So, now that I’ve actually made a post, maybe it’s time for me to introduce myself as well. And I’m going to be ornery and write in English, as it’s my mother tongue and preferred means of communication. Det er ikke, at jeg ikke kan dansk, bare at jeg ikke gider.

I’m a bit unusual in comparison to my fellow bloggers here on Lingoland (not least of which because I seem to be the only female thus far): I’m about a decade older than most of them, I’m American, and I have a BS and MS in chemistry from back when I went to university the first time. Suffice it to say, I figured out eventually that I would have made a pretty mediocre chemist, but I’m discovering that I’m a pretty damn good linguist. I don’t regret my training in the “hard” sciences at all; it’s given me a rigorously empiricist background that I wish were more widespread within linguistics.

Right now, I am officially on an internship with The Language Museum, a fledgling organization co-founded by one of our recent alumnae, one of our professors, and a journalist/language-consultant. My official task for this internship is developing exhibits that will comprise the core of the biological/anthropological portion of the museum. While I will be at least partially designing exhibits having to do with articulatory and auditory phonetics (aka, how we produce and understand speech), the subject I’m grappling with the most right now is the question “How did humans evolve the capacity for language?”. This will eventually lead to an exhibit as well , but right now I’ve just barely started and am getting a fix on what I need to learn to do justice to this topic.

What I’ve discovered thus far is that most linguists are woefully underqualified to address the subject. As many have heard, the Linguistic Society of France (or something similar) put out a ban on discussing the subject in the late 1800s, which persisted until about 20 years ago. Mind you, only linguists ever observed this ban; other fields went merrily forwards with the question. In the last 20 years, linguists have been trying to play catch-up, and for the most part, they’ve done a spectacularly bad job of it. Basically, it’s showing itself to be a microcosm of the generativist/nativist debate, with everybody and their brother popping up to say “my particular syntactical theory or variation thereof can account for how language evolved!” Bullshit, says I.

That which is becoming amply clear to me is that this is a highly multidisciplinary topic which requires knowledge of paleoanthropology, evolutionary biology, anatomy, neurology, primatology, and probably some other fields as well as linguistics to be able to discuss it intelligently. This is one reason why, with my background in the physical and biological sciences, I feel like I’ve at least got a slight leg up over many linguists, or will, once I’ve gotten through all the reading I’ve laid out for myself.

There does seem to be one aspect of this most multifaceted question that does suit itself well to linguists, namely that the evolution of lexicon and the evolution of syntax seem to be two very different things. Perusal of any of the literature about Nim Chimpsky, Washoe, Kanzi, and other higher primates who were taught “language” makes it quite clear that, while they were able to acquire some small amount of lexicon, they acquired no syntax whatsoever. Any fully fleshed-out hypothesis of the origin of language will need to address both of these topics, not to mention the topics of how the neurological, anatomical, and genetic features necessary for human language evolved. I definitely have my work cut out for me.

If my fellow bloggers are interested, I can periodically post here with what I’ve learned on the subject. I imagine it will be a fascinating next few months.

…those who know me in person would not be the least surprised, as I am a frequently silly person. I just had to crosspost this amusing quiz result from my personal blog, since it’s so befitting a linguist.

Your Score: Akkadian

You scored

You are Akkadian, a blend of the incomprehensible symbols of the Sumerians with the unwritable sounds of the early Semitic peoples. However, the writing just doesn’t suit the words and doesn’t represent everything needed, so you end up a schizoid mess. Invented in Babylon, you’re probably to blame for that tower story. However, crazy as you are, you’re much loved and appreciated, and remain actively in use by records keepers long after schools have switched to other languages.

Having finally gotten wifi working on Ubuntu on my MacBook I wanted to setup input methods for Japanese in Gnome. While doing so, I stumbled upon an IPA input method, which turned out to be quite sexy.

First, make sure you’ve installed SCIM, additional tables for SCIM and of course, the SCIM GTK+2 module. Also, you might want a font that supports all of the Unicode IPA extension, so let’s throw Thryomanes in there too, since it does exactly that.

sudo apt-get install scim scim-tables-additional scim-gtk2-immodule ttf-thryomanes

(The packages can of course be installed with Synaptic or whatever you prefer, as long as you make sure to install ’scim’, ’scim-tables-additional’, ’scim-gtk2-immodule’ and ‘ttf-thryomanes’.)

Open “System > Preferences > SCIM Input Method Setup” and select “IMEngine > Global Setup”. Find “Other > IPA-X-SAMPA” and check it. Hit Apply or OK to save the changes and restart X (hit Ctrl-Alt-Backspace, which will log you out and restart X) for the changes to take effect.

Then (if you want easy access to the IPA input method) right-click on one of your desktop panels and select “Add to Panel…” from the menu. Find “Keyboard Indicator” and add it. Now you can switch between the input methods simply by clicking the keyboard indicator.

Now, to actually use the super-cool input method, you just open any GTK+2 text editor (eg. “Applications > Accessories > Text Editor”, AbiWord or OpenOffice – actually, most applications that can take text input) and select the IPA method from the keyboard indicator (Other > IPA-X-SAMPA). Your keyboard layout will then change quite a bit and you’ll be able to write IPA easily. When you start typing, you might notice that sometimes a letter is highlighted and a little box is showing below it, that’s SCIM showing you the available IPA characters on that particular key – you can select them by using the up and down arrow keys and hitting space or enter. For instance, to write a schwa, type ‘@’ and hit space.

It’s worth noting, that not all IPA symbols are found exactly where you would expect, but it doesn’t take long to get used to and it’s so convenient – especially because it works in all Gnome applications, which includes your favorite web browser, you mail client etc.

I en artikel (samt en tidligere artikel) på politiken.dk skrives, at Dansk Sprognævn har bedt om bud på nye ord (og nye anvendelser), der er på vej ind i det almindelige danske sprog. Nævnet har sågar lavet en fin blanket, der kan findes på deres hjemmeside, som man kan udfylde for at informere om disse nyskabelser.

Er dette nu en god måde at blive bevidst om sprogets status anno 2007? Hvis Dansk Sprognævn er tilpas kritiske overfor de indsendte data og ser på det som en slags folkelingvistik, så er det måske ikke dumt — men nævnet må huske, at det sikkert vil tiltrække en del folk, som finder sig selv usandsynlig kreative og derfor indeberetter ethvert ord, de selv synes har potentiale, selvom det måske kun bruges i en enkelt sociolekt. Det virker umiddelbart til, at det vil være svært at skille skidt fra kanel, men man må jo håbe at Dansk Sprognævn har styr på sagerne. Heldigvis er de i det mindste ikke bange for nyskabelser, ulig visse andre modersmålsfikserede organisationer.

Derudover, finder man i førstnævnte artikel en meget kort redegørelse for ord som “nederen” og “fråderen”, som er hvad dette indlæg i virkeligheden handler om.

»Det er en meget populær orddannelsestype, som faktisk er beskrevet i den første slangordbog fra 1950′erne. Her var et af eksemplerne »børneren«, som betyder børnehave«, siger Pia Jarvad.

Konstruktionen er, at man fjerne det sidste af ordet og sætter »-en« på, og derfor er både »nederen« og »fråderen« – som betyder noget dårligt eller at være meget sulten – altså klassiske slangord.

Jeg må nok stille mig uenig med Pia Jarvad (eller, hvad Politiken har fået ud af hendes udtalelser) her — “nederen” og “børneren” er ikke konstrueret ens. For de gamle slangord som “børneren” og “svømmeren”, mener jeg, at der er tale om såkaldte clippings, fordi det ganske enkelt er lettere (og hurtigere) at sige “børneren” i stedet for “børnehaven” og “svømmeren” i stedet for “svømmehallen”. Dette er substantiver, som forbliver substantiver. Dette kan ses på, at man blandt andet godt kan høre “der ligger en svømmer nede om hjørnet” og forstå det som “der ligger en svømmehal nede om hjørnet” og ikke “der ligger en person i badevinger og svømmefødder nede om hjørnet”. Endelsen -en kommer altså på fordi substantivet er i bestemt form. Det samme er tilfælde med ord som “mayo” for “mayonaise”, “bil” for “automobil” osv. Alle opfører sig grammatisk som det ord de er dannet ud fra.

“Nederen” og “fråderen” derimod, er sværere at bestemme, fordi de efterhånden primært anvendes som adjektiver (eg. “det er fandme nederen” og “det er en fråderen lasagne, det her!”). Her er der ikke tale om clippings på grund af lettere eller hurtigere udtale — ordene de er dannet ud fra er kortere og ikke engang nødvendigvis af samme type som resultaterne. Det giver altså ikke mening at betragte dem som simple forkortelser for lethedens skyld.

For “nederen” kan tilfældet være, at det er dannet ud fra adjektivet “nede”, blevet til substantivet “neder”, derefter “nederen” i bestemt form og slutteligt syntaktisk adjektiviseret, som i eksemplet “det er fandme nederen”. Syntaktisk adjektiviseret fordi adjektiviseringen sker vha. ordstillingen fremfor morfologisk (eg. -lig). Substantivformen kan stadig sagtens anvendes, f.eks. “jeg fik nederen på over det”.

“Fråderen” kunne meget vel være verbet “fråde”, der er blevet bøjet i nutid (“fråder”), substantiveret (“en fråder”) og — ligesom “nederen” — syntaktisk adjektiviseret. Selvfølgelig er der også substantivet “fråde”, som kunne ligge til grund for processen, men jeg har svært ved at finde en logisk forklaring på, hvordan det skulle kunne blive til “fråderen”. Det er vigtigt at bemærke at Pia Jarvad beskriver brugen af den substantiverede form “en fråder”, men den adjektiviserede form bruges, så vidt jeg har bemærket, lige så meget.

Så vidt jeg ved, så kommer disse udtryk fra tjaldrygning, hvor man kan få bl.a. “fråderen”, “æderen”, “nederen”, “noieren” (“paranoia-eren“) og “steneren” på. “Steneren” har forresten også sneget sig med ind sammen med “nederen” og “fråderen”, f.eks. “det var en steneren film” og “han er en steneren fyr”. Jeg er ikke bekendt med lignende udtryk fra andre kilder, men vil da meget gerne høre dem, hvis du — ærede læser — skulle have kendskab til et eller flere.

Både “fråderen” og “nederen” (og “steneren”) kan anvendes — og bliver anvendt — som adjektiver, hvorfor jeg mener det ikke er korrekt at sige, at de er “klassiske slangord” i den forstand, at de er konstrueret ud fra samme princip som “børneren” og “svømmeren”, selvom de morfologisk ser ens ud. Der er tale om vidt forskellige processer i, og grundlag for, konstruktionen af slangordene.