The Language of Bonobos

Inspired by Kanzi, MSL Linguistics students took a field trip to the Milwaukee County Zoo today where Director of Conservation Education James Mills gave a whirlwind lecture that lead us through evolutionary biology, anthropology, and linguistics.  We then headed over to the Primate Building where we got to see bonobos in action--the Milwaukee Zoo is home to 20 of the 90 bonobos in captivity in the U.S.-- and then listen to a talk by the orangutan keeper about their enrichment program with iPads.  (Turns out M.J. enjoys This Old House and Tommy paints along with Bob the Painter on PBS.)

The Language of New Orleans

For our school's annual Festival of Nations Open House, the Linguistics students helped out by creating signs explaining "The Language of New Orleans" for our English Department interpretation of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire.

 There are more photos from the event itself at Festival of Nations 2014.

Pidgin Dinner 2014

Language Acquisition Observation Assignment

                                                        Language Acquisition Observation

Linguistics                                                                                                   

Your assignment is to observe a child who is between the ages of birth and four years old.  The ideal age of a child to observe is between the ages of two and three because most children ages two to three are in the midst of the “language explosion” period.

You can choose to interact with the child and film your experience to reflect on later or you can observe a parent/friend/teacher/sibling interacting with the child and takes notes on what you observe.  Pay attention to the phonemes the child is able to produce and the ones the child is not able to produce yet.  What sounds does the child make for the phonemes they cannot yet pronounce?  (My son, for example, at age two made the [t] sound in place of the [k] sound—choosing a voiceless alveolar consonant instead of the voiceless velar sound that he could not yet pronounce.)  Record as many examples as you can of sounds, words, phrases, and sentences the child says.

Your assignment is to turn your notes into a narrative of your experience.   Describe the context of your observation with the child (Where were you?  How do you know the child?  What was the child doing while you observed/interacted with him/her?).  In paragraph form, explain the observations you made about the sounds, words, phrases, and/or sentences that the child said.  Your essay should be 2-4 pages, typed, double-spaced, in MLA format.

Rubric:

_____/ 5- At least one full page of notes from your observation

_____/ 5- Essay explains the context of your observation in detail

_____/ 15- Essay explains the observations you made about the child’s language acquisition (phonemes, words, phrases, sentences)

_____/ 3- Grammar/Mechanics of the essay

_____/ 2- Essay is at least 2-4 pages, typed, double-spaced, in MLA format

Total Score: _____/ 30 points

**On the due date, you will be asked to tell the class about your experience in a two minute oral presentation.

 

Because...

 What do you think of the American Dialect Society's choice of "because" as the Word of the Year?

Because awesome?  Because lame?
 
American Dialect Society Chooses "Because" as Word of the Year

Full Circle Moment

I met Janney, one of the Original High School Linguists from the MSL Class of 2011 and a student at Hamline University in St. Paul, at the Linguistic Society of America conference this past weekend in Minneapolis.  We went to sessions on Names and Literature, Names and Women, Forensic Linguistics, and Endangered Languages.  We took a selfie at the conference in honor of the Oxford Dictionary's Word of the Year.

 

Take this dialect quiz!
"How Y'all, Youse, and You Guys Talk"
Based on research by Bert Vaux and Scott Golder and published in the New York Times on December 21, 2013

Articulatory Phonetics Links to Show Students

The voice system as a musical instrument

http://www.uiowa.edu/~acadtech/phonetics/anatomy.htm

Vocal Tract Anatomy

X-ray of speech
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcNMCB-Gsn8

http://allthingslinguistic.com/post/23800820902/this-is-something-i-wish-id-had-in-phonetics

The Diva and the Emcee

Guest Speaker on Ojibwe

On November 20th, Dr. Meg Noodin, UWM professor of Ojibwe, came to talk to us about the Ojibwe language and people. One of the most fascinating things she talked about was how verb-centric the language is (she said about 80% of the language is verbs) and when you think about a language with so much focus on verbs, you think about how the emphasis on action, movement, motion affects how people perceive the world, as opposed to a language with a lot of emphasis on nouns, or things. I also was interested to learn that for the Ojibwe, the Great Lakes are conceptualized as more of a sea and that they have a different word for a smaller inland type of lake. We also learned that the name Chicago comes from an Ojibwe word for "skunk," and Wauwatosa was originally the Ojibwe "Waawaatese" meaning "firefly," Mequon was "Miigwan" meaning "feather," and Kenosha was "Genozhe" meaning "pike fish."

Could this be how Proto-Indo-European sounded?

 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/28/proto-indo-european-language-ancestors_n_4005545.html

Meet Alex, Kanzi, and Koko

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_Tk0-85ZSE


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Dhc2zePJFE

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w81EnyTAUBs

John Green Presents 107 Regional Slang Words

Click to enjoy:
107 Regional Slang Words

"20 awesomely untranslatable words from around the world"

Enjoy these 20 words!

http://matadornetwork.com/abroad/20-awesomely-untranslatable-words-from-around-the-world/1/

Please don't "tingo" from me.

http://termcoord.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/lexical-gaps1.jpg

Short Video on Italian Hand Gestures

 
http://www.nytimes.com/video/2013/06/30/world/europe/100000002309793/the-italian-gesture-.html

Final Exam Essay Example

Thank you to Marina for allowing me to share her final exam essay on this blog.  The final exam essay prompt in Linguistics is very open-ended, essentially what have you learned in this class.   The first time I assigned such a broad question I was nervous about what kind of response I would get, but students have impressed me with their insights. 

Marina J.

Linguistics

Ms. Loosen

1 June 2013

In Linguistics

            It is rare in high school walk away from a class knowing what you have learned will stick with you and be applicable in the real world.  The knowledge I gained in linguistics extended beyond the classroom.  With the school year drawing to a close, I plan to seek other means of studying parts of linguistics, but just in this year I learned about the history of the English language, the acquisition of language, how body language is used, and sociolinguistics.  I also learned that I'm a bit of a descriptivist.  This class is proof that students can learn a lot from stepping back and analyzing what makes someone alive; their ability to understand and use language.     

            In the average English class, a student does not find the history of the language.  Linguists map out English as a branch of the Germanic language.  Developed in Britain, Germanic tribes brought with them what is now considered to be Old English.  Circa the 13th century, Britain was conquered by the Normans who spoke a sort of French.  This added many French words into the English language, such as bouquet and clique. Then, circa the 15th-16th century, began what is known as the Great Vowel Shift.  We saw that the long vowels shifted upwards.  Listening around, we know that language does not change much overnight but the English language is expanding and evolving constantly.  Here we are with what is called Late Modern English.  As young, creative thinkers, we were excited to learn, or more so, realize, that we have all the power to change the language we speak.  Seeing slang, throughout history, transitioning into common language was interesting because students are so often told that their language is "wrong".  I have learned that kids these days are not destroying the language.  It is simply evolving.  Linguistics taught me to appreciate English in its complexity and insanity.  

            This year I was fascinated by how a person acquires language.  A child listening to and learning language while still in the womb is almost frightening but it is truly amazing how children pick up on grammar and universal grammar.  A person's knowledge of language grows as fast as they do.  I could see this with Ben.  The first time in class, he spoke in broken sentences and mixed up letters.  Then in his second visit, I could hear him speaking with more confidence and responding in comprehensible sentences.  I learned and have seen outside of the class that young kids do either, over apply grammar rules, or don't use them at all.  The Wug test showed this.  I will likely never forget what a Wug looks like.  I now know the basics of language that maybe teachers should have been teaching to elementary school student.  Knowing a morpheme is a meaningful unit of a word that cannot be further divided, may have helped me on spelling tests.  Knowing that a phoneme is a distinct unit of sound may have helped as well.  Linguistics has made me wish I was bilingual, in the native-speaker sense but MSL has been a wonderful environment for building the bridges of language.  At this age, my classmates and I have little time to waste if we really wish to fully understand the mental structure of our foreign languages.

            Sociolinguistics was my favorite part of the year because the material was easiest to observe outside of the class.  I had realized it before, that I code-switch but I had not known before what it was called.  I have begun paying more attention to my dialect shifts.  However, I do not agree with what we learned on genderlects.  In my own environment, women and men speak far too familiar for them to claim different dialects.  Each person, rather, has their own way of communicating with their own dialect.  Learning to recognize the differences in the body language of men vs. women, was interesting though.  I agree, women are more personal in a conversation and men pose to face the room.  Walking with power makes a person appear to have authority and speaking sharply and confidently gives a person power as well.  I may take a class in college that further explores body language or sociolinguistics as a broader subject.  I have taken the time to read articles by Noam Chomsky and I wish I had more time in the day to study what he proposes.          

            A great class offers students more than lists of  facts, notes, and names.  Linguistics offers new perspectives on the way people work together in a society and gives a person an understanding of how and why people think differently from one another.  One of my favorite new words that I can remember off the top of my head is "aware".  In Japanese, "aware" is the word used for the bittersweet decline of something beautiful experienced in a brief moment.  I experienced a moment to use "aware" this week when I picked the last branch of lilacs from my yard and watched them wilt on my nightstand.  I am driven to learn new words and ways to express thoughts and feelings.  I have learned to appreciate all languages and recognize that no language is, or ever was, primitive.  I am increasingly aware of my language in all of its forms and the languages used around me by classmates compared to friends compared to people in other communities.  Linguistics opened up a new kind of learning, one which takes place in everyday life.  I have learned to love a high school class.    

           

Our Youngest Guest Speaker Returns!

My son came in five months after his first appearance in Linguistics class so that we could discuss his growth during his "language explosion" period.  Ben was told that he would be coming in to teach the students about baseball.

Our Linguistics class was in the newspaper!

"MPS teacher's linguistics class an example of valuable, enterprising course" by Alan J. Borsuk

http://www.jsonline.com/news/education/mps-teachers-linguistics-class-an-example-of-valuable-enterprising-course-nc9qlkg-206114351.html

Research Project Presentation Rubric

Linguistics Research Presentation Rubric

(5 minute presentation, 25 points)

 

5 pts. for Delivery (eye contact, organization, professional appearance, support for partner)

 

15 pts. for Content (background info, hypothesis, experiment, results, analysis)

 

5 pts. for Visual (hand-out, poster, powerpoint/prezi, graph, chart)

 

 

Research Project Requirements

Linguistics Research Project

Spring 2013

• You may work with one partner.
• Remember that linguists are scientists.  You will use the scientific method for your project.

The steps of the scientific method are to:

1.    Ask a Question

2.    Do Background Research

3.    Construct a Hypothesis

4.    Test Your Hypothesis by Doing an Experiment

5.    Analyze Your Data and Draw a Conclusion

6.    Communicate Your Results

Here’s how we’ll do that:

1.  Ask a Question   Picking your topic is a very important part of the process.  Start by asking a question that you have related to language.  Think about what you’ve written about in your Daily Language Observations as a starting point.  Select a question/ topic that is narrow enough so that you can say something significant about what you learn.  For example, “Sociolinguistics” is not an appropriate topic; it is a vast field about which hundreds of books have been written.  “How Often Spontaneous Conversations Happen in Elevators at West Allis Memorial Hospital on May 8, 2013” is a more manageable topic.

2. Do Background Research Look up your topic online and in books.  Have other linguists written about your topic?  Take notes on what you find, keeping careful track of your sources.

3.    Construct a Hypothesis What do YOU expect to find as the answer to your initial question?

4.    Test Your Hypothesis by Doing an Experiment  How will you test your hypothesis?  Through observation?  Through a survey?  By eliciting data similar to how William Labov did as he studied the relationship between social class and r-lessness in the three stores in New York City?

5.    Analyze Your Data and Draw a Conclusion  What have you learned?  What does your data show? 

6.    Communicate Your Results  What does your study teach us as linguists and as people?  What are the more far-reaching implications of your study?  

 

How to Present Your Research:

·       Write a 4-6 page essay in MLA format with in-text citations and a Works Cited page.   It would be appropriate to use headings to break up your essay to show the different parts of your study.

·       Plan a five minute presentation to the class with the assistance of a visual aide (ex:  poster, graph, hand-out, Power Point, Prezi).