- “Teaching English intonation and stress patterns” by Ted Power – http://www.btinternet.com/~ted.power/esl0108.html
- Are you a Yankee or a Rebel? – http://www.alphadictionary.com/articles/yankeetest.html – an online quiz diagnosing the variant of US English you are using.
2010.11.24
Accent, intonation and identity
2010.11.12
Bilingualism, Multilingualism
- “Hearing Bilingual: How Babies Sort Out Language” by PERRI KLASS, M.D. (New York Times; 2011.10.10) – http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/11/health/views/11klass.html
- “The Bilingual Advantage” by Claudia Dreifus (The New York Times; 2011.05.30) – http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/31/science/31conversation.html
- “Bilingualism Good for the Brain” by Jessica Marshall (Discovery News; 2010.10.14) – http://news.discovery.com/human/bilingualism-language-brain-function.html – The longer a person has spoken two or more languages, the greater the cognitive effects.
- “Being Bilingual May Boost Your Brain Power” by Gretchen Cuda-Kroen (NPR; 2011.04.40) – http://www.npr.org/2011/04/04/135043787/being-bilingual-may-boost-your-brain-power
- “Why Mother-Tongue Instruction Improves Achievement” (Multilingual Philippines blog; 2010.11.01) – http://mlephil.wordpress.com/2010/11/01/why-mother-tongue-instruction-improves-achievement/
- Benefits of bilingualism (Accent Mod Blog – http://accentmodblog.wordpress.com/; 2010.10.21) – http://accentmodblog.wordpress.com/2010/10/21/benefits-of-bilingualism/
- “Mum and dad made me multi-task better” by Neil Bowdler (BBC News; 2010.10.15) – http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11534481
- “Use of Spoken and Written Japanese Did Not Protect Japanese-American Men From Cognitive Decline in Late Life” by Callier Library (COMD News; 2010.10.14) – http://callierlibrary.wordpress.com/2010/10/14/use-of-spoken-and-written-japanese-did-not-protect-japanese-american-men-from-cognitive-decline-in-late-life/
- From the Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences
- Results. Rates of cognitive decline were not related to use of spoken or written Japanese. This finding was consistent across numerous sensitivity analyses.
- Second Language Learners Recall Native Language When Reading, Brain Research Suggests (ScienceDaily; 2010.06.03) – http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100601171848.htm
- Resources for Bilingual Parents – http://advanceddenglish.wordpress.com/2010/11/04/resources-for-bilingual-parents/.
- Multilingual Mania – http://multilingualmania.com/
- Top Ten Tips for Raising Bilingual Children (Multilingual Mania blog; 2010.07.08) – http://multilingualmania.com/top-ten-tips-for-raising-bilingual-children/
- The Omniglow (web site) has a 6-part series of articles on bilingualism by Christina Bosemark:
- 1 – Raising Bilingual Children: The First Five Steps to Success – http://www.omniglot.com/language/articles/bilingualkids1.htm
- 2 – Raising Bilingual Children: Fact or Fiction? – http://www.omniglot.com/language/articles/bilingualkids2.htm
- 3 – Raising Bilingual Children: The Snags – http://www.omniglot.com/language/articles/bilingualkids3.htm
- 4 – Raising Bilingual Children: The Different Methods to Success – http://www.omniglot.com/language/articles/bilingualkids4.htm
- 5 – Raising Bilingual Children: 10 Tips for Boosting the Minority Language – http://www.omniglot.com/language/articles/bilingualkids5.htm
- 6 – Raising Bilingual Children: Is It Too Late? – http://www.omniglot.com/language/articles/bilingualkids6.htm
- links to many more articles on raising bilingual kids – http://www.omniglot.com/links/bilingual.htm#kids
- Raising Bilingual Children: Common Parental Concerns and Current Research – http://www.cal.org/resources/digest/raisebilingchild.html
- Babies Raised In Bilingual Homes Learn New Words Differently Than Infants Learning One Language (ScienceDaily; 2007.09.30) – http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070928092050.htm
- How do I raise a bilingual child? – http://languagemusicandmore.wordpress.com/2010/10/05/how-do-i-raise-a-bilingual-child/
- “Research to find effects on brain of bilingualism” (BBC News; 2010.01.12) – http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/north_west/8452843.stm
- “Bilingual classes ‘raise results'” (BBC News; 2007.03.15) – http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/6447427.stm
- “A New Language Barrier: Why Learning A New Language May Make You Forget Your Old One” (ScienceDaily; 2007.01.18) – http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/01/070118094015.htm
Related here: Linguistics links – https://eikonal.wordpress.com/2010/08/07/linguistics-links/ | Learning languages / Language acquisition – https://eikonal.wordpress.com/2010/11/12/learning-languages-language-acquisition/ | Language acquisition – https://eikonal.wordpress.com/2010/11/12/learning-languages-language-acquisition/ | Body language – https://eikonal.wordpress.com/2010/10/19/it-journals/.
Learning Korean
- The “Life is a journey” blog has several postings on learning Korean – http://creativityjapanese.wordpress.com/
- Using Evernote to learn Korean – http://creativityjapanese.wordpress.com/2010/10/30/using-evernote-to-learn-korean/
- Learn Korean: http://learn-korean.net
More at this blog:
- Learning languages / Language acquisition – https://eikonal.wordpress.com/2010/11/12/learning-languages-language-acquisition/
- Learning Japanese – https://eikonal.wordpress.com/2010/11/12/learning-japanese/
Learning Japanese
- PeraPeraPenguin’s – http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/columns/0002/: This column is a conversation class for learners of the Japanese language. It is written by Hitomi Hirayama, a Japanese teacher with more than 15 years of experience, and the founder of Shibuya Ward-based Japanese Lunch, a Japanese language school serving businesspeople in Tokyo. Her column is carried once every eight weeks in Tuesday’s Language Connection of The Daily Yomiuri, and may be downloaded at no cost from this page after each installment appears in the newspaper. …
More at this blog:
- Learning languages / Language acquisition – https://eikonal.wordpress.com/2010/11/12/learning-languages-language-acquisition/
- Learning Korean – https://eikonal.wordpress.com/2010/11/12/learning-korean/
Learning languages / Language acquisition
At this blog:
- Learning Japanese – https://eikonal.wordpress.com/2010/11/12/learning-japanese/
- Learning Korean – https://eikonal.wordpress.com/2010/11/12/learning-korean/
General
- Papers on Learning and Modeling – http://hum.uchicago.edu/~jriggle/modeling
- Chater, N. and Christiansen, M. H. (2010), “Language Acquisition Meets Language Evolution” (Cognitive Science, Volume 34, Issue 7, pages 1131–1157. doi: 10.1111/j.1551-6709.2009.01049.x; 2009.06.22) [ACCESS REQUIRES PAYMENT/SUBSCRIPTION] – http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1551-6709.2009.01049.x/abstract
- Abstract: Recent research suggests that language evolution is a process of cultural change, in which linguistic structures are shaped through repeated cycles of learning and use by domain-general mechanisms. This paper draws out the implications of this viewpoint for understanding the problem of language acquisition, which is cast in a new, and much more tractable, form. In essence, the child faces a problem of induction, where the objective is to coordinate with others (C-induction), rather than to model the structure of the natural world (N-induction). We argue that, of the two, C-induction is dramatically easier. More broadly, we argue that understanding the acquisition of any cultural form, whether linguistic or otherwise, during development, requires considering the corresponding question of how that cultural form arose through processes of cultural evolution. This perspective helps resolve the “logical” problem of language acquisition and has far-reaching implications for evolutionary psychology.
- When can you say you speak a language? 9The Economist; 2010.11.05) – http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2010/11/learning_languages
- European language levels – Self Assessment Grid – http://europass.cedefop.europa.eu/LanguageSelfAssessmentGrid/en
- Children creating core properties of language (Experimental Expressions blog; 2010.11.04) – http://experimentalexpressions.wordpress.com/2010/11/04/30/
- “Reference material for learning Chinese” by Jerome Parisse (2010.10.23) – http://alivewithwords.com/2010/10/23/reference-material-for-learning-chinese/
- Reflections on articles on language acquisition – http://creativityjapanese.wordpress.com/2010/10/17/reflections-on-articles-on-language-acquisition/
- Using challenging concepts to learn promotes understanding of new materials (ScienceDaily; 2008.12.01) – http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081201105702.htm
- Techniques For Better Learning Illuminated (ScienceDaily; 2007.08.24) – http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070823142827.htm
- Monkey See, Monkey Do? Novel Study Sheds Light On Imitation Learning (ScienceDaily; 2007.03.20) – http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/03/070320095836.htm
- Learn a Language With Flashcards (WordMentis blog; ) – http://wordmentis.wordpress.com/2010/10/01/learn-a-language-with-flashcards/
- Spaced Repetition – http://wordmentis.wordpress.com/2010/10/01/spaced-repetition/
- Better Flashcards – http://wordmentis.wordpress.com/2010/10/01/better-flashcards/
- Baby Talk: How to boost your child’s language skills (The Blessing Tree blog; 2010.09.19) – http://blessingtree.wordpress.com/2010/09/19/baby-talk-how-to-maximise-your-childs-language-skills/
- Syzygy on Languages – Musings on Foreign Language Learning (blog) – http://syzygyonlanguages.wordpress.com/
- The Polyglot Project – http://www.docstoc.com/docs/60429490/The-Polyglot-Project
Chinese
- “Today’s Chinese Semiotics Lesson” by James Fallows (The Atlantic; 2011.05.31) – http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/05/todays-chinese-semiotics-lesson/239668/
Language acquisition in animals
- Vocal imitation as a form of cultural transmission: parallels between human language acquisition and vocal learning in birds (Experimental Expressions blog; 2010.10.28) – http://experimentalexpressions.wordpress.com/2010/10/28/11/
Related here: Linguistics links – https://eikonal.wordpress.com/2010/08/07/linguistics-links/ | Bilingualism – https://eikonal.wordpress.com/2010/11/12/bilingualism-multilingualism/.
2010.08.07
Linguistics links
Sites
- Language Log by Mark Liberman – http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/
- Old postings – http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/
- Babel’s Dawn blog by Edmund Blare Bolles – http://www.babelsdawn.com/ has many articles on intersection of language origins, animal intelligence, coevolution (memetics), etc.
- Popular Linguistics Magazine – http://popularlinguisticsonline.org/, online
- Language Hat blog – http://www.languagehat.com/
Language universals
- “Are languages shaped by culture or cognition? – Linguists debate whether languages share universal grammatical features.” by Philip Ball (Nature; 2011.04.13) http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110413/full/news.2011.231.html
- They found that neither of the universalist models matched the evidence. Not only did the co-dependencies that they discovered differ from those predicted by Greenberg’s word-order ‘universals’, but they were different for each family. In other words, the deep grammatical structure of every family is different from that of the others: each family has evolved its own rules, so there is no reason to suppose that they are governed by universal cognitive factors.
What’s more, even when a particular co-dependency of traits was shared by two families, the researchers could show that it came about in different ways for each, so it was possible that the commonality was coincidental. They conclude that the languages — at least in their word-order grammar — have been shaped in culture-specific ways rather than by universals.
- “Universal truths” (Nature [Volume 472; Page 136]; 2011.04.14) – http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v472/n7342/full/472136a.html – Rejection of broad commonality in structure of languages has implications for all sciences.
- “Evolved structure of language shows lineage-specific trends in word-order universals” by Michael Dunn, Simon J. Greenhill, Stephen C. Levinson, Russell D. Gray (Nature [Volume 473; Pages 79–82]; 2011.05.05) – http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v473/n7345/full/nature09923.html [FOR PAY ARTICLE]
Language myths
- book “Language Myths” by editors Laurie Bauer and Peter Trudgill – http://www.amazon.com/Language-Myths-Laurie-Bauer/dp/0140260234
- a short review of the book “Language Myths” – http://www.spanishphrases.autowealthmaker.net/review/language-myths
- Six Common Myths About Language – “There was no Golden Age” b y Richard Nordquist (About.com) – http://grammar.about.com/od/words/a/langmyths6.htm
- Myth #1: The Meanings of Words Should Not Be Allowed to Vary or Change
- Myth #2: Children Can’t Speak or Write Properly Any More
- Myth #3: America Is Ruining the English Language
- Myth #4: TV Makes People Sound the Same
- Myth #5: Some Languages Are Spoken More Quickly Than Others
- Myth #6: You Shouldn’t Say “It Is Me” Because “Me” Is Accusative
Related here: Language evolution and families – https://eikonal.wordpress.com/2010/12/16/language-families/ | Learning languages / Language acquisition – https://eikonal.wordpress.com/2010/11/12/learning-languages-language-acquisition/ | Bilingualism – https://eikonal.wordpress.com/2010/11/12/bilingualism-multilingualism/ | Language acquisition – https://eikonal.wordpress.com/2010/11/12/learning-languages-language-acquisition/ | Body language – https://eikonal.wordpress.com/2010/10/19/it-journals/.
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