scholarly journals How language learning and language use create linguistic structure

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenny Smith
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Structural Properties ◽  
Computational Methods ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Linguistic Community ◽  
Historical Time ◽  
Design Features ◽  
Linguistic Structure ◽  
Linguistic Data

Languages persist through a cycle of learning and use: you learn a language through immersion in the language used in your linguistic community, and in using language to communicate you produce further linguistic data which others might learn from in turn. We know that languages change over historical time as a result of errors and innovations in these processes of learning and use; this paper reviews experimental and computational methods which have been developed to test the hypotheses that those same processes of learning and use are responsible for creating the fundamental structural properties shared by all human languages, including some of the design features that make language such a powerful tool for communication.

scholarly journals Models of Language Evolution

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cathleen O'Grady ◽  
Kenny Smith
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Language Evolution ◽  
Experimental Models ◽  
Linguistic Structure ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Learning Biases ◽  
Evolutionary Linguistics ◽  
The Individual

Models of Language Evolution reviews the models that provide evidence for the role of cultural evolution in the emergence of linguistic structure. This chapter discusses the levels of linguistic structure, and why the emergence of structure in language is a central question for evolutionary linguistics. It reviews the computational and experimental models which demonstrate that pressures operating during language learning and language use can give rise to the appearance of design in language, through the repeated cycle of learning and use that characterise language transmission. Finally, it discusses how learning biases at the individual level lead to the presence of typological universals: systematic patterns in how the world’s languages tend to be structured.

You’ve got to crack a few eggs to make an omelette. Linguistic complexity and instruction in SLA

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rick De Graaff
Keyword(s):  
Second Language Acquisition ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Teaching Practice ◽  
Task Complexity ◽  
Language Performance ◽  
Linguistic Complexity ◽  
Language Pedagogy ◽  
Instructed Second Language Acquisition ◽  
The One

In this epilogue, I take a teaching practice and teacher education perspective on complexity in Instructed Second Language Acquisition. I take the stance that it is essential to understand if and how linguistic complexity relates to learning challenges, what the implications are for language pedagogy, and how this challenges the role of the teacher. Research shows that differences in task complexity may lead to differences in linguistic complexity in language learners’ speech or writing. Different tasks (e.g. descriptive vs narrative) and different modes (oral vs written) may lead to different types and levels of complexity in language use. On the one hand, this is a challenge for language assessment, as complexity in language performance may be affected by task characteristics. On the other hand, it is an opportunity for language teaching: using a diversity of tasks, modes and text types may evoke and stretch lexically and syntactically complex language use. I maintain that it is essential for teachers to understand that it is at least as important to aim for development in complexity as it is to aim for development in accuracy. Namely, that ‘errors’ in language learning are part of the deal: complex tasks lead to complex language use, including lexical and syntactical errors, but they are a necessary prerequisite for language development.

Computational Methods for Socio-Computer Interaction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wai-Tat Fu ◽  
Mingkun Gao ◽  
Hyo Jin Do
Keyword(s):  
Computational Methods ◽  
User Interfaces ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Computational Techniques ◽  
Special Focus ◽  
Design Features ◽  
Social Phenomena ◽  
Online Social Media ◽  
Social Opinions ◽  
Computer Interaction

From the Arab Spring to presidential elections, various forms of online social media, forums, and networking platforms have been playing increasing significant roles in our societies. These emerging socio-computer interactions demand new methods of understanding how various design features of online tools may moderate the percolation of information and gradually shape social opinions, influence social choices, and moderate collective action. This chapter starts with a review of the literature on the different ways technologies impact social phenomena, with a special focus on theories that characterize how social processes are moderated by various design features of user interfaces. It then reviews different theory-based computational methods derived from these theories to study socio-computer interaction at various levels. Specific examples of computational techniques are reviewed to illustrate how they can be useful for influencing social processes for various purposes. The chapter ends with how future technologies should be designed to improve socio-computer interaction.

A case-study in historical sociolinguistics beyond Europe: Reconstructing patterns of multilingualism in a linguistic community in Siberia

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-251
Author(s):  
Olesya Khanina ◽  
Miriam Meyerhoff
Keyword(s):  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Life Stories ◽  
Social Power ◽  
Language Choice ◽  
Linguistic Community ◽  
Oral Histories ◽  
Northern Siberia ◽  
Historical Sociolinguistics

AbstractA collection of traditional and ‘old life’ stories recorded in the late 1940s is used to reconstruct the sociolinguistic situation of the Enets community in Northern Siberia from the 1850s until the 1930s. The Enets had regular contacts with a number of neighbouring indigenous peoples (Nganasans, Tundra Nenets, Selkups, Evenkis, Dolgans) and later with Russian newcomers. The oral histories often comment on language use, and as a result we can reconstruct not only the languages that the Enets people used in this period, but also the contexts in which they used them. The Enets community’s multilingualism was typically characterized by command of key neighbouring languages, with the occasional command of other more (geographically and socially) remote ones. With close neighbours, language choice seems to have had limited social load, while in cases of trade or agonistic contact, the choice of language in interethnic communication seems to have followed a principle of asymmetric convergence towards the language of the party with the greatest contextual social power. The analysis is founded on a database of dozens of communicative events mentioned in the oral stories (over 50 are analyzed). Ongoing fieldwork on the modern sociolinguistic situation suggests that until quite recently there was considerable stability in the sociolinguistic norms governing multilingual interaction among the Enets.

scholarly journals Discovering Language Properties through Corpus-Based Dictionary Data Analysis

2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 61-70
Author(s):  
Paul Lyddon ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Data Analysis ◽  
Language Use ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Structural Characteristics ◽  
Language Teacher ◽  
Linguistic Data ◽  
Large Samples ◽  
Widespread Availability ◽  
Real Language

To reveal underlying patterns in real language use, linguists have increasingly come to rely on corpus analyses, involving the evaluation of statistical frequencies in generally sizable bodies of natural linguistic data. However, accessing and analyzing large samples of raw language is neither always practical nor even truly necessary, especially in cases pertaining to structural characteristics. In fact, the requisite data can oftentimes be gleaned from a state-of-the-art (i.e., corpus-based) dictionary. Moreover, given the widespread availability of easily searchable electronic dictionaries nowadays, almost any language teacher or learner can use one to answer a number of these types of queries. This paper illustrates this claim with a step-by-step analysis of corpus-based dictionary data for the purpose of formulating the sound-symbol relations in English words with vowels preceding –gh.

scholarly journals Ideologies of language at Hippo Family Club

Pragmatics ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-227
Author(s):  
Chad Nilep
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Teaching Methods ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Foreign Language Learning ◽  
Foreign Language Teaching ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Approach To Learning ◽  
Japanese Schools ◽  
State Language

Ethnographic study of Hippo Family Club, a foreign language learning club in Japan with chapters elsewhere, reveals a critique of foreign language teaching in Japanese schools and in the commercial English conversation industry. Club members contrast their own learning methods, which they view as “natural language acquisition”, with the formal study of grammar, which they see as uninteresting and ineffective. Rather than evaluating either the Hippo approach to learning or the teaching methods they criticize, however, this paper considers the ways of thinking about language that club members come to share. Members view the club as a transnational organization that transcends the boundaries of the nation-state. Language learning connects the club members to a cosmopolitan world beyond the club, even before they interact with speakers of the languages they are learning. The analysis of club members’ ideologies of language and language learning illuminates not only the pragmatics of language use, but practices and outcomes of socialization and shared social structures.

scholarly journals Cross-cultural Training and Second Language Learning

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Zhonghao Zhou
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Cultural Awareness ◽  
Second Language Learning ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Cultural Training ◽  
Cross Cultural Training ◽  
Complex Process ◽  
Culture Teaching ◽  
Culture And Language

Culture and language are inseparable, and cultures as groups adopt particular practices and norms of behavior. Culture teaching is a long and complex process concerning something more than language use itself. The two popular theories influencing practice today are the Constructivist and the Creative Constructionist approaches, and the technique for conveying cultural awareness is cultural assimilator, which has been designed for specific cultures around the world. Cross-cultural training can be used to promote cultural awareness, that is, sensitize people to the influence of culture on people’s values and behaviors and help them recognize and accept the existence of cultural differences.

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