User:Aericanwizard~enwikiversity

Aericanwizard is the most frequently used alias of Garrett Nicolai, a student currently studying Linguistics at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Upon completion, he hopes to work on his PhD in Computer Science, using what he knows about linguistics in the field of Natural Language processing.

This semester, he will be contributing a chapter to a textbook on Psycholinguistics. This chapter will concern articulatory phonetics, the study of the production of speech sounds by the human vocal apparatus, and he can assure you, kind reader, that the chapter will be a must-read. Keep checking either this page or the Psycholinguistics page for updates on the status of the chapter.

Aericanwizard also exists on Wikipedia, although his editing has largely been reduced to proofreading and grammar correction.

Week ending January 16, 2011
Although I don't believe that thought and language are inextricably tied together, I have to wonder how those with limited language experience thought. In particular, I'm thinking of people who were born deaf. When I am thinking, I hear an inner voice speaking to me, my thinking occurs as an interior monologue. I can't help but wonder how thoughts are expressed by those who have never heard speech. It wouldn't surprise me if they experience thought in the same way; although I think of my thoughts as being an interior monologue, there is no stimulation of the auditory nerve, and I don't actually hear a voice. The voice is merely the way I perceive my thoughts. It is entirely possible that deaf people process thought in the exact same way that I do, albeit they perceive it in a completely different manner, whether it be as sign language, writing, or some other form that I haven't really thought about. The answer to my question may be a simple one, but for me, thought is expressed linguistically, and I have trouble imagining how it could be expressed in any other way. Aericanwizard 00:30, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Week ending January 23, 2011
This Friday, in our lecture on Speech perception, we briefly talked about Phonotactic constraints, that is, the rules of a language that prevent certain combinations of phonemes in certain positions of syllables. It led me to thinking about the issue of speech segmentation and speech acquisition. Spoken speech can be very hard to segment for a new learner of a language, and in my experience, I've used phonetic cues to be able to separate streams of speech. I imagine that children who are learning their first languages similarly make use of phonotactics to segment the speech that they hear into words. That then makes me think of bilingual children. I wonder, if when they are learning two languages that have severely different phonotactic constrains, if they have more difficulty separating words in either language. I realize that children are more adept at learning language, and seem to be able to differentiate between multiple languages, but when they are learning two languages, it would seem that they would be less likely able to separate words if the end of one word and the start of another form a legal phonetic combination in the other language. Aericanwizard 02:38, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Week ending January 30, 2011
As a computer scientist, the problem of speech perception and production is of particular interest to me. Although both areas have progressed, synthesized speech still sounds very unnatural, and speech recognition requires an amazing amount of tuning to a particular individual, and still achieves lower than desired accuracy. This week, we also discussed how phoneme recognition plays a rather large role in the development of reading skills, which came as quite a surprise to me, although now that I've thought about it, it seems only natural (even now, when I encounter new words, I "sound them out" as I'm reading). I wonder if phoneme recognition also plays a role in other "passively acoustic" activities (by passively acoustic, I mean tasks that don't actually involve hearing speech sounds, but in some way rely on them, such as memory or mathematical tasks). Math is similar to literature, albeit "words" tend to be shorter, and less dependent upon smaller phonemes. However, memory is often reliant on the spoken word, and if phoneme recognition is faulty, it may be possible that memory could become skewed. I'm not entirely sure how memory is processed, but it would be interesting to see if faulty phonemes are preserved as such when they are transferred to memory. I know that my memory is not perfectly faithful when it comes to speech, generally maintaining semantic information instead of phonological, and that it seems to be better for read information than heard information. I have to wonder at the re-encoding that is going on when information passes into memory. Although the semantic information is stored, and I very rarely can recite exactly from memory, I know that when I memorize something on purpose, phonological cues are very important. Songs and rhymes are very useful in memory, and often, memories are brought to mind by hearing a particular word or phrase. Aericanwizard 04:00, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Week ending February 6, 2011
This week was cut short by the snowstorm and Munro day, but we did get a chance to touch upon Morphology, and my mind got to thinking about the issue of overgeneralization. I have younger siblings, and my mother runs a daycare, so I've been around young language learners my entire life, and have experienced this phenomenon numerous times. Interestingly enough, I find the same thing happening in my current approach to German. I currently find myself making mistakes in conjugation and noun derivation that I never would have made two years ago. Strangely enough, my conjugation generalizations are towards irregular verbs; I tend to conjugate irregular verbs properly, but over-extend the irregular rules onto regular verbs. Other than that, my language learning is progressing much like a first language, although I had linguistic knowledge "going in", something that first language learners are lacking. I'm also learning Mandarin, which has no particular morphology, and thus would have no real chance for overgeneralization on morphological bases. It makes me wonder what kind of speech errors are common for young learners of languages like Mandarin. I make mistakes in the language largely due to my Germanic language background, but for infants going in with Tabula Rasa, I have to wonder if there are less learning mistakes, or if the mistakes are centred on a different area of the language such as phonology (Mandarin is a tonal language), or semantics (Mandarin has many homophones that are only distinguishable by context). I would imagine learning errors would be more of the latter and less of the former, but I have no real basis other than my own experience as reference. Aericanwizard 05:06, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Week ending February 13, 2011
First, I have to say that I love the idea of Zipfian distribution. The idea that a natural system such as language could evolve to follow such a precise distribution definitely appeals to me. I also like the idea of a a generative grammar, although I find the idea of traces to be kind of a clumsy workaround for alternate phrase structure such as passives and questions (they do work, and show the relationship that the trace originally had in the sentence, but I still find them awkward). As I was thinking about the generative grammars, I got to thinking about how the brain would go about constructing one on the fly. Things like garden-path sentences show that the brain can shift the grammar as necessary (albeit with a timing delay). Although sample sentences for generative grammars tend to be fairly co-operative when it comes to related items coming together in the sentence, this is not always the case (relative clauses and other linguistic gimmickry can separate parts of phrases). Furthermore, in languages like German, dependent clauses always push the verb, which is usually early in the sentence, to the end, causing a reader to not be able to parse phrases until the very end of a sentence, and then all at once. I imagine that working memory is able to put place-holders for various items that the brain knows will be coming later, but what about speakers with affected memory? Do they have more difficulty understanding complex sentence forms? Do they tend to use them less, relying on shorter, less oblique manners of speech and writing? And, tying back to the beginning of this post, if Zipfian distribution can be attributed to the principle of least effort, how can we describe the persistence of such structurally complex devices as relative and dependent clauses, if minimal effort is rewarded evolutionarily? Aericanwizard 03:57, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Week ending February 27, 2011
This week, we explore music and mathematics, and their relationship to language. I almost see the three as existing along a continuum, along one side of the continuum is music, which I see as being a free form of expression, with a very broad capability for interpretation (although even here there are rules in its composition). On the other end, we have mathematics, which is very rule-governed, with little leeway in how the representation can be interpreted. Somewhere in the middle is language, which slides along the continuum, with different languages being more or less dependent upon rules, yet still open to wide interpretation. Interestingly enough, music can still be translated into a mathematical formula, and analysed using natural language. Furthermore, music and mathematics seem more contrived than natural language: we know that language can be acquired passively, but although one may have an "ear for music" or an "aptitude for math", their manipulation and production must be taught explicitly. That said, the teaching of the three does not separate nicely: children learn to count before they learn to read, and some of the most beautiful language seems to have a musical quality to it (such as poetry, or wonderfully flowing prose, not to mention the relation between music and prosody). I have to wonder if exposure to mathematics and music affect production and understanding of language. I can't help but think that someone with a "critical ear" for music would be more adept at learning foreign languages, simply due to an ability to distinguish new sounds. Likewise, the problem solving skills required in mathematics would aid in the decoding of both foreign and abstract language. I understand that there are conditions that affect one area of the continuum, but not others, which calls my theory into question, but there are also conditions that affect speech, but not comprehension. I'm one those people that has trouble believing in the "Language Acquisition Device"; I believe that language, like all critical thinking, makes use of a coordinated brain, and as such, there must be some overlap between all areas of thought, mathematics and music included. Aericanwizard 02:32, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Week ending March 6, 2011
Before marking on anything else, I had an interesting linguistic moment this week. I was listening to music on Youtube, and finding the same songs in several different languages. Interestingly enough, when I would switch to a new language (and one that I can understand fairly well), my mind was unable to comprehend the data for a short period of time as the song started. I could hear the music, and hear the words, but they were a "garbled mess". I may just have been tired, but it seemed that my brain needed some time to adjust to the new language; I was kind of shocked (in a good way). Now from garbled perception to mistakes in production. Starting last week, we started getting into speech production, and used the idea of speech errors as a source of investigation into the ordering of phonology, syntax, and semantics. Personally, I don't know what to think; I've been guilty of phonetic, semantic, and syntactic errors, but I rarely think about whether there was anything particularly in common with any of the similar cases. My tongue will lock up on certain words, but I know the meaning of what I want to say, but can't access the word. As for the experiments that we looked at investigating gender (syntax) and meaning, I'm not sure that they can be separated. The gender of a word is tagged to the meaning in languages that have grammatical gender. In German, the word for shoe is not "Schuh", but rather "der Schuh", complete with grammatical gender attached. In a case like this, semantics and syntax almost become one entity (German is also a heavily inflected language, so case will be tied to a noun's role, and thus meaning in a sentence). I don't think it's as simple as saying one comes before the other, or one activates the other; I would need to see more proof. I'll end this week's post on an inquisitive note: we saw numbers suggesting that English is perhaps a friendlier language for psychoanalysis (our slips of the tongue seem to translate into an inordinately high amount of real words), but could it just be because we have a large number of rhyming mono-syllabic words? I don't know the numbers, but English does like to make use of its few inflecting affixes. All of our verbs end the same (within reason), all of our plurals end the same, and our pronouns rhyme. It is no surprise that switching onsets gives existing words. If every single person attempted to parlay in multisyllabic utterances, the likelihood of embarrassing malaprops would decrease sharply. Aericanwizard 11:29, 7 March 2011 (UTC)

Week ending March 13, 2011
Happy Pi Day!! Last week, when we were discussing writing, I got to thinking about spelling errors. There are certain words that, a high majority of the time, I spell incorrectly. However, once I put them on the page, I look at them, and am able to see that I've made a mistake in their transcription. My knowledge of the word contains the correct spelling, but for whatever reason, I often end up being unaware of an incorrect spelling until I actually see the word. To me, this seems to provide fairly strong evidence of a disconnect between reading and writing, and that words are potentially stored twice, once for production, and once for recognition (although this seems highly inefficient, and goes against every intuition). It could just be that I have tied the incorrect spelling (that I probably learned initially) to some form of muscle memory; as soon as I go to write the word, this memory takes over, and needs to be corrected nearly every time by my correct knowledge. I can write the words correctly upon the first attempt, but I need to "picture" the shape of the word in my mind first. I have to wonder at the perseverance of memory and how often it gets in the way of performance. In most cases, assigning word production to motor memory would seem to be an evolutionary advantage, so that thoughts can be constructed on the fly (the words have been assigned to the hand or the tongue while other parts of the brain work at creating a viable conclusion to the phrase or paragraph. Even as I type this, I'm thinking four or five words ahead of where I'm typing.  However, it would seem that there can also be a potential downside (typists can "trip over their fingers" when they're working).  I also have to wonder at cases of speech and writing disfluency, if an impaired ability to assign words into a "motor queue" is somewhat responsible. Aericanwizard 01:53, 14 March 2011 (UTC)

Week ending March 20, 2011
Bilingualism is a topic of personal interest to me; I was enrolled in a French Immersion program at the age of five, and my love of language has only grown since. Through personal experience, I tend to disagree with the idea that a critical period exists, after which it is impossible to learn a new language, albeit I do believe in a modified version of the hypothesis. After witnessing countless friends and acquaintances struggle through high-school French classes, I had accepted that perhaps early exposure was key to learning language. However, having taken foreign languages in University, I have seen both success and failure that seems to be unrelated to age (but often seems related to the amount of effort put in by the students, something that distinguishes it from early linguistic learning, which requires less conscious effort). Using my own experiences as a guide, I am now inclined to believe that "bilingualism" is like a switch in the brain that is much easier to be activated at a young age. If the speaker activates the switch, he or she may be more adapted to learning languages at a later age (although some people seem to just have a skill for language), although the speaker must still put in the effort to achieve proficiency. It's possible that habit and incentive play a large role in language acquisition. Children strive to imitate adults to the best of their ability, yet many adults are not motivated enough to learn a language at a native level; once they are understood, they are happy with their level of progress, and in a busy schedule, find little incentive to devote the necessary effort to improving their language for what would amount to a minimal gain (the Principle of Least Effort applies here). It would be interesting to see examples of native speakers of lesser-spoken languages immersed in cultures that are dominant in another language. The problem with studying English, Mandarin, Spanish, or other major languages is that no matter where the speaker is (especially if a lab for language research exists), there is some probability that their native language is spoken, and they can make themselves understood. If the only manner of understanding would be through a (for the speaker) second language, I imagine that their proficiency would eventually reach a very high level. Studies have shown that the brain is more able to pick up language at a young age, but other studies have shown the massive adaptability of the brain following various trauma. Should the brain need to fully acquire a new language, I have no doubts at its ability to do so. On a final, unrelated note, I wonder about so-called "Foreign Accent Syndrome," where a speaker acquires a foreign accent in their native tongue after a brain trauma. It's possible that this is just a disruption of normal speech production that sounds foreign to native ears, but I have to wonder if the part of the brain that unconsciously works towards "sounding like a native" when learning a new language is related to the area of the brain that is damaged in such a syndrome. Aericanwizard 02:03, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Week ending March 27, 2011
Well, the semester is starting to run down, and we get into the debates. Not surprisingly I guess, I find myself arguing a concept that considers linguistic diversity. I am interested in the role that language plays on cognition, and if the Wharfian hypothesis even holds. Although I am arguing against the idea of linguistic relativity, I personally believe that our thoughts are shaped by the language that we speak. I'm hoping that by researching the contrary, I will be more inspired to find data that conclusively (or at least convincingly) demonstrates that my intuition is false. I will likely be more skeptical of weak counter-arguments than I would be of weak supporting arguments. At least in theory. I mentioned in my very first post that I felt that language and cognition are inextricably tied, and I find it hard to believe that our thoughts aren't at least partly shaped by the language that we speak. Part of my love of language is involved in the exposure to new cultures and new ways of thinking that I hadn't yet considered. I've been lucky to have the opportunity to study several cultures, and I'm sure that my views of the world are highly influenced by my exposure to other traditions. That said, I have no real basis to compare it against, and as such, I can't scientifically show that my way of thinking is different than it would be had I grown up under different circumstances, or under a different language. Experience (and moreover, shared experience) may be the main guide of cognitive processes, regardless of language. Humanity has a set of morals and concepts that appear universal, and others that vary from culture to culture, even with a shared linguistic heritage. The English don't quite look at the world the same way as Canadians, Americans, or Australians, despite sharing a mutually understandable (for the most part) language. I'm looking forward to the debates and hope that even if I don't change my opinion regarding the Language-Cognition debate, at least that I can learn to appreciate the opposite side (the one for which I am arguing), as well as find some scientific basis for my opinions, rather than "I just feel it should be this way".

Week ending April 3, 2011
Getting into the final week of classes, it's time to comment on the debates that we've had thus far. I personally like the format as an alternative to a term paper. Research is still required, but the method of presentation is altered. Furthermore, we get to see the topics covered by other groups, rather than just our own. Generally, I appreciated the debates of the previous week, and although time limited how much I could learn about any particular topic, I received enough information regarding Ebonics, Dyslexic treatment and schooling of students with cochlear implants that I can begin further research, should I wish to. I think I was most interested in the discussion of Ebonics, and the teaching of Ebonics in classrooms. The question of minority schooling is a tricky topic; both sides make compelling arguments, and although I can appreciate the argument that a certain language (in this case, English) is more useful in the wider world, at the same time, I lament the decline of minority languages around the world. unfortunately, it is this type of thinking, which, although practical, is leading to the extinction of lesser-spoken tongues, and with them, the death of their respective cultures. As English becomes a Lingua Franca of the educated world, it becomes less and less practical for children to learn their native tongues, or to promote them beyond their own generation. As a personal example, my Great-grandfather moved to Canada from the Ukraine in the early 20th century, and spoke multiple languages. He taught his children Ukrainian at home, and they, including my grandfather, spoke Ukrainian fluently. However, my grandfather refused to use Ukrainian outside his home, and I did not find out that he was even bilingual until after his death. The stigma attached to being a cultural minority led to a loss of linguistic diversity as English was more "practical". Similarly, my other grandfather spoke fluent Fries and Dutch, neither of which I ever heard him speak. Unfortunately, as governments around the world proclaim, as Germany's Chancellor Merkel has, that "Multi-culturalism has failed", I'm afraid that more and more mother tongues will be lost. At this rate, I'm not surprised that in "Star Trek", all members of Star-fleet speak the same language. Aericanwizard 04:08, 4 April 2011 (UTC)

Week ending April 10, 2011
It always surprises me how quickly the winter semester goes by; the fall semester always crawls into Christmas, while the winter semester seems to be done almost before it begins. I have to say that I had a really positive experience with the end-of-semester debate. I have had some poor experiences in the past re: group work, but this debate went by without a hitch. All of the members of my group put forward maximum effort to ensure that we could co-ordinate several busy schedules to produce a wonderful final product. I was quite pleasantly surprised. I mentioned a few weeks ago that I was arguing against my intuition concerning Linguistic relativity, and while my research has not fully convinced me to change my view, I was surprised to learn that although many people feel the way I do, scientific support is very hard to come by. I have quickly become very skeptical of any "support" for linguistic relativity; although I would still like to believe the hypothesis, I am perfectly willing to believe that it may be false. Regarding the class in general, I really liked the format of the class, and was somewhat surprised at how well it flowed. I generally like classes with a lot of feedback, i.e. assignments, to ensure that I am understanding the material, but I think that the wikiversity chapter/debate was a wonderful way of ensuring that we really understood a few aspects of the course material (and often areas that we ourselves were already interested in), as well as being able to be presented with some of the current research through the debates and chapters, even as we learned the necessary background information. All in all, I had a very pleasant semester, and this class definitely played a part in that. Have a wonderful summer! Signing off one last time, Aericanwizard 03:00, 11 April 2011 (UTC)