How Do We Share Our Languages Around? Lingua Francas @thelingspace

The Ling Space | How Do We Share Our Languages Around? Lingua Francas @thelingspace | Uploaded 8 years ago | Updated 1 hour ago
How do some languages get to be so widespread? What happens to them once they're in such broad use? In this week's episode, we talk about lingua francas: where they come from, and how they grow. We also discuss a few different examples: English, Latin, Nahuatl, and Indonesian!

This is Topic #54!

This week's tag language: Cebuano!

For our discussion of pidgins and creoles, take a look here: youtu.be/Fjd5rj9Ata8

Last episode:
Good Vibrations: Phonation and Glottal States: youtu.be/edYLoMRgaFw

Other of our historical linguistics videos:
Writing It Down - Writing Systems: youtu.be/eTdJp8N8FdU
Sense and Shiftability - Semantic Shift and Meaning Changes: youtu.be/iLKDYqxWY7w
The Recipe for English - A History of the English Language: youtu.be/BRy-lMMCAC8

Find us on all the social media worlds:
Tumblr: http://thelingspace.tumblr.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/TheLingSpace
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/thelingspace

And at our website, http://www.thelingspace.com !
You can also find our store at the website, http://www.thelingspace.com/store

Our website also has extra content about this week's topic at http://www.thelingspace.com/episode-54

We also have forums to discuss this episode, and linguistics more generally.

Sources:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingua_franca
http://mufwene.uchicago.edu/publications/Globalization_and_the_Spread_of_English.pdf
http://mufwene.uchicago.edu/publications/The_Evolution_of_Language_-_Hints_from_Creoles_and_Pidgins.pdf
http://www.indians.org/welker/nahuatl.htm
http://www.aztec-history.com/aztec-timeline.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_Nahuatl_language
http://itotd.com/articles/310/bahasa-indonesia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Latin#Romance_languages
http://ipll.manoa.hawaii.edu/indonesian/2012/03/10/how-many-people-speak-indonesian/
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/sep/24/nigeria-pidgin-scatter-brain-swagger
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Nigeria
youtube.com/watch?v=ikROAEWvpKI

Looking forward to next week!

What Questions Cant We Ask? Syntactic Islands

How Do We Interpret Sentences? Parsing Strategies

How Much Can We Adjust Our Second Language Grammars? Parameter Resetting

Interview with Daniel Dennett - Remastered

$How Complex is Natural Language? The Chomsky Hierarchy How can we describe the complexity of linguistic systems? Where does natural language fit in? In this weeks episode, we talk about the Chomsky hierarchy: what it captures, what characterizes different kinds of grammars on the hierarchy, and whether we can find grammars that sit higher on the scale than human language. This is Topic #63! This weeks tag language: Croatian! Related topics: Happy Little Trees: X Theory - https://youtu.be/7UOcoQr0hvg Trace Evidence: Syntactic Movement - https://youtu.be/x5iBbSkp8rk Last episode: Quantifying Sets and Toasters: Generalized Quantifiers - https://youtu.be/U1l3C_hmjqM Other of our syntax and morphology videos: Raising the Bar: Raising and Control Verbs - https://youtu.be/SYoYNeaSYrU Organizing Meanings: Morphological Typology - https://youtu.be/Ts2DS0ZsTyo Referential Treatment: Binding Theory - https://youtu.be/9sqm_cex4kA Also, if youd like to know more about the Chomsky Hierarchy and its impact on computer science, Computerphiles had a few videos about them: - Their episode on the hierarchy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=224plb3bCog. - Their episode about finite-state machines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhiiia1_hC4. - And their episode about how finite-state machines relate to grammar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjOCRYdg8BY. Find us on all the social media worlds: Tumblr: http://thelingspace.tumblr.com/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/TheLingSpace Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/thelingspace/ And at our website, http://www.thelingspace.com/ ! You can also find our store at the website, https://thelingspace.storenvy.com/ Our website also has extra content about this weeks topic at http://www.thelingspace.com/episode-63/ We also have forums to discuss this episode, and linguistics more generally. Sources: (1) I-Language (1st Edition, Daniela isac & Charles Reiss) (2) Introduction to the Theory of Computation (3rd Edition, Michael Sipser) (3) Mathematical Logic for Computer Science (3rd Edition, Mordechai Ben-Ari) (4) Evidence Against the Context-Freeness of Natural Language (Stuart Shieber - http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~shieber/Biblio/Papers/shieber85.pdf) (5) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chomsky_hierarchy (6) Syntactic Structures (Noam Chomsky) (7) Mathematical Methods in Linguistics (Barbara Partee, Alice G. ter Meulen, Robert Wall) Proof regarding crossing dependencies (adapted from the first edition of Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation, by John Hopcroft and Jeffrey Ullman. Note where carets appear that the following character should be taken as superscript): We first capture the general pattern of embedded clauses in Swiss German with the language a^nb^mc^nd^m . We then treat this as the result of intersecting Swiss German with the regular language a*b*c*d*. Now, let L = {a^nb^mc^nd^m | n ≥ 1 and m ≥ 1}. Suppose L is a context-free language, and let p be the pumping length referred to in the pumping lemma for context-free languages (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumping_lemma_for_context-free_languages). Consider the string z = a^pb^pc^pd^p. Let z = uvwxy satisfy the conditions of the pumping lemma. Then as |vwx| ≤ p, vx can contain at most two different symbols. Furthermore, if vx contains two different symbols, they must be consecutive, for example, a and b. If vx has only a’s, then uwy has fewer a’s than c’s and is not in L, a contradiction. We proceed similarly if vx consists of only b’s, only c’s, or only d’s. Now suppose that vx has a’s and b’s. Then uwy still has fewer a’s than c’s. A similar contradiction occurs if vx consist of b’s and c’s or c’s and d’s. Since these are the only possibilities, we conclude that L is not context-free. Since context-free languages are closed under intersection with regular languages, and the above intersection is not context-free, Swiss German must be non-context-free. Q.E.D. A proof of the pumping lemma itself can be found in Introduction to the Theory of Computation (among other places). For a discussion of the closure properties of context-free languages, see Mathematical Methods in Linguistics (among other places). Looking forward to next week!$