"Talking Hands" by Margalit Fox

In the introduction Fox is explaining her research trip to an isolated Middle Eastern village. The villagers in this isolated village Al- Sayyid speak unusual language spoken only there and which has never been documented before. Four linguists have been doing research for couple of years and they have been documenting this extraordinary language. Before the linguists started their research they had to gain the trust of the villagers, as well they had to protect their privacy. Fox was the first journalist that was allowed to visit this village, but she wasn’t allowed to interview any of the villagers. She was permitted to visit the village, but she had to show her whole manuscript to the linguists. The history and the life that are described in her book are based on her own observations and on the interviews with the members of the research team. To keep the privacy of this village in her book Fox has changed the names of every villager; also she has disguised the exact location of the village.
In the first chapter “In the village of the deaf” from the book Fox describes the house at the edge of the village, the owner of the house and his family. The man and his family are called Bedouins; they are middle class, they own automobiles and computers, but the remarkable thing about them is their unusual language, spoken only in their village. Fox explains that for the last seventy years the inherited deafness has been passed down from one generation to the next. In the village there are around 3,500 residents and about 150 are deaf. Many of the hearing residents can speak the sign language. Then Fox talks about the second time that the entire team goes to the Al- Sayyid village and collects data. On their first visit to the village they videotaped the villagers telling stories in sign. Then Fox explains how over the years many of Al- Sayyid deaf children go to special classes for deaf in other towns, where they learn the Israeli Sign language. This language is very different from the Al- Sayyid Bedouin Sign Language. This language as the other languages that has very few speakers can very easily die. I think that when the older Bedouin signers die and their children use the Israeli Sign language instead of their own, then this unique language will change or maybe die.

NY Times

United States is the most multicultural country and New York City is known as home to one of the most ethnically diverse population. In this article are mentioned the spoken languages in New York City, also the dying languages. Professor Daniel Kaufman started the project “endangered language alliance” to identify and record dying languages. Some of the languages found in New York City are Vlaski, Mamuju, Aramaik, Chaldik, Mandaik, Bukhari, Chamorro, Irish Gaelic, Kashubian, indigenous Mexican languages, Pennsylvania Dutch, Romany and Yiddish. When the language is not carried on to the next generations, then the language dies and the culture gets lost through the decades. From this article I learned that the Vlaski language is dying which I really didn’t realize that since my mother speaks that language. I know that the language is very important to every person because knowing a specific language helps families and relatives connect to each others.

Sedaris “Me Talk Pretty One Day”

a) “Sometime me cry alone at night”.
This is an incorrect sentence. The correct sentence is:
“Sometimes I cry alone at night”.
The pronoun “me” is not used correctly in the first sentence, because it depends on the category person, such as first, second and third person and the category number, such as singular and plural. In the second sentence “I” is correct because is used in English language for first person singular.
b) Last year my brother came to the United States to visit me. He knew the basics of the English language. He was able to understand most of the words, but he couldn’t speak fluently. At the time I was teaching him words and explaining their meaning. Because I thought he needs to know more words to be able to form a sentence. But now after I learned about the syntax I think that he had difficulty because he wasn’t familiar with the rules of the grammar. Knowing the system of rules, it will be much easier for him to form a sentence.

Research log for chapter 9

In this chapter is explained the term syntax, a Greek word which means “arrangement”. Specific grammar rules are used to form a sentence; these precise rules are called generative grammar. This grammar has limited number of rules which can form an infinite number of sentences. There are shown two types of different sentences in the book. One sentence is active and the other sentence is passive, and the difference in those two sentences is in the surface structure. The deep structure is the basic components in the both of the sentences. Recursive rules are the rules that can be applied more than once in producing a structure. Some of the symbols that are used in syntactic analysis are N for noun, V for verb, NP for noun phrase, VP for verb phrase. Other symbols that are used are an arrow (→) for “rewrites as”, pair of round brackets (), for an optional constituent and the curly brackets {}. Very interesting and helpful is the tree diagram. The tree diagram is used to show the grammatical information for a whole sentence. At the top of every tree diagram is the letter S, for sentence, then at lower level the noun phrase-NP and verb phrase VP, then the NP is divided into article –A and noun-N. Other rules that are explained in this chapter are the phrase structure rules. The first rule in this set of rules is: “a sentence rewrites as a noun phrase and a verb phrase”. The second rule is: “a noun phrase rewrites as either an article, an optional adjective and a noun or a pronoun or a proper noun”. The lexical rules are used to specify which words can be used when we turn structures into recognizable English. The word “that” used in sentences is called a complementizer (C), and it is used to introduce a complement phrase (CP). The transformational rules are used to change or move constituents in the structures.

Where words come from

The chapter “Where words come from” by Bill Bryson is about the words in the English language, how they were formed. The words were created by making them up, adding and subtracting from them, as well creating them by mistake and borrowing them from different languages. At the beginning in the chapter, Bryson speaks about words that are not very familiar, but they describe something that we know. Such as the word aposiopesis, this means sudden breaking off of thought. English language has the richest vocabulary, for example it has one word with many meanings, term known as polysemy, and has several words meaning the same thing. It is very interesting how some words can be created by mishearing, such as the word sweetard, now known as sweetheart. Some of the words were formed by misreading and typographical errors. There are words that were formed with back-formation, for example beg from beggar, and laze from lazy. For so many years the English language has been borrowing words from every language, such as ketchup from China, sofa from Arabia, potato from Haiti. But many borrowed words get anglicized, and we can’t even notice that they are borrowed from other languages, like the word bankrupt, taken from Italian word, banka rotta, which means “broken bench”. In the English language for so long there was a word hound, but then a new word was created, which we are familiar with, the word dog. Like dog there are a lot of other words that were created through the centuries. The writer Shakespeare plays a big role in creating new words, some of them we use today, such as critical, monumental, radiance, excellent. Isaac Newton, Jeremy Bentham, Sir Thomas Elyot also created words that we use. Some words stay the same, but their meaning changes, strange but sometimes the meaning becomes opposite. A lot of words that were adopted from Latin changed their original meaning, such as the word nice, which originally was stupid and foolish. The words can also change by becoming more detailed, like starve, which original meaning was to die, and then was changed to die by hunger. With adding the prefixes and suffixes pre-, anti-, -ness, -able, a lot of new words can be created.

Research log for chapters 6, 7 and 8

In chapter 6 are explained the processes of word formation, from the least common process to the most common process of word formation in the English language. Such as coinage (the invention of new terms), borrowing (taking words from different languages), compounding (joining of two separate words to produce a single form), blending, clipping (the word is reduced to a shorter form), then backformation, conversion, acronyms and the most common derivation (small “bits” called affixes, which appear in words).Then in this chapter are described the different affixes, such as prefixes, which is added to the beginning of the word and suffixes, which is added to the end of the word. Also another type of affixes called infix, which is included inside another word. In chapter 7, is described the basic elements in a language, known as morphemes and the study of those elements, the term morphology. Types of morphemes used in English are free and bound morphemes. Then there are two categories of free morphemes, such as lexical and functional morphemes. Also there are two categories of bound, such as derivational and inflectional morphemes. One morpheme has different versions, which are called allomorphs. Then in chapter 8 are described the rules for proper use of language and definitions of the technical terms such as nouns, pronouns, articles, verbs, adverbs, adjective, prepositions and conjunctions. The category grammatical gender helps us distinguish between masculine and feminine. With the labeled and bracketed analysis of the structure of a sentence we can easily understand how the sentences are formed in the English language.

“Yes and No” by Amy Tan

Amy was born in the United States; and her parents were immigrants from Mainland China. She writes how it felt growing up in bilingual family. Her parents were talking to her on both Chinese and English language, she always responded on English but she knew Chinese language also. She is explaining in the chapter how she read an article in New York Time Magazine that stated “…there aren’t even words for yes and no” in the Chinese language. Then she explains why she doesn’t agree with that and explains the Sapir-Whorf thesis: “that one’s perception of the world and how one function in it depends a great deal on the language used”. A great and interesting example for this thesis is the example she gave about the Eskimos and their infinite words for snow, they actually have the ability to see differences in the snowflakes configurations, and the others who are not Eskimo have only one word. (28). Then she talks about the English speakers, who said that Chinese language is difficult, also the Chinese speakers have said the same thing to Amy about the English language that is very difficult (31). But as I learned from this course all languages are equally complex and equally capable of expressing any idea. Amy worries that the people are seeing the Chinese people from a partial perspective. Then in the last part of the chapter she agrees that there is no words for “yes” and “no”, but she gives a couple of examples of different questions and different answers, so the answer actually depends from the question. Like the example she gave in the chapter, if you ask a Chinese person if he ate, than the answer can be chrle (eaten already) or meiyou(have not).

Stories of Mishaps and Reconciliation

a)Nadica- Nadi[c]a ([N] voiced +V alveolar nasal)
Zecevic- Zɛt∫ɛvit∫ ([Z] voiced +V alveolar fricative)
b)There are a lot of different languages, and that means a lot of different sounds. One language can be distinguished from another language with the sound in the language. We produce sounds with our vocal cords and different parts of our mouth. So we are familiar with the sounds that are consisted in our own language. Sometimes when we hear a sound that we don’t know and we never used in our language than it is a little bit difficult to pronounce it. That is why when I say my name to somebody that has never heard it before, it is hard for that person to pronounce my name. I think my last name is easier to pronounce because the sounds are consisted in the English language, but my name is hard for the English speakers to pronounce it. That is because the sound [C] in my language is pronounced differently and that sound is not consisted in the English language. In the English language the sound [C] is pronounced like in the word cat.
c)I do have difficulty pronouncing some names and things. For example the word water, the English speakers pronounce it with the sound “d”. I try but I always pronounce it with the sound “t”.

Research Log

Chapter 5 in “The Study of Language” by Yule is about the sound patterns of language. First is explained the term phonology, which describes the patterns of speech sounds in a language. The phonology helps us to distinguish the meaning in sounds that we hear and say. The phonemes /f/ and /v/ in English language help us to distinguish the meaning between the words fat and vat, this meaning in a sound is described as a phoneme. In a regular speech one sound can be pronounced with many different versions. Those different versions are called phones. When there are many versions of one phoneme then those versions are called allophones. It is interesting that when we pronounce the word tar, the puff of air, called aspiration is stronger. For a difference when we pronounce star, the puff of air is weaker (pg.45). When replacing one phoneme for another in a word, then the result is a different meaning and different pronunciation, for a difference replacing one allophone for another, the result is only a different pronunciation of the same word. Then in this chapter is explained the term minimal pair, which means two words fan-van are identical in form, except for a contrast in one phoneme. A minimal set is when group of words can be differentiated by changing one phoneme such as fit, fate, foot, fought. Phonotactics are part of every speaker’s phonological knowledge; they are permitted arrangements of sounds. The basic elements of the syllable are the onset and the rhyme. The onset consists of one or more consonants, and the rhyme consists of vowel, called nucleus and consonant, called coda. When we pronounce English words in everyday speech the assimilation process takes place. The same process happens in Macedonian language. This process happens because is easier and quicker (pg.49).

Writting Assignment

When people want to share their experiences with each other they use language. The written and spoken language is very important because we use it to express our thoughts, emotions and opinions. Sharing same language means sharing the same culture. Language is inherited from one generation to the next generation. The culture and language that we know is given from our parents and we will give it to our children. Every human has own language since birth which helps him to communicate with family, friends, and strangers. I was born in Macedonia and my native language is Macedonian. But the first seven years of my life I lived in Germany with my family. I was speaking German and knew only some basic Macedonian words. When we moved back to Macedonia I had to learn writing and also speaking Macedonian. With learning my language very soon I started to forget German. Now I only know couple of German words. In Elementary school and High school everyone in my country have to learn second language, so I choose to learn English. Knowing English Language was very significant for me, when I decided to stay here in United States. After I finished high school I went to college in Bulgaria. Macedonian and Bulgarian language are very similar but still have a lot of differences. The Bulgarian alphabet consists of couple of letters that were new for me. As a result it was very difficult at the beginning because I couldn’t understand everything. But after couple of months I was able to learn those letters, which were not part of my alphabet and to understand the new sounds. My major in Bulgaria was International relationships so I had to study two languages, I choose English because I was familiar with the language and my second choice was Spanish, I learned only the basic of Spanish. Now I can understand a little bit Spanish, but because I never talk or practice I’m not able to respond. That is why I think when you want to learn a new language it is a big advantage to understand it and being able to answer. I will like to know if there is a way the adults can learn new language easier. Why sometimes learning a new language can interfere with the old language we learned. For example my father knows and speaks German, now he lives in Italy, and he is trying to learn Italian but it’s difficult for him because always when he tries to speak Italian, the words that he is pronouncing have German accent. So how can adults make a distinction between the old language that are familiar with and the new language that they need to learn.