je m'appelle l'amour.

Brains benefit from multilingualism.

"It was assumed earlier that differences in the brain would only occur if a person is bi- or trilingual, that is with a very high command of different languages. The recently published research suggests, however, that changes in the brain’s electrical activity may occur already in the beginnings of learning (acquiring) a new language."From this article on AlphaGalileo, redirected from Lingformant. Parenthetical correction added.

Another reason to study a foreign language, yo.



I've been really busy lately, I swear I'll post something this weekend.

Right now I'm working on a French Linguistics project. My topic is the optional liaisons and its frequency among native French speakers.

Oh, liaison, by the way, is the realization of the silent latent consonant when followed by a vowel-initial word. Example: Mon [mo~] + ami [ami] = mon ami [monami]. The underlined is the realized liaison. The liaisons are syntactically restrained, making them categorize into 1. Obligatory, 2. Optional, and 3. Prohibited liaisons. I'm studying #2 and how often certain people actually make these "optional" liaisons. Specifically, I am inspecting liaisons after the auxiliary verbs etre and avoir, as these are optional liaisons-- and I'm going to see if the numbers vary according to sex and age.

Yeah so basically, I'm going through a 200 page corpus to find examples of these liaisons and see if the speakers pronounce the latent consonants or not. The teacher marked all the examples for us, but it's stilllll a lot of work.

Oh, did I mention that I'm doing a supplementary project for special credit for this course. This one's about possible pragmatic causes/effects on the phonetic phenomenon of the liaison in French. Haven't even started that one yet.

As I get results, I'll post stuff about it on here too.


Kind of wishing I hadn't taken three French courses this semester, I'm starting to think that such a thing as "too much French" does exist.

You know you've had too much French when you type better on a French keyboard than on an English one.

Oh well, I guess it is my second major after all. At least I'm managing well.

I'm looking forward to Morphology, SLA, and (hopefully) Syntax next semester. Hopefully because hopefully, the freaking Linguistics department will change my class assignment from Sanskrit II to Syntax.

Where the hell did they get Sanskrit II. I haven't even taken Sanskrit I! wtf.

SOD:


Fuzzy yellow footies. Made in Japan. Keeping 'em warm as the weather gets colder.

Yeah, not SLA, but more like Eleventh Language Acquisition...

Wendy Vo, at eight years old, speaks 11 languages.

Holy shit.


I mean, I know it's easier to learn a foreign language before the age of 8. But geez. I wonder how her brain works.

In theUniversal Grammar that I mentioned in the previous entry, there are common rules among all languages, called principles (e.g. All languages have the concept of subjects). The application of such principles in each language is called the parameter (e.g. In Spanish, the subject of a sentence need not be present).

Maybe for Wendy, it's some crazy flipping of parameters.



As to the age thing.

Steven Pinker, in The Language Instinct (yep, still reading) writes in chapter 9 about a study conducted by psychologist Elissa Newport.

"[Newport and her colleagues] tested Korean and Chinese-born students and faculty at the University of Illinois who had spent at least ten years in the United States. The immigrants were given a list of 276 simple English sentences, half of them containing some grammatical error like The farmer bought two pig or The little boy is speak to a policeman. The immigrants who came to the United States between the ages of three and seven performed indentically to American-born students. Those who arrived between the ages of eight and fifteen did increasingly worse the later they arrived, and those who arrived between seventeen and thirty-nine did the worst of all, and showed huge variability unrelated to their age of arrival."

Clearly, there is a "Critical Period" for language acquisition.



A side note.

From personal knowledge, I think "semi"lingualism occurs in the first half of the "age eight to fifteen" group mentioned in the pargraph above. "Semilingualism" or "limited bilingualism" is when a bilingual is not proficient in neither of the languages (Is that double negation?).

Usually people are balanced bilinguals or dominant bilinguals. A balanced bilingual shows equal proficiency in both languages, and a dominant bilingual shows better proficiency in the language that is used more.

Some psychologists and linguists don't believe in "semilingualism," hence its quotational notation. Some don't like the negative nuance of "semilingualism," and prefer to call it limited bilingualism. I think there's also a debate as to if it is a language disorder?

I can't find much information on it yet, but I plan to discuss semilingualism further later on. I'm certain it exists.



I wonder how "proficient" Wendy is in her 11 languages? It'd be interesting to interview her as an adolescent.