thelanguageguy.blogspot.com
The Language Guy: The Origin of Language
http://thelanguageguy.blogspot.com/2005/10/origin-of-language.html
Monday, October 17, 2005. The Origin of Language. Two of the great mysteries of human development are. I) How did spoken language originate? II) How do children learn language so quickly? As saying in his book Evolution. Where it is said:. How can I help a child pronounce words correctly? By setting a good example. Don't interrupt or constantly correct the child. Don't let anyone tease or mock (including friends or relatives). Instead, present a good model. Use the misarticulated word cor...The keys are ...
thelanguageguy.blogspot.com
The Language Guy: Is Avatar Racist?
http://thelanguageguy.blogspot.com/2010/01/is-avatar-racist.html
Wednesday, January 20, 2010. Spoiler Alert - Do not read if you haven't seen but plan to see Avatar. I was directed by a tweet to an story in the Japan Times. On line saying that a small but vocal minority of people believe that Avatar is racist. First, the phrase "small but vocal" wants to be looked at. What it may mean is that there are two or three people who are extremely talkative who believe this. This article begins. Promoting this thesis says. I am so tired of people playing the "race card" I wan...
thelanguageguy.blogspot.com
The Language Guy: The More You Spend The More You Save
http://thelanguageguy.blogspot.com/2009/12/more-you-spend-more-you-save.html
Saturday, December 05, 2009. The More You Spend The More You Save. And the comforting concept of saving to rush to Zale's to buy diamonds. However, trust me, if you go by Ben Franklin's. Adage on day 1 you will have more money on day 2 than if you abide by Zale's. At the Zale's web site linked to the title of this blog, you get a bit different version of this promotional scheme, namely "the more you buy the more you save." Notice that these two claims are linguistically different. We spend. My haste cost...
thelanguageguy.blogspot.com
The Language Guy: Spoken vs. Written English
http://thelanguageguy.blogspot.com/2006/04/spoken-vs-written-english.html
Friday, April 21, 2006. Spoken vs. Written English. There is a significant disconnect between the principles for writing formal English and the principles that dictate how we talk. In the simplest case, we separate separate words from each other with spaces. If we equate these little spaces with short silences, then how we speak is way different from how we write. In his great Movie, Annie Hall. You know, I was having lunch with some guys from NBC, so I said, 'Did you eat yet or what? IPA), a system many...
thelanguageguy.blogspot.com
The Language Guy: Incomprehensible Language
http://thelanguageguy.blogspot.com/2005/09/incomprehensible-language.html
Tuesday, September 06, 2005. The US culture has long been fond of words. We have "word for the day" calendars. And on-line dictionaries offer up words for the day. At Dictionary.com. The word for today is cavil. The word for the day at Merriam-Webster. The word for the day at the New York Times. In addition to this fascination with words for the day, many of us also want to increasing our "word power." One web site titled "How To Increase Your Word Power". Link and then on annu- , enni-. I suppose that l...
thelanguageguy.blogspot.com
The Language Guy: Spelling and Spelling Bees
http://thelanguageguy.blogspot.com/2006/03/spelling-and-spelling-bees.html
Sunday, March 26, 2006. Spelling and Spelling Bees. Those who are familiar with my blog Incomprehensible Language. May recall my claim that it is possible to know the meanings of all of the words of a sentence and still not have a clue what the sentence means. My example was drawn from a physics doctoral thesis at Ohio State:. It has been a long time since I studied epistemology but some sort of nontrivial theory of knowledge is presupposed to account for our learning to individuate objects and actions&#...
thelanguageguy.blogspot.com
The Language Guy: Weasel Words -- The Modal Verbs
http://thelanguageguy.blogspot.com/2005/03/weasel-words-modal-verbs.html
Wednesday, March 16, 2005. Weasel Words - The Modal Verbs. When I was doing research on the language of advertising I encountered Carl Wrighter's book I Can Sell You Anything. Carl/Paul's claim is that advertisers use bits of language that fool us, making us think that some product or service will do for us things it cannot do. One important class of said "weasel words". Statements like these containing "could" and "can" if construed in some narrow literal way, are so weak that they could hardly be false...
thelanguageguy.blogspot.com
The Language Guy: The iTouch and the myTouch
http://thelanguageguy.blogspot.com/2009/12/itouch-and-mytouch.html
Thursday, December 10, 2009. The iTouch and the myTouch. In fact, when the iMac was first introduced, Steve Jobs claimed (see the title link). The iMac comes from the marriage of the excitement of the internet with the simplicity of Macintosh. Posted by The Language Guy at 11:17 AM. By the way, Ive been discussing immigration. Lately, which I expect to be the next big topic in Congress after health care is done. If youre interested, check it out. Or or this reference to the iTouch Tablet. It may be a ful...
thelanguageguy.blogspot.com
The Language Guy: Wearing a Burka in Public
http://thelanguageguy.blogspot.com/2010/05/wearing-burka-in-public.html
Friday, May 07, 2010. Wearing a Burka in Public. Now, there is nothing specifically linguistic about this of course except that a law banning a "full-face covering" would be one thing and a law banning a "burka" using these phrases specifically, would be interpreted very differently. A law mentioning the latter would constitute religious discrimination. A law banning the former would not even though it could have the same effect. Where two persons pistol-whipped a post office manager in a daylight robber...
thelanguageguy.blogspot.com
The Language Guy: What is Linguistics?
http://thelanguageguy.blogspot.com/2005/02/what-is-linguistics.html
Thursday, February 24, 2005. When people ask me what I do or did before I retired, and I say I am a linguist, I usually either receive a blank look or they ask how many languages I speak. When I reply that linguistics is the study of the nature of language, the blank look turns to puzzlement. Study language? Could you pass the salt? Posted by The Language Guy at 8:06 AM. My son is in a doctoral program in Tokyo. His discipline is "psycholinguistics," the meaning of which I'm not sure I quite understa...
