Linguistic Structure

Language comes in a bewildering array of varieties. But there is a common thread that unites them all - a set of properties common to the structure of all human languages. In this video, we’ll dive into this common thread, and the computations that the human mind performs to learn, produce, and comprehend linguistic structure.
0:00 - Intro
2:39 - Sound patterns
8:14 - Strictly Local patterns
10:10 - Strictly Piecewise patterns
12:58 - Impossible patterns
14:40 - Structure of sentences
17:11 - Hierarchical structure
26:21 - Sentence complexity
33:01 - Key concepts
Sources:
Everaert, Huybregts, Chomsky, Berwick & Bolhuis (2015). Structures, not strings: Linguistics as part of the cognitive sciences. www.sciencedirect.com/science...
Heinz & Idsardi (2011). Sentence and word complexity. www.science.org/doi/abs/10.11...
Heinz & Idsardi (2013). What complexity differences reveal about domains in language. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/f...
Dryer & Haspelmath (2013). World Atlas of Language Structures Online. wals.info/
The World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS) is a great resource that lets you search linguistic structures across a large database of documented human languages. If you want to know how many language there are with only two vowels, for example, just plug in “vowels”, and WALS will give you a map!

[@ruxsky7593]

Brilliant 👏 ❤thanks a million

[@ioannis-johnmizithras]

keep making these videos. They will blow up one day

[@Mitch_De_Jong]

I’m not here for a report. But I love languages, and am working on a research project (for myself, not school) and excited to learn from you. I see you touch on other compelling topics, of which I’m excited to hear your perspective.

[@JD-ux6jk]

Wow, this was surprisingly educational! Given the fact that the question " what is language'' seems so obvious I mean.

[@lucasdemo5763]

awesome video. thanks for creating and sharing this :)

[@EduNauta95]

Great videos! I found you because i'm looking for the deep theory of universal grammar on youtube, to no avail. To my very limited knowledge, there's a whole theoretical world of structures and relations of grammar posited by the chomskian school. But i don't know the extent of this being true or not. Greetings from Barcelona.

[@RYANRHODES-cogsci]

There were some very detailed and expansive theories of universal grammar in the 80s/90s, but nowadays Chomsky has really backed away from the specific claims to a much more general position (that universal grammar consists of just the apparatus necessary to learn language, which he usually posits as just the recursive Merge operation)

[@EduNauta95]

@@RYANRHODES-cogsci Aahh i see, what do you think about those theories?

[@RYANRHODES-cogsci]

@@EduNauta95 I don't specialize in acquisition, but there are two main types of language acquisition theories - Chomskyan/generative/UG theories, and functionalist/statistical learning theories. Cop out answer, but I think both have a lot of merit!

[@EduNauta95]

@@RYANRHODES-cogsci i'm interested in universal grammar thoeories in a, lets say in a poetic way, 'kabbalistic sense' ie charts, graphs, interlocking concepts, etc

[@danielalatiera214]

My report brought me here☺️ #ABELstudent

[@danielalatiera214]

My report brought me here☺️ #ABELstudent

[@danielalatiera214]

My report brought me here☺️ #ABELstudent