Posted: January 22, 2014 | Author: dpod | Filed under: Research-and-comment, Teaching | Tags: animal language, english 2810, grammar, language, linguistics |
The textbook I am using in my grammar class, The Linguistic Structure of Modern English, suggests that humans are unique in that they are the only species known to show abstract language use in the wild (they do mention the example of chimpanzees that have been trained to use sign language).
Very recent research, however, provides a potential counter example: Dolphin names. It has long been known that dolphins communicate with each other verbally. And since the 1960s, researchers have believed that individual dolphins use a “signature whistle” to identify themselves that is recognised by others in their population. What is new, however, is the evidence that dolphins use the signature whistles of other dolphins to refer to them—that is to say, recognise a particular whistle sequence as being symbolic of a particular individual dolphin, distinct from themselves.
This use of arbitrary signals to refer to a specific object, if true, would invalidate the claims in Brinton Read the rest of this entry »
Posted: December 20, 2008 | Author: dpod | Filed under: Language and Linguistics, Teaching, Tutorials | Tags: answer keys, exercises, grammar, linguistics, morphology, students, study tips, syntax, Tutorials |
Here are possible answers to the exercises in
Grammar Essentials 2: Parts of speech. In some cases more than one right answer might be possible.
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Posted: September 18, 2008 | Author: dpod | Filed under: Language and Linguistics, Medieval Studies, Old English, Teaching, Tutorials | Tags: anglo-saxon studies, grammar, linguistics, medieval studies, morphology, old english, students, study tips, syntax, Teaching, Tutorials |
Old English and Modern English can be deceptively similar from a syntactic point of view. In particular, word order frequently is the same in the two languages (though Old English is actually probably closer in some aspects of its word order to other Low German languages such as Dutch). This means that it is often possible to translate simple declarative sentences from Old English by simply looking up the meaning of each word in a dictionary…
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Posted: September 18, 2008 | Author: dpod | Filed under: Language and Linguistics, Medieval Studies, Old English, Teaching, Tutorials | Tags: anglo-saxon studies, linguistics, old english, phonology, pronunciation, students, study tips, Teaching, Tutorials |
The sounds of Old English should not prove difficult, with a few exceptions, for speakers of Modern English. It can be hard at first to get used to some of the spelling conventions, such as the fact that all letters—including final
e—are pronounced; but on the whole Old English does not have many sounds that are not the same as in Modern English, and, in most cases, indicated by the same letters…
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Posted: March 5, 2007 | Author: dpod | Filed under: Language and Linguistics, Teaching, Tutorials | Tags: anglo-saxon studies, germanic languages, grimm's law, history of english, linguistics, medieval studies, students, study tips, Teaching, Tutorials, verner's law |
This tutorial looks at Grimm’s Law and Verner’s Law.
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Posted: January 4, 2007 | Author: dpod | Filed under: Language and Linguistics, Teaching, Tutorials | Tags: english language, exercises, grammar, linguistics, morphology, students, study tips, syntax, Tutorials |
Words are different from each other in meaning—
car and
unwelcome mean different things, after all.
But they can also differ from each other in more than meaning: they can also differ in the way they are used in sentences.
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Posted: January 4, 2007 | Author: dpod | Filed under: Language and Linguistics, Teaching, Tutorials | Tags: english language, exercises, grammar, linguistics, morphology, students, study tips, syntax, Tutorials |
For the most part, English uses word order to indicate the relationship among words in sentences. When I say “The boy bit the dog”, people listening to me know that it was the boy who did the biting because
The boy comes first in the sentence. Likewise, they know that it was the dog that was bitten because
the dog comes after
bit.
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Posted: January 3, 2007 | Author: dpod | Filed under: Language and Linguistics, Teaching, Tutorials | Tags: english language, exercises, grammar, linguistics, morphology, students, study tips, syntax, Teaching, Tutorials |
This tutorial is intended for high school, college, and University students who need a quick guide the essentials of English grammar. Its goal is to help you understand the core grammatical terminology used in textbooks and lectures in courses on foreign languages, the History of English, Old English, or other medieval and classical languages.
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Textbook companies are teaching classes; colleges charging full tuition. By @GabeKahn http://t.co/FKGsqmxaq0 via @slate
Dolphin Language
Posted: January 22, 2014 | Author: dpod | Filed under: Research-and-comment, Teaching | Tags: animal language, english 2810, grammar, language, linguistics | Leave a comment »The textbook I am using in my grammar class, The Linguistic Structure of Modern English, suggests that humans are unique in that they are the only species known to show abstract language use in the wild (they do mention the example of chimpanzees that have been trained to use sign language).
Very recent research, however, provides a potential counter example: Dolphin names. It has long been known that dolphins communicate with each other verbally. And since the 1960s, researchers have believed that individual dolphins use a “signature whistle” to identify themselves that is recognised by others in their population. What is new, however, is the evidence that dolphins use the signature whistles of other dolphins to refer to them—that is to say, recognise a particular whistle sequence as being symbolic of a particular individual dolphin, distinct from themselves.
This use of arbitrary signals to refer to a specific object, if true, would invalidate the claims in Brinton Read the rest of this entry »