Keres part I
I have moved to New Mexico and become a substitute teacher in the high schools and middle schools in the Alamogordo/Cloudcroft area; I love New Mexico history best although I am far from an expert on it. I have not entirely given up on all of my ESL goals, my life, my research, my passions, but for the moment, I've had to do this for personal reasons, and my path is leading me to being a high school history/social studies teacher. New Mexico needs teachers, so it is making it easier for me to do it. I also needed a break, but needed to keep working, since my wife's experience as Chair led to what can be best described as a healing recovery period in the mountains.
So, I was subbing in a New Mexico History class on Monday, and opened up an old textbook (2005?) by Joe Sando called "Nuevo Mexico." It was slightly more comprehensive than your average textbook, and when it came to the part about the nineteen Pueblos up by Albuquerque, the author claimed that those nineteen fell into three camps based on origin of their language: the Zuni were in a camp of their own (possibly having come from Mexico), the Tiwa/Tewa/Towa were in the biggest camp, accounting for most of the Pueblos, and then there were the Keres, or Keresan, or Queres - these accounted for seven of the Pueblos, including the Zia Pueblo (who gave us that cool Zia symbol on our license plate). Then, he claimed that he believed the Keresan people started in the Caribbean, based on similarities in the languages, and that they had come to New Mexico via Florida, where they had learned about putting shells on the leader's house and calling it the "white house." He also said that they had stopped at Chaco Canyon for a while, before settling in the Pueblos that we recognize today as the Keresan Pueblos around Albuquerque.
I was stunned, but I hastily jotted down some of the information that he claimed. When I asked the students, I found out that it was generally known that there were 19 Pueblos; it was generally known that the Pueblos at one point had rebelled against Spanish rule; nobody knew anything about the Caribbean. I came home and researched links between Keres language/culture and the Caribbean. No mention of Sando's claim. No nothing tying these people to the Caribbean whatsoever.
Joe Sando was actually from the Tiwa/Tewa/Towa side of the Pueblos, a place called Jemez Pueblo, but he was a respected scholar of all the Pueblos, and wrote many books. He was best known for not sharing details of the Pueblo religions with the outside world, though he was a prolific teacher of other things related to the people of the Pueblos. He died recently. I have found no other reference to this book or to his claims. Did people ignore them? Hate him for making them? Dislike the inference that ancient people (1300?) could travel from the Caribbean to New Mexico?
The heck of it is, in graduate school, I studied ancient Caribbean languages, or at least Arawak, which was spoken in the Caribbean when Columbus arrived. I still have those notes somewhere. I had found this worn out book that translated what was left of Arawak into French, and made my Historical Linguistics paper on it. It was the crowning achievement of my graduate school career, though that had some low points too. Those Arawak people were generally thought to have related people deep in the Amazon, and the Garifuna of Honduras had a related language too. I considered it my job to find out whether the languages were indeed related, based on the principles of language change that we had used. I got an A on that paper, I believe.
I have a new theory, which is that the ancient peoples traveled more than we give them credit for. They knew the stars and planets far better than we do. The mound people of the Cahokia area traveled the rivers, from present-day East St. Louis to Canada, Idaho, the Appalachians, the Gulf. There is proof that they did thousands of miles on the rivers, but no proof that they ever saw the Aztecs or Incas. But this was all before 1200, when they disappeared from the East Saint Louis area. If they could do that, then the Keres people could go from the Caribbean to New Mexico. They would have had to have taken the Rio Grande (most likely) - through Big Bend, El Paso, Las Cruces, etc. They would have had to have had a reason. I'm still stewing on that.
Joe Sando said in his book that they'd stopped in Florida; also, that they stopped in Chaco Canyon for years before they settled in their Pueblos. Hmm. He also said that they have an expression in their language, "When we were in the east..." that indicates that they are about to tell a story from the old times. He was convinced that this referred to the days of the Caribbean. He gave linguistic evidence, which I have copied poorly but will retrieve at the first opportunity. It's all on p. 28 of "Nuevo Mexico."
In the Wikipedia entry for the Keres language, it says that there is some disagreement about what the Keres languages could have been related to; there were no known languages that were close to it. Sapir studied them but couldn't get the hang of the tones; one of his assistants stayed behind and got a better idea. Greenburg thought they might be related to Caddoan, which is interesting because the Caddoan people claim the Cahokian sun god as their own, and all three (Caddoan, Mound people of Cahokia, and Keres) had elements of sun worship in their culture. Remember, Cahokia was empty after 1200, though it had been the biggest city in the Americas for over a thousand years. Archaeologists have placed the arrival of the Keres in the 1300's though I haven't seen the Caribbean mentioned
anywhere. My guess is that if they knew the stars as well as they did, they also knew the land. They didn't have Wikipedia, but they knew how to make boats and use them. They weren't necessarily afraid of the Gulf of Mexico.
They didn't even discover Cahokia, really, until they were building the interstates, in about the 1950's. They had to build a bunch of cloverleafs in E. St. Louis and they kept running into the bases of what came to be known as "Woodhenge." Eventually they realized that this was the capital of the Americas for a thousand years and that much of it, across the river in particular, had already been destroyed. But what they saved was still quite intense. And some of it is still there.
These days I drive past a place with ancient caves. It has the feeling of ancient, canyon, river, mountains and elk, all that stuff, on the border of the vast Tularosa basin and the Sacramento Mountains, where the ancient people would have had access to everything they needed - meat, plants, water, shelter, security. I know one could find stuff by digging. But instead I shoot down that road at 45, going from 9000 ft. to 3500 feet every day, paying close attention to staying on the road and not craning my neck to look for rock drawings on the walls of the cliffs. These too were ancient people, before the Apache and Comanche came around with their horses, before everyone. We're in the habit of calling them "primitive." That's because they didn't have laptops. But hey, I have an idea. That is, every time a huge rock falls from the cliff and lands in the road, that's because the ancient people are watching us, and saying, basically, wake up. You think you're so great. You'll be lucky if you have descendants in this world, because you have no respect. And if you scorn travel, you're an idiot.
Labels: endangered languages, languages, linguistics, personal, wikipedia
linguistics papers
My undergraduates have just finished writing term papers which were, to me, very interesting. They had three choices: 1) choose an uncommon or endangered language and write about it, 2) take a stand on whether "Spanglish" can be considered a language of its own, 3) investigate linguistic forensics and its application to a court case. About six jumped on #3, and it could be assumed that they are forensics majors; many of my students are. Only one took #2 (so far - in fact I have only received 34 out of about 40 papers); and the rest did endangered or obscure languages.
So let's talk about those. There were Native American languages and their programs to survive and teach their children; similarly, there was an Australian one. There were two on Ainu and some other Asian ones; there was also two papers on European languages, one in Poland and one in Belarus.
One was on Klingon, which was invented by a guy in response to enthusiastic reaction to Star Trek and a group of aliens who appear on it. The guy supposedly was
less concerned about grammar than about other elements of the language, which he spelled out very carefully. Classes have been held in Klingon, and Hamlet was rewritten in Klingon. It has an enthusiastic fan base,
but no group of native speakers. It has a tension between people who believe that
only what the originator specified is valid, versus people who would experiment, change and adapt the language. It raises questions about whether it is a language, partly because interest in it is growing, and even maturing, yet it has restrictions on settling in to being a huge language.
Another paper was on Boontling, a language spoken in the small California town of Boonville. Apparently these rural people, in the late nineteenth century, started systematically making up new words and using them in place of English words, until their Boontling slang was indecipherable by outsiders; ultimately it became like a souvenir, glorified in YouTubes and in tourist literature. But the question is: did it ever have its own grammar, or was it just new words being plugged in systematically in places where English would have content words? My question really is whether it can be called its own language if it has used English grammar and phonology entirely, and simply replaced all the words. In the case of this language, there were generations of people who grew up within it, unclear about what common things (such a phone) were really called; however, these native speakers ended up with a huge vocabulary, more than with two separate languages.
A final question was about saving native languages, and Hawaiian came up as one that has significant attention put to saving it. Hawaiian is an interesting and unique language and attracted this attention partly because of that. The University of Hawaii set about teaching Hawaiian as a second language and soon built up a culture of non-native speakers who were very interested in perpetuating the language. Meanwhile a group of native Hawaiians holed up on one of the islands, where outsiders were prohibited and where they could successfully perpetuate the language and a culture. But the inevitable happened, or is happening: this culture survives only by being isolated. Its elders die; its young generation seek more action in the larger cities. Now, of the two populations who speak Hawaiian, it can be argued that the university one may be more vibrant, or, that due to lack of contact, the variations inevitably split
from each other. And either group is just as likely to change anything in their variant, as we saw in English in colonial days. The set of changes that befall a language invariably create a different language, when and if they don't maintain contact.
I'll read these papers more carefully as soon as I can, and report back. I find it an interesting subject, and want to pursue it more.
Labels: endangered languages, language, languages, ttu
articles
Rosenberg, T. (2011, Dec. 9).
Everyone speaks text message.
New York Times Magazine. Accessed 1-12. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/11/magazine/everyone-speaks-text-message.html?pagewanted=1&tntemail0=y&_r=4&emc=tnt.
Miller, L. S. (2012, Jan. 8).
ESL instruction videos teaching more than English on YouTube.
GigaOm. Accessed 1-12. http://gigaom.com/video/esl-instruction-videos-teaching-more-than-english-on-youtube/.
DeSantis, N. (2012, Jan. 6).
E-Textbooks Saved Many Students Only $1.
Chronicle, Accessed 1-12. http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/new-study-shows-e-textbooks-saved-many-students-only-1/34793.
Crotty, J. M. (2011, Dec. 21).
M.I.T. Game-Changer: Free Online Education For All.
Forbes. Accessed 1-12. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesmarshallcrotty/2011/12/21/m-i-t-game-changer-free-online-education-for-all/
Bell, K. (2012, Jan. 14).
Internet creates a cat-and-mouse game between schools, students.
Victoria Advocate. Accessed 1-12. http://www.victoriaadvocate.com/news/2012/jan/14/kb_school_internet_011512_164404/?features&education.
Labels: bib, chat, endangered languages, internet, youtube
Linguistics luncheon, 4-28-10
Webster, A. (2010, April 28). Urinating donkeys, abalone shells, and Disney: On unintentional punning and interlingual punning among Navajos. Linguistics Luncheon, Illinois Room, Student Center.
Dr. Webster had come to my class two days earlier to talk about kinship systems, and I was very interested in the Navajo anyway. His talk was about the social roles of interlingual puns, and I realized that I live in a world of interlingual puns, where people, upon learning English, are often finding words that sound similar to words in their own language, thus enjoying a little interlingual ambiguity or the ability to jump back and forth from one mind to another.
Though he admitted that the title was mostly to draw an audience, and that he had unexpectedly drawn more than at a conference where his title was perhaps duller, he did give an explanation for the urinating donkeys, abalone shells, and Disney. The donkey was related to television:
telii alizhgo in Navajo is "urinating donkey." This was often related to the drinking of beer, he pointed out, though I missed the specific reference or how they were related. A priest apparently continually addressed children as abalone shells, and the name of Canyon de Chelly (or Chinle) in Navajo often sounds like "Disney" thus causing Navajos to make subtle remarks about what has happened to one of their favorite places.
Both in my class and in the lecture he told the story told by Robert Young, of J.H. Beedle recording "Holahei" as the Navajo word for "God." Apparently when he asked Navajos about God, giving his western view of a single guy who controls everything, the Navajo said, "I don't know" (Hola) and then later added an emphatic (Hei) to say, "I really don't know!" This became recorded as the Navajo word for "God" and stood for twenty years or so, until it was straightened out later. A joke involving the word "Hola" has an anglo linguist explaining that Navajo is such a hard language that it's almost impossible to learn. At one point he asks a Navajo sitting nearby, "What does "Hola" mean?" to which the Navajo responds, "I don't know." The linguist now says, "See? Even the Navajo don't know what these words mean!"
There was much in this lecture that I could repeat but I'm saving things I thought I could use later. One is that the expression
shikaa ch'elinood (with stress accents on the vowels that I cannot replicate) sounds like
Chicago Illinois and means literally "it soared over me (like a snake)". People were known to shout out "Chicago Illinois" at various points of a lecture, apparently; this would be something to keep in mind for later, I'm sure.
He made a point about the endangered nature of Navajo that I thought was very important. It was that it is very hard for older Navajos to get their children to learn Navajo, and part of the reason is that they have much higher expectations of their children, than, say, they would have of an anglo anthropologist. The lecture brought up lots of miscommunications between missionaries, anthropologists, tourists, and the various people who have poked their heads into the Navajo world, but the damage done by putting Navajo children in boarding schools was a crippling blow, not that it untaught anyone the language, but that it forced them to be reminded, every time they hear it, of an unpleasant history. Much the same as Yiddish, a crippling blow is dealt by the mere circumstances of what the language comes to represent; what a tragedy for a rich and wonderful language. The Navajo are a nation of 300,000; their reservation is the size of West Virginia; they are the largest and most prosperous of all First Nations; but they are having trouble keeping their language alive.
Two more stories. One involves the Navajo kids in school, pledging allegiance to the flag, and saying "with liberty,
ajetsin for all (and a leg bone)- reminding us of all the various interpretations given to rote forced chants over the years. Another involves the Navajo poet who says, "Every time I speak Navajo it's an act of resistance"....yes, but resistance to what? To the inevitable decrease of the language, I'm sure. But also to the cruel fate, that the circumstances, more than anything else, have tricked the Navajo into not using it.
Labels: endangered languages, languages, siuc
linguistics at SIUC: retrospective
When I'm on break, as I am now, I sometimes go to an underground place that I know and love, but feel like very few others know about. It's the web archive records of the old Journal of Pidgin and Creole Linguistics - which, fortunately, saved, at least for the time being, a very interesting slice of the history of linguistics at SIUC.
The Journal, brought to SIUC by Dr. Glenn Gilbert, had at that time a webmaster, Caro Jacques I believe (though these pages list the author as Jeffery Parsell), who patiently put much of what it was doing on the web. Though one now has to know how to find it, as it is gone from all but the archives, short articles from old JPCL's can be found there; longer, more substantial ones also; longer pieces on Creole language in general; obituaries; a glossary of pidgin and creole terms; an index of old JPCL articles; in short, all kinds of stuff. I bring you a couple of examples, both called "Short Notes".
http://web.archive.org/web/20011202084455/www.siu.edu/cwis/departments/cola/ling/online/snotes/sn17.htmSanson Pirog, by Derek Bickerton and Marcel Rosalie (Issue 5.1, 1990)
a "Short Note" about fishing-boat songs in the Seychelles Islands in the Indian Ocean.
and
http://web.archive.org/web/20011218045527/www.siu.edu/cwis/departments/cola/ling/online/snotes/sn54.htmON THE (SENSATIONAL) SURVIVAL OF KIKONGO
IN 20TH-CENTURY CUBA by Armin Schwegler
Issue 15.1, April 2000
There are many reasons to be interested in these documents, besides the fact that they are exactly the kinds of things I like to read. In the second article, there is clearly an academic argument about the survival of Kikongo, an African language, in Cuba and other places in the Americas, as opposed to a better-established theory that what survived was a combination of languages (it's clearly possible that both were right). Not that I know anything, really, about this particular dispute. It's more that I feel that putting it in public was itself an important act- on the cutting edge, one could say, of a general trend of making academic journals public, a trend that is continuing today and that in general is good, I feel, for such conversations. For one thing, people like me can participate, from home, late at night, whereas otherwise I might not have used my precious daytime working hours to go find the place in the library where I could have dug this up. Now if it were on a blog, I could also comment, if I wanted to, but that's another story.
My second point, and this really speaks to the first example, is that the web makes it far more likely that people, some people, any people, linguist people, will actually
find anything like this that is quite hard to find- this is what Google is good for. And I happen to know that such songs as these, and accounts such as Bickerton & Rosalie's, are quite valuable in their own way.
And this brings me to the rest of the story. The JPCL was moved to Ohio State soon after these were put on the web; SIUC inadvertantly deleted the file as "inactive" with our permission, as we believed that Ohio State now owned it, and would put it directly on their web (perhaps they did; I'm not sure, but it's not there now); the JPCL, meanwhile, has returned to being an offline, academic journal, available only in libraries and by subscription; but worse, linguistics at SIUC has suffered a decline, and who would even know - besides me, that is - that such cool stuff could be found so deep in the web- with SIUC's name still on it? That's why I'm on this earth, I guess. For that reason, and to ponder the following questions: could more of this be salvaged, and brought to the web where we all could read it? Will SIUC get back into the groove, and realize again what it means to have active, productive Linguistics publications? Will the field of linguistics come to enjoy the explosion of possibilities brought by the connection of world peoples through the new media?
I don't know the answers, sorry for teasing you. Enjoy these, such as they are; thanks again, Caro (or Jeff?), and thanks again to the
Web Archive for being there for us when we need it...
PS - though it has taken me a while to get the above links to work (let alone to
wrap, I have not made it easy for anyone else to actually do what I do, and go trolling through the caves of the archives. To do that, put the old JPCL address (www.siu.edu/departments/cola/ling) into the archive; December of 2001 works well; see what you can find!
Labels: endangered languages, internet, jpcl, linguistics, siuc
scottish gaelic revisited
Think there's a chance? Here are
some old links from my old archive. Took me quite a while just to find them, hopefully not so long to use them.
Ciamar a tha sibh?
KIM-mer-uh-HAH-shiv? -How are you?
Tha gu math, tapadh leith
HAH-gu-MAH, TAH-pih-LEH-eev -I'm well, thanks!
Labels: endangered languages
languages in the turquoise sea
My own memory is like my e-mail inbox: certain things, about three or four months old, risk falling off the edge of it, into the great abyss, to be forgotten until the great archivist calls me into question. Such it is with the
old jpcl files, which have been hiding away in the old
wayback archive. I'm very grateful to this archive, for we didn't think to save these files ourselves, and they have information about such languages as
St. Lucien Creole, and
Mauritian Creole. As you can see I'm not done saving the files, but I haven't given up. Break is almost here; it's 100 degrees in the shade, and I'm finding that old html code is about all I have the patience for.
If any of the links work, have a look around. What you can't find on the surface, you'll find in the archive; and then, if I'm smart, and persistent, it will all come out of the archive, and back home. It'll take some coding, but it's one of my missions in life. These are, after all, endangered files.
Labels: endangered languages, jpcl, linguistics
notes from around and about
A
collection of my son's reviews, which make me proud. I can say that he started his journalistic career here at SIUC- as I guess I did also. I'm kind of a casual participator in the citizen's media, but he's bettered me, I think. I told him to get into the web-design part of it, and he would be employed for life. I'm not sure that's what he wants.
Working on patiently updating
CESL Today, cleaning up a disaster in the back library. I have heard that the restriction on all old logos, the more draconian of regulations for webmasters, may have been lifted. You may recall that I'm not so much against the high-noon-at-pulliam sidebar, though it is difficult to work around the same insidious red color day in and day out- but I am opposed to the deliberate forced defacement of old archived materials (ok, I admit, they weren't all that great to begin with)- the wreckage of which still upsets me- because of a "uniform look" rule. If that part of the webmasters' requirement is gone, I'm glad to know it. But I'll be happier still if some old logos can see the light of day again. The logos to me represent historical eras- and those who delete history are bound to go diving through server-logs and web archives trying, sometimes futilely, to recover it. I should also mention that an extreme time shortage has hurt this effort, as well as the St. Lucien project, the archiving of old faculty pictures and historical records, and numerous other projects, which mostly just take time, and a few moments by a computer.
Finally I invite one and all to
the Mix in Carterville to hear yours truly- Fri. evening, 7-9, be there or be square.
To those who missed it, abroad and wherever, a happy Fourth. It poured buckets here. We've moved from hot-tub to sauna now, though- it's likely to be prickly until October. Time to stop driving after 6:30 in the morning.
Labels: cesl, endangered languages, jpcl, personal, siuc
it's all relative
This may seem arcane to some of my readers, but if you're in the position I'm in (that is, missing your glasses, late at night, after spending a week grading endless papers), it's a subject of great interest. I've watched hundreds or thousands of students stumble through the upper levels of our program, some never acquiring relative clauses, others picking them up quite easily but stumbling on other things.
Now I don't believe that it's all genetic, or natural, or that there is a universal order that all language learners will follow on their way to fluency. Sure, they'll pick up relative clauses after they pick up basic sentences, but that's obvious. A tougher question would be: are they all at the same stage of development when they
do pick them up? I'm not sure. And, you can run them through a grammar class where you teach them relative clauses explicitly, and it will only make a tiny difference: they will use them for about a week. Then they'll go back to whatever they were doing before. I can't be sure of this though; I only see some of their writing.
In any case, I'm especially interested in two kinds of learners. The first are Arabic speakers, who seem to have something like relative clauses in Arabic, but whose native relative clauses leave a trace, as I believe they would say in my linguistics class. Thus, they'll say, Carbondale is a city that I like it. The "it" is a trace left behind when "that" presumably moved.
What's interesting about this is that, because both languages
have lots of relative clauses (use them easily, in many circumstances), Arabic speakers appear to acquire them fairly easily, early in the game. But, because of the trace, you can have a clue that they didn't construct the sentence with native English logic. Constructed in Arabic, it comes out with a relative clause that is flawless, except for the trace which gives away the translation. One could in fact argue that they have not been acquired at all; they are just being used as part of a translation. Which brings up one thorny issue in the measuring of "acquisition".
But the other case is that of Japanese, which has slightly more possibilities of making complex noun structures as appeared for example in the following sentence: "Eighty percent of the people use energy comes from hydroelectric dams." Now we native English speakers would about have to use "energy that people use" - a relative clause - in this sentence, but this speaker obviously didn't feel it was necessary, or didn't want to. Or, was unable to.
I'm interested in the chain of thought in cases like this- and I'm interested in how to change it, since that would represent acquisition I'd like to get to the bottom of it. Comments, anecdotes welcome.
Labels: endangered languages, krashen, learning theory
Learning theory
Oddly, I was at a pleasant dinner, outside on a nice, steamy June day, watching children tear around a shady back lawn, when it hit me about how I would pull all this learning theory stuff together. Of course, a lot of it will have to be written as I go along, and is not set in stone yet, even in my mind. But I've already done a bit of writing on the subject, and I believe I'm ready to organize and move forward with what I've got. I'll lay out the plan below. That way I can say I've published it; I put it down, printed it, got it out there in the world, whether I die tomorrow or not.
Krashen was right about a number of things, and wrong about a few crucial things. When he clearly defined the difference between learning and acquisition, most veteran teachers said
yes! - because anyone who has taught a language has experienced the students who can learn tricks for a test, yet be unable to use them in real situations, sometimes less than ten minutes later. We teachers knew that things, lots of things, were learned but never acquired; that Krashen was onto a crucial distinction. With time, researchers sneered at him, because he was unable to show exactly how one would prove that something was learned but not acquired. Krashen in fact has a very bad name among SLA researchers for basically having unprovable hypotheses.
On this problem I'll say, I agree with the teachers; he was onto something. Just because he was unable to show exactly how it could be done, doesn't mean it can't be done. His model, in this instance at least, was quite right.
His biggest weakness was that he was caught up in the Chomsky era and assumed or believed that so much of what happened in language learning was inherent or derived from completely natural, inborn systems. In this regard he was wrong about a number of other hypotheses; first of which was a LAD, or language acquisition device, which made me laugh when I first heard about it, and still reminds me somewhat of a tumor, or maybe a heart implant. But that's not really what i'm posting about.
Because he thought of acquisition as a natural, inborn process, he didn't take much time distinguishing the differences between first and second language acquisition, which are in fact substantial. The whole Chomskian era, with its emphasis on the inborn nature of acquisition, has this weakness. The two are quite different, and all the differences are behavioral, since the second language learner has a language system already, when he starts, and thus builds new understanding of a new language
on top of assumptions which are, in many cases, false.
Thus the first language learner is like a filing clerk who looks at a huge pile of files and says, I'll have to look at these for a while before I really know how to organize them- but I'll start organizing them anyway, as I look at them, because I have to have a way to process this information as I get it, and I can always change my system a little as I go along. The second language learner, however, says, it's a pile of files, it's probably organized like the last pile. I'll use that system, the one I used for the first pile, until I figure out that this one is different, or, at least until I have a better way of organizing it, and until I really believe my life will be simpler if I reorganize it.
Notice that the two filing clerks have profoundly different approaches. Notice also that, by definition, the L2 learner whose first language is Korean has a profoundly different approach to English than the L2 learner whose first language is Arabic, for example. An entirely different system of understanding the language, an entirely different set of systemic hurdles to understanding it completely and becoming fluent.
One of Krashen's hypotheses was that there is a natural order of acquisition. People will learn one grammatical structure before they'll learn another. When they tried to prove this, things got complicated; they ended up with examples that made me angry. I'd say, sure people learn
A before they learn
B, since you
have to learn
A before you can possibly learn
B...but, I figured, that doesn't prove anything, and certainly doesn't prove that language learning is a natural, inborn process, genetic and as preprogrammed as getting an Adam's apple.
I think he was wrong about that. People whose first language has relative clauses will learn relative clauses at a different time, developmentally, than people whose first language doesn't have them, or whose first language has them, but avoids them at all costs. We choose to acquire what we feel we need the most- and our perception is guided by our experience. Different experience -> different perception -> different needs analysis -> different acquisition order.
Acquisition is basically when the filing clerk says, my life will be simpler if I organize it this new way. I will reorganize my data because I recognize now that a different or better system of organization will be more efficient- will better reflect the data I have- and will thus make it easier for me to communicate, and use the system.
Here are my (rudimentary, I admit) principles of second language acquistion:
Progress in second language acquisition is marked by a voluntary change in the system of the learner- the brain reorganizing itself for the purposes of creating better language and/or being understood more clearly . For example, my Spanish teacher can teach me the difference between
ser and
estar (
ser- the existential
be;
estar, the locational
be) and I can get it right on the quiz
and the midterm, but still use
ser for all
be when I speak Spanish. Then one day I figure it out, and basically put a programming order in my system, one that says, basically, when you're talking about location, use
estar; use
ser for the other stuff. When this order is successfully put into my production system (I actually remember when I did this- though I couldn't tell you when or where), the learner can be said to have
acquired the difference. We can notice that the learner begins getting it right- getting the difference and using the correct verb in the correct slot. And, it's a different time than the time when somebody actually taught him/her the difference.
The mind is aware of the need to reorganize, long before it actually takes the time and effort to do it. This is self-explanatory. We are conservative, and don't take matters of internal organization lightly.
Nobody can tell us how to organize our own filing system. They can, however, point out truths about the way the data is organized, which we, as language learners, will recognize when we see, and respond to accordingly. Some semblance of control is necessary, however, if only for the sake of pride. It's my mind. I'll change it only when I'm ready, you lay off telling me how to think.
The kid who becomes bilingual at a young age is at a distinct advantage, because he/she sets up two filing systems right away, rather than running the second one through the first. More about this later.
The baby hears mountains of data before actually having to produce anything in a first language. The adult second language learner, however, hears much less, and, as an adult, will have to produce much sooner. And furthermore, he/she hears a lot less of some things, for example commands, that kids hear a lot of. So it is possible that he/she has a different kind of interpretation
just on the basis of what he/she has already heard, let alone a different interpretation
based on false assumptions carried over from the first language. One that I recall, though I don't remember it being proven in any way, was a theory that the -ING form of a verb was the basic form (the most common- the starting point). If you didn't go through several years of
come here, give me a kiss, go to bed, eat your spinach..., that might be possible, I suppose. I'd like to ask some language learners.
More about this later. This whole treatise will be moved, I assure you, to a permanent home on the web somewhere.
Labels: chomsky, endangered languages, krashen, learning theory
publication
Leverett, T. (2007, May). Dialects in a changing language.
Global Study Magazine 4, 3. London. pp. 56-57.
This is one attempt at social commentary on the effects of online environments on modern culture. Because of the computer, various things are happening: we who are online have much more contact with people in faraway lands; standardization of the language is a steady but sure process; oral dialects have become less integral as part of our lives, as most people have command of a standard Hollywood kind of dialect that they can use with strangers; the written language has become more important as a introductory tool and as a shared language among people who don't know each other and have never met; written dialects exist in places where people do a lot of online interaction, share many experiences in common, and develop their own shortcuts independently of the written language outside the confines of that environment (examples: World of Warcraft, Second Life); the relationship of written and oral language is actually changing in front of our eyes.
Enough for now. I'll let you know when this one is online; it's really not that complicated. The magazine is extremely well-made, interesting, modern, hip and glossy- all at the same time. I'm not sure if you can get it at the corner store, though. Fortunately, they're really nice about putting it online. They also put really nice pictures along with the articles, and give us (CESL/SIUC) free advertising. It's a bargain for everyone, unless, of course, I were trying to make a living from writing.
Labels: chat, endangered languages, internet, personal, second life
jpcl language files
I've
written before about, and I need to keep on top of my conscious perception- a certain problem, concerning work on small languages that is endangered. I'm not sure if the languages are endangered, but the work is endangered, since it is now available only on the
wayback web archive, which is an incredible and little known service. These files could at least be brought back to the SIUC Linguistics webpages, which I, by default really, am still in charge of, but it would be a time-consuming job. I started the first- a paper on
St. Lucien Creole, and realized that it alone, in order to be finished, would entail bringing half a dozen files back, planting them back on our website, and linking them internally together. I had almost forgotten this project- but mentioned one day to Dennis Oliver, who kindly put in a comment in favor of saving it. Thanks are in order here- as it makes a huge difference when one is not doing this kind of thing unnoticed.
But it also brings up a further question. Dr. Gilbert's classes, and Dr. Gilbert himself, did a huge amount of work on these languages. The small corner of it that was clipped of the web accidentally, a few years back, represents only a tiny percentage of the entire work, and material, that was actually done. What happened to it? Who will keep it in the general record of work done on languages? He is, in fact, here in Carbondale, as far as I know, and it's worth at least finding out. It would also be worth it to get it on the web, where it could do the rest of the world some good!
Labels: endangered languages, jpcl, languages, linguistics, siuc
teardrop in the turquoise sea
It turns out I'm at an interesting nexus point. I happened to be around SIUC a few years back when the
Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages was moved to Ohio State, and its files downloaded off the web and transferred, by disk I believe. A few years later SIUC wanted to delete the account as inactive and we let it- little did we know that those files did not reappear on any web and are probably collecting dust somewhere- Ohio State's link for them comes up empty. We're on a search for them, and they may turn up-
but-
In the meantime, I've gotten a request for an old file on St. Lucian French Creole (Ed Ford and Leonie St. Juste-Jean), and, since I happen to know about the wayback machine, was able to find at least an image of
the file. Turns out this link, the wayback's record of our old page, leads you to a subterranean archival record of all these files- obscure Caribbean pidgin language and other pidgin language reports, sometimes along with pictures and ethnography- projects of Linguistics students, mostly, saved by the wayback archive.
If those files never turn up (I am, as we speak, returning to many other responsibilities- as Ling-dep't webmaster, I'm really just a temp) - then this will be as close as we get. It's kind of a bureau dresser link into another world- but, I'd like to point out, the web is more and more important, not less & less. These small languages may have here their first recorded archiving- from the old times- a historical record that should not be forgotten, nor misplaced. I'm sorry to have ever been aware that they were to be erased- and to have done nothing about it at the time. Now I'm looking for someone to pick up the ball- collect them, brush the html dust off of them, put them someplace safe- in short, value them for the resource that they are. Takers?
Here's one on
Tok Pisin, "The National Language of Papua New Guinea" (E. Etepa).
And another one does
Mauritian Creole (B. Morrissey).
Finally,
Shelta-Gammon (H. Tondini).
Labels: endangered languages, jpcl, language, linguistics, siuc
Esperanto
This is an interest of mine that I've had sporadically over the years, another language that I've considered learning, but haven't had time to. Got a newsletter once, for a couple of years, but didn't learn much. Sorry to keep apologizing for stuff I
didn't do, but I actually have a few things to say about this one. I don't know how well Esperanto is doing- they have a hard time getting anyone to speak it outside of its conferences, but I"d like to keep abreast of its general popularity worldwide and see if the computer can change it (increase it) in any way. I'd also like to know if any of the following has happened: first, has there been a movement to truly make it more inclusive, namely including many of the non-Romance languages that make up the vast majority of languages in the world? It should truly be more worldly, by taking on
every single language with a commitment to borrow at least
something...and that would be a worthwhile challenge! Just wondering...second, what does it actually do to increase its own ranks? anything? One could live here in a small town in the heart of the media circus and never even hear of it.
Here's a good story. I was living in Korea in the late '80s and shared a ride with a Swiss friend who taught English also. We got to talking about Esperanto and he swore up and down that it was a living language in a certain area, a certain valley, of Switzerland. Had its own radio broadcast, or television broadcast too. As a living language it had native speakers, etc. I argued furiously, feeling that it was not actually a living language of any geographical area anyplace. But he was from Switzerland; finally he said, are you trying to tell me about my own country? So I gave up. What did I know about Switzerland?
Upon return to a linguistic environment I found out that Esperanto had indeed started television broadcasts in Switzerland, but was not a living language in any valley that anyone knew of. They did tell me about Romansch, though, a language of rather fossilized Latin, spread in one valley when some Roman soldiers were trapped there many hundreds of years ago. This language is like Esperanto in that it sounds very Latin, apparently; both Esperanto and Romansch are so much like Latin in some ways that they can be easily mistaken for each other. And that's the best explanation I could find for what my friend was telling me.
It's a crazy world. Don't know why I was even thinking of this. In general, I find it fruitful to get all these strains of thought, things that have resurfaced in my mind if nowhere else, down in my blog. Someday it may all amount to something!
Labels: endangered languages
save scottish gaelic - and yiddish too
Here are some sites from a friend in graduate school here. This is what I like about working near a linguistics department- just coming into contact with this information, which I hope to pursue someday. Not to mention getting in touch with my
roots. Writing these down here will certainly be better than keeping them on a scrap of paper, which, like most of my tartan ties, will eventually get coffee spilled on them.
gaelic lessonssave gaelicSabhal Mor OstaigAs a Wallace (Wallace is a Scottish name for Welsh, I understand) on my mother's side, I am fully aware that a lot of us were essentially forced off the land at some point, put in Northern Ireland, then kicked out of there more or less too. But that's no reason to let the
language die. Languages die, because, unfortunately, they become
perceived as representing some unpleasant aspect of one's history - rather than representing the living, breathing essence of one's own culture. and once they are just a corner of one's perception, and a back corner at that, it's hard for them to come back.
Look at Yiiddish...once a sprawling language, thousands of speakers, thousands of dialects even, but now it's associated with Hitler, and with Europe, and even its native speakers shrug it off. But that's too bad. A good language can teach you a lot...it has intrinsic value, not to mention, a colorful lilt, a rhyme to use while pounding on a baby's toes...
shmit shmit shmit
nem den hammer mit
ven du vilst der ferd bashovn,
must den hammer mit chik trogen
shmit shmit shmit
If it dies, Hitler will have won. Don't let that happen either.
Labels: endangered languages
