"Talking Hands"

A) In the first chapter of “Talking Hands,” we see how a team of four linguistics, two from the United States and two from Israel, embark on a journey to a remarkable place, which is an isolated Middle Eastern village. In this place, there many residents who “speak” sign language. Sign language is a language unlike any other in the world, witnessed by few outsiders and never before described. These four linguistics have been working in the village, documenting this astonishing language and, little by little, understanding it. What is being described in this document is based on the observations of the team and on the interviews with the members of this research team. One of the members of the team, explains that in order to gather this information, she first had to gain the villagers trust. She even had to change their names and locations in order to secure the villagers privacy.
B) After learning so much in class discussions and in my classmates oral presentations, I have learned many new things about dying languages. I believe this topic is very important in linguistics, but most importantly, I believe this issue connects to “Talking Hands.” The reason why is because thanks to the research of these linguistics, we now have research of the very important information of sign language. With this research and documentaries, we can keep close statistics to the many languages that die, day by day, month by month and year by year and also see how the language prospers and evolves from people to people.
C) The main question I have about this reading, would be if their has been any drastic change in the research, since the investigation?
D) Personally, I really enjoyed reading this document. The reason why is because as I mentioned above, we now have research of a certain language, that we can go into depth about and learn a lot of unique information about sign language and their “speakers.”

7- UP BINGO

1) 93= SLIDE # 73 = 93 in English means "nine groups of ten, three."
2) Anthropologists= SLIDE # 49 = Anthropologists use language as a source of information in their study of "culture."
3) Marking Individuals= SLIDE # 75= Marking individuals are defined as members of a group defined by social connection.
4) Whistle their Language = SLIDE # 56 = In Brazil, the Piraha, whistle their language and have such little sense of the past.
5) Many expressions for "coconut" =SLIDE # 64= In Tuvaluan, central Pacific, there are many expressions for the word coconut.
6) Mrs.= SLIDE # 77= In language, there are social categories and address terms, such as Mrs.
7) Differ culture by culture= SLIDE # 56= Concepts of time in language differ culture by culture

Listening to (and Saving) the World's languages

A) In the New York Times article, i saw that there were many different languages spoken in New York City. Aside, from this, i also read in the article that there are many languages that are disappearing. These disappearing languages are otherwised known as "dying languages." Also, from the reading, i saw that Professor Kaufman found out that "New York City is home to as many as 800 languages."
B) From the article, i learned many new things about language in New York City. For example one thing i found interesting was the fact that without knowning, "we're sitting in an endangerment hot spot where we are surrounded by languages that are not going to be around in about 20 or 30 years." I also learned from the article that in New Jersey, the Neo-Aramaic language(rooted in the language of Jesus and the Talmud) is still spoken and taught today.
C) One question i have after reading this article is whether or not the English language will ever become extinct? or will it continue "alive" from generation to generation?

Me Talk Pretty One Day

After reading "Me Talk Pretty One Day," I have seen that this story, is a humorous story of a non English speaker's daily misuse of words. In the reading, I found many grammatical errors in his sentences, but one that really grabbed my attention was a sentence said by one of his classmates, which was "Sometimes 'me' cry alone at night." As you can see, the sentence is grammatically wrong because of the misuse of a pronoun. Instead of using "I," in the first person's point of view, the student used the word "me," to refer to himself. Therefore, I believe the correct sentence should have been "Sometimes 'I' cry alone at night."

Also, after reading this story, I was able to make a connection to a personal experience, in where I remember hearing my mother, trying to learn English. As I mentioned in my "Relationship to Language" story, my mother had a really hard time learning English. But now, thanks to the reading and the many new things I have learned about language, I realized she had a really hard time learning it, because as well as Sedaris' classmate, my mother had the same problem of misusing pronouns. Instead of 'I' she would use 'me' and instead of 'me' she would use 'I'. Everything was just very confusing for both of us, because everything seemed very similar to her and she just talked the language with whatever word she could remember first, to explain that she was addressing herself. Therefore, after seeing that, I would always try to explain to her, that she wasn't using the correct part of speech, and this just seemed to confused her even more.

Yule's Chapter 9 "Syntax"

In Chapter 9, Yule teaches us about Syntax. Syntax is a word that originally comes from Greek and it means putting together or arranging the elements in a linear structure of a sentence. It is the analysis of the structure of phrases and sentences. Therefore, Chapter 9 is basically about the rules we use to form a sentence.

In Syntax, there are many different forms or structures that help make a sentence. For example in this chapter, I learned about the Deep and surface structure. I also learned about generative grammar and its “all and only” criterion, which means that the grammar we use must generate all the grammatical sentences and only the grammatical sentences, nothing else. I also learned in the chapter that deep structure is when we use phrase structure rules, while surface structure is otherwise known as a transformational grammar. It is the structure of individual sentences, after the applications of transformational rules.

In chapter 9, I also learned about the symbols used in syntactic description. For example, I learned that there are symbols such as ‘S’ for sentence, ‘NP’ for noun phrases, ‘N’ for noun, ‘Art’ for article and so on. On the other hand there are also many different symbols that are used, such as brackets and parenthesis. When parenthesis are used, it means that whatever occurs inside of them will be treated as an optional constituent, while brackets represent the only elements that must be selected.

Lastly in this chapter, I learned that syntax has many different rules, such as Lexical and transformational rules, which have to do with phrase structure rules. I also learned about tree diagrams and how it’s a diagram that is divided into many different branches, that show the “hierarchical organization” of sentence structures.

Where Words Come From

In this chapter, “Where Words Come From,” Bryson is basically explaining some of the terms we read in Yule’s book. He is explaining to us, how words in the English language are formed and where they all come from. As I read along in the chapter, I saw that he believes that many words are “borrowed from another language, and created by mistake” (71). Therefore, he decided to explain himself in this chapter, by dividing his theory into five ways in which he believes words were created.

In the first one he says “words are created by error”(71). He states that many words, such as sweetheart, pea and cherry, owe their existence to mishearing, false analogy or backformation. In the next way, he believes “words are adopted”(73). He believe this because he says we take words from almost everywhere in the world. For example, ketchup is adopted from China, potato is adopted from Haiti and sofa from Arabia. The third way, is when, “words are created”(75). He states in this section, that for a century and a half, English “flowed” with many new words. Between 10,000 and 12,000 words were coined, of which about half still exist today. But he also explains, that he believes many words are also made up by writers. In the fourth way, “words change by doing nothing”(77). He believes this means, that words stay the same, but often the meaning changes. Frequently, the meaning of a word becomes its opposite or something very similar to it. Lastly, he believes words are finished off by, “adding or subtracting something”(80). In this section, he explains certain terms we read in Yule’s book and went through in class. For example, he states that English has more than a hundred common prefixes and suffixes, such as able, ness, ment, pre and many more, that help form and reform many words with great ability.

Overall, I really found this chapter very interesting. The reason why is because I never really took the time to think about all of the ways words could be created and where they really came from. But now, after reading this chapter, I am aware that words come from all over the world and are created in many different ways; which are often “borrowed” by other languages.

Reading Log for Chapter 6, 7 & 8

After reading chapters 6, 7 & 8 in Yule's book, I have learned many new things about language. For example, I learned that the study of the origin and history of a word, is known as Etymology. Also, in chapter 6, I learned about words and word formation processes. I have learned that the least common processes of words formation in English is Coinage. The term Coinage means the invention of completely new terms and Borrowing means taking over words from another language. I have also learned in this chapter, the differences between compounding and blending. Compounding is the joining of two separate words to produce a single form. On the other hand, the term Blending is the combination of two separate forms to produce a single new term. Along with these processes, I have also learned about many others such as clipping, backformation, conversion, acronyms, derivations and many other ones.

In chapter 7, I learned about Morphology. The term Morphology is better known by scientists as "the study of forms." In chapter 7, Yule teaches the basic elements in a language, which are known as Morphemes. In this chapter he talks about the types of morphemes used in English, which are "Free and Bound Morphemes." The "Free Morphemes" are separated into two different sections, which are the Lexical Morphemes and the Functional Morphemes. On the other hand, the "Bound Morphemes" are broken down into Derivational Morphemes and Inflectional Morphemes.

Lastly, in chapter 8, I learned about Grammar phrases and sentences. I have learned that Grammar is basically, the correct use of language. In this chapter, Yule’s talks about grammar and it's many parts of speech, such as nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, pronouns and many other. He explains little by little the meaning of each of the parts of speech and he uses examples to get his point across. He also talks about different approaches, that we have somewhat spoken about in class, which are the prescriptive and descriptive approach. The Prescriptive Approach to grammar is a grammar that tries to legislate what our grammar should be, while the Descriptive Approach to grammar represents the unconscious linguistic knowledge or capacity of it's speaker, meaning us.

Pronouncing Names, Places and Things

a) [l] = voiced, alveolar, liquid
[i] = high front
[s] = voiceless, alveolar, fricative
[e] = mid front
[t] = voiceless, alveolar, stop

b) Widely, I think my name is one of the easiest names to pronounce because the pronunciation consists of the same spellings. The only difficult part of my name is knowing whether the pronunciation is in Spanish [liset] or in French [lizet]. My name is originally pronounced in Spanish, but in school, I have been known as lizet. I believe it has been easier for them because Lissette is a very common name and the pronunciation in English is pronounced with a [z]. Therefore, I believe that lizet was their first guess in pronouncing my name.

c) There are a couple of things that I have trouble pronouncing, but at the time, they really don’t come to mind. I mostly have trouble pronouncing words when I hear a word for the first time ever, but other then that my pronunciation is fine.

Yule's Chapter 5

In Yule’s, chapter 5, we learn about the sound patterns of language. For example, one thing I learned about was phonology. Phonology is what describes the patterns of speech sounds in a language. It helps us differentiate the meaning in sounds that we say and hear.

Also, in Chapter 5, we learn about phonemes and how by substituting one phoneme for another changes pronunciation and meaning. But if we substitute one allophone for another changes only the pronunciation. In addition to this, Yule’s also teaches us about aspirated sounds. He says that an aspirated sound is the sound that is pronounced with a stronger puff of air.

Lastly but not least, we learn in chapter 5 about phonotactics and open and closed syllables. The phonotactics are the permitted arrangements of sounds which obey constraints on the sequence and ordering of phonemes in a language. On the other hand, an open syllable ends with a vowel, as nucleus, and a closed syllable ends with an consonant, as coda.

Another thing we learned about in chapter 5, that I am still having a bit of trouble differentiation, is minimal pairs and sets. A minimal pair is when two words are identical in form except for a contrast in one phoneme, occurring in the same positions, such as pat and bat. While a minimal set is when a group of words can’t be differentiated, each one from the others, by changing one phoneme, such as feat, fit, fat and fate.

Amy Tan "Yes or No"

In her story “Yes or No,” Amy Tan talks about her experience with English and how many things change when a person grows up bilingual. In her story, she talks about an occasion where she came across in a New York Times Magazine article. In the article, there were many things said about Chinese people and their language. For example, she read that “Chinese people are so discreet and modest, that there aren’t even words for yes or no” (26). They are very polite and indirect people and that is why when they come here to America, they are obligated to do everything they are told to do because they just can’t simply say no. I believe they do all of this out of courtesy.

Also, aside from this article, Tan also talks about her mothers experience to language. Tan’s story is very similar to my “Relationship to Language” story in many ways. The reason why is because in my story I talk about how hard it was for my mother to speak English when she first came to this country and even now, because her brain is just not capable of learning the language. As well as Tan’s mother, my mother has a very hard time distinguishing the difference between plural and singular words in English. She has a very hard time with her pronunciation and she just gets frustrated to the point where she just gives up. In any event, I believe this is the part I found most interesting in the story. The fact that both Tan and I could make a connection with our mothers.

Another part I found interesting in the story, was when Tan said that “English speakers point out that Chinese is extremely difficult because it relies on variations in tone barely discernible to the human ear” (31). The reason why I found this part so interesting was because I believe this is the same way my mother feels about learning the English language. She believes it’s just extremely too hard for her to learn the different variations of tone, sound and articulations.

My Relationship to Language

To me, language is the ability to use speech the way we were taught by our ancestors and family members. I believe it varies upon our race and it has a lot to do with the place where we were born. I also believe it is a way to express ourselves and show our emotions. It's a tool that builds up who we are. I for one was taught to speak Spanish by my mother and learned English in school; and that is why I believe education also has a major influence in learning the use of language.
As a child, I remember learning English very quickly. I went to daycare and preschool and by kindergarten, I was already talking English non-stop. While I was learning, I would always speak English and Spanish all mixed up together. For example, I would say “mommy quiero milk” or “mommy give me agua.” I remember finding this really “cool,” because I was speaking two languages. But as time passed, I learned how to not combine both languages and focus only on one. Little by little I learned how to make complete sentences in English and complete sentences in Spanish without combining the two. I believe that for me it was easier to learn a different language because as a child I was able to adapt to anything new. As we all know, little children always try to pick up something, such as a word or a habit, no matter what it is. And I believe that is what happened to me as a child. I was so excited about learning English, because everyone in school would speak it and I really wanted to learn the language, in order to fit in and communicate with my peers.
On the other hand, I believe learning a new language is really hard as an adult. From my family’s experience, I think as we grow older our ability to learn a new language decreases. For example, I remember a couple of years ago trying to teach my mom to speak English. Every time she came from work I would have a notebook ready for her with some work to do. As much as she tried, she never could pronounce the word and this made her more and more frustrated, to the point in where she would just give up. I would always try teaching her English by making the activities fun, such as using games and flash cards, but she just couldn’t do it. She would always tell me her brain was just not capable of adapting to the new language. We didn’t know how she was able to understand the language but not speak or write it.
In any case, my two experiences have left me with many unsolved questions. For example, why is it easier for children to learn a language, rather than an adult? Also, where does language really come from? How can we adapt to a language as an adult? How do children ACQUIRE a language, while we as adults LEARN a language? And in my mother’s case, why is it that some people have an easier time understanding a language, rather than speaking or writing it? My hypothesis is that children automatically adapt to the language. They copy everything they hear and I have proven my hypothesis correct with my niece. She is four years-old and at times, I have really observed her and the way she talks. Every time she hears a new word, she asks what it means, and then starts running around the house saying the word over and over, until she learns it for good. I believe that similar to me she is excited about learning something new as a child.
In conclusion, I believe I haven’t had many personal experiences on my own with language, but I can relate to the many experiences my family members have had acquiring a new language. My first experience was combining both English and Spanish and my second experience was when I was teaching my mom English. I didn’t have a hard time learning it as a child, but I personally saw how difficult it was for my mom to learn.