly debunked. So, building from the perspective that there is some level of linguistic universalism & universalism to human cognition, it's not really surprising to me that most concepts can be translated from one language to another, even if the respective languages' concept-lexicon doesn't match up on a 1:1 basis. EDIT: Yeah, you are gonna have problems reading Chaucer. The first being that you're attemtping to read Chaucer at all.

[@clarfonthey]

re: difficulty communicating on the phone, it's also important to realise that the technical decisions in developing a phone network literally had to answer the question of "how bad can I make this sound while still being understandable" and, that's effectively what we got. It's hard to understand because even after decades of improving technology we haven't changed our phone networks beyond the initial push to make them easier to understand than telegrams. It's way easier to talk to someone over a VOIP (voice over internet protocol) connection like Discord since the audio quality is better than two cans and a string. Fun little technical tidbit, but there's actually a lot of linguistics involved in /speech/ codecs, where we only care what someone said instead of just any sound. Modern audio compression can match some of the throughput of early audio compression while being way more recognisable because we've figured out how to do it that isn't just, running the audio through a bunch of circuits that mess with it.

[@stardustpan]

A fun fact I learned in my Methods in Speech Research course is that at least some early phones missed the fundamental frequency of human speech completely :D So you couldn't hear the basic pitch of human voice but your brain could still figure it out from the formants which are kind of harmonics of the basic pitch :>

[@jlewwis1995]

I would assume that at this point the main reason why actual phone calls quality isn't better is purely because of bandwidth reasons since iirc phone calls are made at 8khz while most modern phone mics can record at either 44 or 48khz so if the call was made at full quality the carrier would have to stream 11x the data and they presumably can't be bothered to do that for actual phone calls as opposed to VOIP which is why voice chat in apps that have it sounds fine but actual phone calls still sound like shit

[@medalkingslime4844]

Wait you guys don’t communicate with your deaf buddies via shadow puppetry?

[@jell0goeswiggle]

I'm sure the phone question was actually about how shit μ-law encoding is.

[@Gamesaucer]

Interestingly, adults _should_ neurologically be just as capable of learning new languages as children are; the critical period of a child's neural development does not actually line up well with the period in which they acquire language. So the current theory seems to be that the way adults interact with the world on a daily basis just doesn't lend itself well to learning languages. This has been experimentally demonstrated as well (though not formally proven), by teaching adults new languages the way children would learn them. They would expose adults to basic use of the language they were trying to learn by acting out various scenes that had been written in that language, _without_ actually explaining anything about what anything they said was supposed to mean. They also instructed their students not to actually _study_ the language, just to be there and pay attention. The results of this were interesting, because only a part of the adults being taught this way learned to speak the language just as fluently as native speakers. They found that those who did _not_ learn to speak the language fluently had actually not listened to the instruction not to study, and had done such things as speaking the language amongst themselves, or even just so little as consciously trying to relate certain words being spoken to certain meanings. So basically, it turns out that (as far as we can tell) we have an innate capacity to learn language no matter our age simply through exposure to it, but that consciously studying a language actually overrides that somehow and makes us perform worse. I haven't tried it yet myself, but I imagine that putting on a movie or a series that has been dubbed in a certain language without subtitles could have a similar result, so long as you focus on the action rather than on what's being said.

[@isaacbruner65]

I think there's also the issue of immersion. Children are immersed in the language of their parents practically 24/7 for a couple years before they start speaking. The only way that adults could accomplish something similar would be actually moving to a place where that language is spoken and hearing it every day. For the vast majority of people that isn't really an option.

[@leave-a-comment-at-the-door]

any chance you could tell me the titles of some studies? those sound like good reads

[@Gamesaucer]

@@leave-a-comment-at-the-door Google "Automatic Language Growth" and you'll find a bunch of articles. For a paper you'll want to look at JM Brown's "From the Outside In: The Secret to Automatic Language Growth"

[@leave-a-comment-at-the-door]

I'm looking at the data after taking the census, and apparently at least 22 people who took the form simultaneously do and do not speak english (ie they put both that they spoke english and none of the above)...

[@leave-a-comment-at-the-door]

also, shock surprise, your audience is very queer ^^

[@LinguaPhiliax]

26:00 Is this the reason you made that your channel's name? Because if so, I approve.

[@AgmaSchwa]

Kinda, haha. Two symbols with cool names that look cool, plus I can confuse my friends and make them sound like catboys, lol

[@collin4555]

@@AgmaSchwa anything to increase the number of (accidental) catboys in the world is an A+ to me

[@caiomaida3630]

Hey, so I was looking at the census. I lived for a year in a country with a different language, does that count as "moving permanently?" Great video!

[@pixel9753]

Def a ɧˤɝʷ moment 😂

[@artifactU]

so true

[@Alceste_]

Okay but what's the sauce behind 19:30 wallpaper ?

[@stefanalecu9532]

I have decided to do the cringe thing of actually getting the real book to see what answers _it_ provides. I'll provide answers to each question in its own reply here. but until then, here's the (abridged) contents of this wonderful book: Introduction................................................................. 1 Part I: Looking at Language through the Lens of Linguistics............................................................... 7 Chapter 1: Knowing a Language Versus Knowing What Language Is........................... 9 Chapter 2: Communicating with Language: The Design Features.............................. 21 Part II: The Building Blocks of Language..................... 33 Chapter 3: Building Sounds: Phonetics.......................................................................... 35 Chapter 4: Putting Sounds Together: Phonology......................................................... 57 Chapter 5: Building Words: Morphology....................................................................... 77 Chapter 6: Creating Sentences: Syntax.......................................................................... 95 Chapter 7: Making Sense of Meaning: Semantics........................................................ 117 Chapter 8: Using Language in Conversation: Pragmatics.......................................... 133 Part III: The Social Life of Language ......................... 151 Chapter 9: Living with Language Variation: Sociolinguistics.................................... 153 Chapter 10: Finding Family Relations: Historical Linguistics.................................... 171 Chapter 11: Cataloguing Differences: Linguistic Typology....................................... 189 Chapter 12: Beginning and Ending: Language Birth and Language Death.............. 205 Part IV: Your Brain on Language: Learning and Processing Language.......................................... 221 Chapter 13: Learning Language..................................................................................... 223 Chapter 14: Perceiving Language................................................................................. 245 Chapter 15: Producing Language.................................................................................. 259 Chapter 16: Locating Language in the Brain: Neurolinguistics................................. 277 Part V: Getting from Speaking to Writing................... 293 Chapter 17: Writing Down Language............................................................................ 295 Chapter 18: Writing Changes You................................................................................. 307 Part VI: The Part of Tens........................................... 321 Chapter 19: Ten Myths about Language Busted by Linguistics............................... 323 Chapter 20: Ten Unsolved Problems in Linguistics................................................... 331 Chapter 21: Top 10 Jobs for Linguists.......................................................................... 337 Index....................................................................... 343 and boy, is the extended table of contents even better, but it's enough to give you the gist of it.

[@AgmaSchwa]

Holy crap! I've gotta check it out for myself to see the angles these questions are answered with.

[@stefanalecu9532]

**1. Why is learning a second language so difficult?** the main idea seems that it's indeed harder as a non-literal baby to learn a second language. it's essentially a tug-of-war between the language learner (the skill issue bearer), the target language (the L2 language) and the source language (the L1 language, the ones you've been cursed to learn when you were a child). you can mistakenly apply the sound system, sentence patterns and conversation strategies of your source language. it isn't hard to find examples, just look at Spanish/Chinese/Russian/Italian people speaking English and you'll see peculiarities that apply to each (e.g. a Russian speaker would incorrectly say "to victor belong spoils" instead of "To the victor belong the spoils" or an Italian speaker might say "We won’t take it to lie down" instead of "We won’t take it lying down." because in Italian it makes sense to use the infinitive there). it goes without saying that if the source and target language are of a similar type, then you can transfer more stuff (even if they aren't related but the learner perceives similarities then transfer is more likely to occur). also, the errors of L2 learners are different in different contexts and here's where skill issues lie, because you might be able to do well on a test but say shit like "did you bought this today". then it goes out to say something about universal grammar which I don't find quite relevant, and then what you must learn to "focus on the target", which tells you what you must do to, you know, actually learn a second language. they suggest first figuring out the sound system (as in doing a lot of listening to get the v i b e), then within a couple of months you recognize a vocab of around 500 words (here's where your dork ass teacher would focus on exercises that build vocabulary, but you can also get that from just listening to the world around you if you happen to live in a place where the target language is spoken). within 6 months, they claim you recognize and use about 1000 words and you get to form actual simple sentences, you can even learn how to write at this stage to reinforce oral language learning. then within a year, it'll only get better and you can have fewer skill issues and fast forward 4 to 10 years you can tell jokes and even dream in your language (I shit you not, that's what they're saying). tl;dr: it's harder because 1. you're not a baby so you're not a language sponge anymore and 2. you know your source language well enough to be influenced by it and its speech patterns, sound system etc. when learning your target language

[@stefanalecu9532]

**2. Why do French and English have so many words in common?** it was a bit hard to pinpoint the chapter that deals with this, but I think it's chapter 5 which deals with morphology, I can straight up paste their answer here: "English has two vocabulary sets, and each has different morphological and phonological rules. (Flip to Chapter 4 for more on phonological rules.) How did this happen? Well, it goes back to the Norman conquest of England in 1066. At that time, the people living in England were Germanic-speaking Anglo-Saxons. The Norman kings introduced French words into spoken English (for example, manual) - linguists call these French imports the Latinate lexicon. By some estimates, over 60 percent of the vocabulary of modern-day English is from the Latinate lexicon. But English also retained its original Anglo-Saxon vocabulary, and to this day, the most frequent words (for example, hand) are from the Anglo-Saxon lexicon. While the Anglo-Saxon vocabulary is used more in spoken English, the Latinate vocabulary - also called the learned vocabulary - is used more in written English. Another language with two vocabulary sets is Japanese: One lexicon is native Yamato-Japanese, and the other is Sino-Japanese, with words borrowed from Chinese."

[@stefanalecu9532]

**3. Why do dialects exist?** I don't actually see a clear answer. I mean, I see they've defined what a language vs a dialect is. here, this is what they say: > Linguists distinguish languages from dialects. Languages aren’t mutually intelligible. Dialects tend to be mutually intelligible - speakers of two dialects can usually understand one another, but not always. Suppose one dialect, call it B, is mutually intelligible with two other dialects, A and C. Depending on the way they differ from one another, dialects A and C may be so different that they are no longer mutually intelligible. For example, dialects of Cree are like this: Their differences form a dialect continuum that stretches geographically from the foothills of the Rockies all the way to the eastern seaboard. Moving from west to east, each dialect-pair is mutually intelligible, but speakers of the westernmost dialects don’t understand speakers of the easternmost dialects. Linguists use dialects to study change in progress (see Chapter 9 for examples of dialect variation). but I believe they're supposed to give the answer in said chapter 9, specifically under "winning out over other dialects" (this chapter is actually interesting as shit, I recommend you checking it out). they talk about "the non-standard variety" of a given language which is your regular speech, not the fancy schmancy standard one (obviously). this + people grouping together in tribes and villages and towns = people end up speaking pretty similarly in their own in-group but develop their own accents, speech patterns etc. = dialects form which may or may not be mutually intelligible with another dialect of the same language.

[@stefanalecu9532]

**4. Why can’t all the sentences of a language be listed?** in chapter 6 they have a section named "Holding Infinity in the Palm of Your Hand: Recursive Generative Rules" which describe our beloved rules and they pretty much acknowledge along every step that these rules are recursive and thus can potentially go off forever. they have a subsection where they make you do infinite "mobiles" and they showcase a "rulebook" that generates phrases such as "I said (that) she said (that) he said (that) ...". since you can expand that infinitely and add onto it as much as needed, the list of all sentences is necessarily infinite (I think it should be something like a powerset, I don't know, certainly in the ℵ_1 range or bigger)

[@asherl5902]

25:33 I'm unable to pronounce all speech sounds in "ŋə" since they are all very diffficult to produce and perceive :(

[@BryanLu0]

If you speak English, surely you can. ŋ is in the ing suffix, and ə is fairly common with vowel reduction

[@asherl5902]

@@BryanLu0 I'm not native. I can't reduce vowels nor even know exactly which vowels are supposed to reduce themselves (since it's not written), to the point I mostly don't even perceive them by ear. Although as far as I pronounce the -ing suffix ending in a clear /g/, yeah: then I have the imperceptible [ŋ] allophone

[@isaacbruner65]

​@@asherl5902which vowels are supposed to reduce is actually easy, though. It's the unstressed ones. Does your native language lack lexical stress entirely?

[@asherl5902]

@@isaacbruner65 Like... All of them??? My native language has an amazing lexical stress. What English lacks is a way to write its, so it's pretty much impossible to know which syllables are the accented ones in English and I just have to listen carefully and guess. So I'm condemned anyway…

[@thekathal]

mama schwa :3

[@Denneth_D.]

*Concerned*

[@tayntedmemories]

no, daddy schwa

[@artifactU]

27:32 all of ðose sounds are not universal across all english dialects

[@BryanLu0]

I think most major English dialects have them

[@artifactU]

@@BryanLu0 th fronting iz fairly common in the UK & i think it sometimes occours in AAVE. the r sound can be /ʋ/ in some UK dialects altho i think this iz rarer then th fronting & i also think some people consider it a speech disorder called derhotacism but that might be diffrent idk. the l sound cant be dark in some dialects, most commonly due to l vocolization which just changes dark l to w. so i guess standard dialects dont have these features but they are still fairly common nontheless

[@vrixphillips]

lmfao the h3h3 cosplay in the background xD