8.4.09For the first class you will need to download these two essays of mine:21.4.09Latin
TurkishI'm sorry if I've given you the impression that all we're going to do this year is learn a few odd bits of a few odd languages! Latin was a good example of an inflecting language, and Turkish of an agglutinating one. The Turkish example is also intended to demonstrate how difficult it is to learn a set of grammatical rules and then apply them all simultaneously. Why should that be, when we have no such difficulties with our native language?12.5.09
Next I want us to think about where English and Japanese fit into the inflecting/agglutinating scheme. Also why is there such a variety of human languages? Was there one original human language, and if so, what was it like? With the information we already have, we can answer one little question at least. That is, why are agglutinating languages so regular in their endings? Why shouldn't there be an agglutinating language with irregular endings like inflecting languages?
It seems impossible that we can ever find out much about the origins of human language - all humans today are brought up with one of the existing ones. Or are they? Please download this fascinating paper so that we can look at it in the next class:Al-Sayyid Bedouin sign languageI'd like to finish off the Turkish examples tomorrow, and also make a start on the next important topic:27.5.09Basque through analogyPlease download the new one and bring it with you!Here are two more downloads about analogy - please bring them this evening!2.6.09Working with analogy
English/Esperanto analogiesWe'll do a bit more about analogy tomorrow evening, and I'll set an assignment on the Basque analogies. Then I want to think about a new topic for a bit, namely, the origins of language. A blogger called Mark Rosenfelder, who writes under the name "Zompist", mainly about comics and computer games these days, has also written some interesting essays on language, and we should look at one of those first:5.6.09Proto-World and the Language InstinctSo please download it and bring it!Try downloading the "English/Esperanto analogies" file again from the link above. I had no trouble with it when I got home on Wednesday evening!11.6.09I've written a summary of what we worked out in class yesterday evening, so here it is:16.6.09More Basque through analogyIt may be helpful. Also I've added an extra week for the assignment, so you can ask more questions next Wednesday (17th June). I've just noticed too that I made a mistake in one of the Basque sentences on page 2. See if you can find out what it is!Don't forget to bring that previous one along too - let me repeat the link:24.6.09English/Esperanto analogiesPlease bring the following two downloads with you this evening. The first one is another good paper by Mark Rosenfelder. I'm sorry it's rather long, but there is no easy way to shorten it and extract just what we need. The second is something of mine on the same topic, the relatedness of languages.1.7.09Deriving Proto-world
More thoughts on chance resemblances between languagesWe'll do more about Proto-world this evening, including working out any problems you have with "Proto-world and the language instinct", the topic of the next assignment. So don't forget to bring that paper with you! I repeat the link to it below:7.7.09Proto-World and the Language InstinctAnd here are my thoughts on those last Basque sentences - please download them too:Final Basque sentencesWe've got some bits and pieces to finish off on Wednesday evening, but we might have time to have a look at the following article about a "language gene", which I thought rather interesting:21.7.09Language genePlease download it and bring it!Here are a couple of things to keep us occupied tomorrow, and over the vacation! They are both interesting, I think, so please download and bring them!Language origins
Language and thought
Assignments
The title and the due date are shown:
Translate the last two English sentences into Latin 15.4.09 Summary of the ABSN paper
(Note: Only include in your summary things that
are of interest to us as students of language -
don't bother with genetics and so on.)13.5.09 Using the same kind of notation as in "Working
with analogy", try to analyse the remaining
Basque sentences, that is from
"Mikel eta Miren joango dira"
to the end.24.6.09 A summary of the arguments
in Rosenfelder's "Proto-world and the language instinct"
from the section called "A counter-example: bee language"
to the end.8.7.09 Examples of new kinds of sentences
that can be predicted from
"Final Basque sentences".22.7.09