Adventures in Linguistics Learning

I'm taking a number of linguistics classes, as well as ESL classes, and will share the noteworthy, the obscure, and occasionally, the silly. But let's start with the silly, shall we?

I'm teaching myself the International Phonetic Alphabet. It's rough. The letters are different. The sounds are different. It's, in fact, incredibly difficult to even hear some of the differences between sounds, never mind replicate them. It's all-around one of the hardest things I've ever attempted to do. And they don't make it easy with the naming conventions.

How on earth is that last one not called "turned c"??? Le sigh.

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Here goes...

I've literally put my money (and my time and sanity) where my mouth is and have started a Masters in Applied Linguistics through OU . (OK, technically, it's an MA in Education with a concentration in AL, but whatevs.) It's a bananas amount of work, considering I'm doing this for fun. I'm going to try posting here regularly in hopes that when I need to write papers I'll have something to draw on. We'll see.

Universal Grammar Basics

I've heard of Universal Grammar, but I have to say, I've never thought it sounded probable. Or, maybe it sounded too probable; something we wanted to be true. "Hey, look! There are reasons we speak this way. It's right ." And I'm not a prescriptivist, so I bristled a bit at the thought of One True Way to speak. Most people who love language love the variety of it. But then I read the research and yeah, it doesn't look entirely like BS. There are four basic principles. Monsieur Jordain's Principle: Like things should be together. The thing that does the action should be somewhere near the action. The words describing a thing should probably be in the same clause as the thing. There are languages that don't follow this as strictly, but they're the exception. Caesar's Principle: The action usually follows our perception of time. The famous example is Caesar's "Veni, Vidi, Vici" - I came, I saw, I conquered. It would make a com...

Here, here!

OK, it hurt just writing that. But really, I do agree with this article , and will be buying this book.

Glottal Spot

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