Jeg er lige faldet over en lingvistisk radioserie lavet af den amerikanske lingvist Rick Rickerson, som kalder sig The Five Minute Linguist. Radioserien som hedder Talkin’ about Talk, er lavet i anledning af, at den amerikanske kongres udnævnte 2005 til at være Sprogenes År i Amerika. Serien er lavet i samarbejde med et initiativ, som ligner noget der ligger os meget nært på Afdeling for Lingvistik og Finsk – nemlig The National Museum of Languages.

Serien består af 52 indslag à 5 minutter, der hvert behandler et spørgsmål, som “almindelige” mennesker kunne finde på at stille os lingvister. Spørgsmålene omfatter bl.a.:

• “Is Sign Language a Universal Language?“
• “Why Do Languages Change?“
• “How do you keep languages in a museum?“
• “How are language and thought related?“
• “Can you use language to solve a crime?“
• “What does language have to do with national security?“
• “Does anybody here speak Klingon?“

Denne komplette oversigt over programmerne kan findes her, hvor man også kan downloade hvert enkelt program. Hvis du ikke har lyst til at sidde og klikke på links i en evighed, som jeg har gjort, kan du også hente den samlede serie via Bittorrent.

Nu glæder jeg mig i hvert fald til at fylde mp3-afspilleren med lingvistik!

Currently there’s a conference called Language in Cognition – Cognition in Language going on here in Århus and I had the privilege to hear Paul Kay and Terry Regier speak about the laterelization of categorical perception. In itself a topic that has had my interest for a couple of years now, but the talk Kay and Regier gave was nothing but amazing. I was, at more than one point, tempted to jump up and yell “woohoo!” and start dancing a little happy celebratory dance.

The main point was, of course, about categorical perception, but the talk also delivered a very diplomatic and compelling point about the whole universalist/relativist discussion, that’s been going on ever since the 1950’s or so, namely that both may co-exist – even peacefully – and be perfectly compatible. In itself not a new idea, but Regier’s points about optimal partitioning of the color space, which seems to be near-universal, and the possibility for language specific deviations were really exciting and they definitely support the claim that there’s no ultimate universal or relativist truth within the domain of categorical perception.

Kay’s points about lateralization of categorical perception seem to support my feeling on the subject, namely that if you ask people to categorize something, they’ll do it by the means readily available. So when language already has color categories set up, why not use them when asked to categorize colors? Kay’s data seems to support this idea, which I’m absolutely thrilled about, since until recently I’ve had close to nothing to back up my feeling, but since Mr. Color Categorization himself seems to be on my side, I haven’t got the slightest reason to worry.

Should you want to check out Kay and Regier’s claims, read:

• Regier, T., Kay, P. & Khetarpal, N. (2007), Color naming reflects optimal partitions of color space, PNAS 2007 104: 1436–1441 (PDF)
• Gilbert, A.L., Regier, T., Kay, P. & Ivry, R.B. (2006), Whorf hypethesis is supported in the right visual field but not the left, PNAS 2006 103: 489–494 (PDF)

HOW TO MAKE A LINGUISTIC THEORY*

*This manuscript was found in an empty xerox-paper box at Harvard
University. Within the history of linguistic science we believe it
dates from the early medieval period, but we do not really care much.

Assemble a judicious amount of grammar, preferably English
grammar since you’re aiming at readers of English. (If you feel
there might be a market for linguistic theories written in Cebuano,
by all means, give it your best shot.) Be sure to include passive
constructions, accusative-with-infinitive constructions, and
constructions with front-shifting. Leave everything else to future
research (don’t worry, you’ll never have to actually do it).

Set up two levels of linguistic representation; call them
Level 1 and Level 2, or even better, Level Alpha and Level Beta.
This is to divide your explicanda into two conceptual domains so
you can let one explain the other. Leave these levels and all
constructs supporting them undefined; these will be your
Theoretical Primes. Define everything else, however, not only as
rigorously as possible but using as many symbols from the predicate
calculus as you can understand.

Be sure to leave undefined the notion “mu.” Now make “mu” a
unit at both undefined levels. For each “mu” use ordinary English
spelling, but in upper case letters on one level, and in lower case
letters on the other. Use abbreviations with upper case; for
example ERG, PRO, +ITAL for “ergative,” “pronominal,” “borrowed
from Italian.”

From this point on you need a graphics expert. Draw guitar
strings (don’t call them that, of course) from units on one level
to units on the other level. Count and classify the various
arrangements of strings you need for the amount of grammar you
began with; then pronounce all other logically possible
arrangements of strings forbidden by Universal Constraints.
Give each constraint a handy name, such as “The Adjustable Bridge
Constraint,” “The Open-String Pull-Off Constraint.” Always
capitalize and use “the” with constraints.

At this point it will be proper, though not absolutely
necessary, to bung in a bit of data from other languages. Since
ultimately theories like yours can be constructed only by trained
linguists who speak natively the languages they are examining,
frankly, the Second Coming will be upon us well before you’ll
really have to think seriously about other languages. Besides, you
have this neat argument:

Premiss 1: If my theory won’t account for English,
then it won’t account for all languages.

Premiss 2: My theory won’t account for English.

Conclusion: Bingo.

With regard to marketing your theory, this is a cinch because
of the way the academic world works. Your theory won’t work, even
for English, right? That’s a foregone conclusion. But for twenty
or thirty years, other people will make such a good living patching
it up that they’ll praise you as a genius even while they’re
bashing the daylights out of you, since without you, where would
they be?

Make occasional references to Kuhn.

– Metalleus

Source: http://www.umich.edu/~archive/linguistics/texts/papers/metalleus