Visuwords: Graphical dictionary

I've seen visual thesauri and dictionaries floating around the web, but I think the best one I've seen (or at least the one I've had the most fun with) is Visuwords, an online graphical dictionary. When you go to the page, you see the following space:

Visuwords screenshot

There is a search box at the top, where you can enter a word you want to explore, or you could choose to hit the "random" button to the left of the search box, which will give you exactly that--a random word.

Running down the left of the blank white area (where your word will be mapped) is a key to understand what you're about to see:

Visuwords key

Using Visuwords can help identify parts of speech and semantic relationships, both helpful in a linguistics classroom.

I chose to search for the word 'linguistics', which resulted in this graphic display:

Visuwords search for 'linguistics'

You can zoom in on the area to pay more attention to some of the detail going on:

Zoomed in section of 'linguistics'

Using the key down the side of the page, I can see that linguistics is a kind of humanistic discipline, that lexicology is a kind of linguistics, and that 'linguistic' and 'lingual' are derivations of the word 'linguistics'. If you hold your mouse over any of the the visual definition, you can get more information:

Mouse over information

In this image, you can see a yellow box of more information about the 'humanistic discipline, humanities, liberal arts, arts' entry.

All in all, I think this is a pretty cool tool to visualize relationships among words and concepts and is something I will introduce in my linguistics courses when we discuss semantics.

The Joy of Phonetics: Getting help with IPA

One area many students struggle with in linguistics is phonetics. Understanding IPA, the IPA charts, transcriptions, and the application of IPA to phonology can be quite frustrating for beginners. Luckily, there are several helpful websites that just might help those frustrated students. (Some of these are mentioned in a past post, but they are worth mentioning again.)

1. UCLA's Interactive IPA Chart (from Ladefoged's "A Course in Phonetics")

Screenshot of UCLA's IPA Interactive Chart

The IPA chart that can be seen in the screenshot is interactive in that it allows you to click on any area to zoom in; once you're zoomed in on an area, it allows you to click on an individual symbol, and a sound file will play so that you can hear the sound that particular symbol represents, which is incredibly helpful for those world sounds that may not be in your native language. The only downside is that the sound files take you to a different screen instead of playing while you're still looking at the chart.

2. York University's Interactive IPA Chart

Screenshot of York's IPA Chart

This IPA chart is similar to the UCLA chart above but was created by Eric Armstrong and has a few extra features that students may find helpful. Just like the UCLA website, you first have to click on a section of sounds to zoom in before you can play with the individual features. Once you're zoomed in, you can click on an individual symbol to hear what sound it represents; one advantage to this website is that the sound file plays without taking you to a different screen.

Another advantage is that if you mouse over any words/symbols on the chart, you can find out more information. For instance, if you mouse over a manner or place label on the consonant chart, a definition box will pop up, like this:

Definition box

If you mouse over a symbol in the chart, the IPA descriptors of the symbol and the "common" name will appear in the box over the top of the chart:

Symbol information

Students often get frustrated by words like 'engma' being thrown around when learning the IPA; this website can help those students learn those names while still learning the IPA descriptions associated with them.

3. Iowa's Interactive Sounds of Spoken Language

Screenshot of Iowa's Phonetics Website

If you aren't learning the IPA charts for world languages but are focusing on either American English, Spanish, or German, then you will most likely find this website helpful. From the home page (which you see in the screenshot above), you can click on your language of choice. Clicking on the American English option will take you to a new screen that looks like this:

The Sounds of American English

From this view, you can decide whether you want to look at consonants or vowels and which category you want to explore. For instance, you might click on the "fricative" button and then click on the "/z/" to get to this screen:

Focus on the /z/

Every aspect of this website is interactive. You can play the animation to watch what happens in the sagittal section when the sound in focus is made. You can choose a play-by-play, in which case each stage of the sound is fully described. Or you can listen to sound files on the right-hand side while watching what the outside of the mouth looks like during sound production. This tool is especially helpful for anyone working in the speech pathology field.


4. Interactive Sagittal Section

Screenshot of Interactive Sagittal Section website

Created by Daniel Currie Hall, this website allows you to choose the features of the sound you're working with (e.g., voicing, placement, manner), and the sagittal section on the screen changes to match the requirements, which can help internalize the difference between all those columns and rows in the IPA chart (and, in the end, help with understanding natural classes). After seeing Iowa's website before this one, you may wonder if it really is all that helpful. The answer is yes. This website isn't constrained to sounds in particular languages (but is constrained by types of sounds). Also, the sagittal sections more closely resemble what some students see on exams/homework assignments and might be more helpful.

There are other online interactive IPA tools, such as the University of Victoria's IPA chart and another IPA chart that is simply housed at www.ipachart.com. The goal is for you to find one that you can work with and that helps you understand the material better. Phonetics shouldn't be frightening--it should be fun to explore the sounds of language.

If you have know any other phonetics websites that you feel should be mentioned, leave the website (and the reason you like) in the comments below.

Women as Linguistic Pioneers

A colleague shared a link with me this morning from The New York Times for an article on linguistic innovation: "They're Like, Way Ahead of the Linguistic Currrrve" by Douglas Quenqua. The article focuses on how many people tease young women for the way they speak--whether it's using like as a filler or using creaky voice to end a statement; and yet, many of those same things young women are teased for become linguistic markers in English at large. The following few paragraphs portray nicely what the whole article is about:

“If women do something like uptalk or vocal fry, it’s immediately interpreted as insecure, emotional or even stupid,” said Carmen Fought, a professor of linguistics at Pitzer College in Claremont, Calif. “The truth is this: Young women take linguistic features and use them as power tools for building relationships.”

The idea that young women serve as incubators of vocal trends for the culture at large has longstanding roots in linguistics. As Paris is to fashion, the thinking goes, so are young women to linguistic innovation.

“It’s generally pretty well known that if you identify a sound change in progress, then young people will be leading old people,” said Mark Liberman, a linguist at the University of Pennsylvania, “and women tend to be maybe half a generation ahead of males on average.”

I urge you to read the original article, as there are other very interesting insights throughout it. While the article (and the linguists quoted in it) cite young women as linguistic innovators, what is perhaps more intriguing is that no one knows why. The article offers several theories, but I'm not sure we'll ever be able to pinpoint the exact reason why these linguistic phenomena catch on like they do and why (or how) young women start many of them in the first place.

What do you think?

Linguistics, Science, and Critical Thinking

In the urge to make sciences and critical thinking more fundamental in our education system, I hope administrators, curriculum writers, and teachers see the potential (and importance) of using linguistic principles as a conduit of teaching critical thinking skills. Over at the Language Log, there is a great post today about teaching science through language.

My students know how passionate I am about telling anyone who will listen that linguistic study really complements any major and profession--this is just one more example of how linguistics can stretch is interdisciplinary reaches.

Want a linguistic challenge?

There is an annual International Linguistics Olympiad, and they are kind enough to share their problems with the public (once they've been used, that is). If you're up for a challenge, you can head over to their website and start with the sample problems and then move up to the archived problems. There are some neat data sets you can work on--I'm tempted to put a whiteboard in the hallway with a problem written on it Good Will Hunting style.

Must Read: Letters of Note

On Wednesday, the Language Log had a post called "Dejobbed, bewifed, and much childrenised" that I absolutely adored. It was based on a post they had seen in the Letters of Note website--a website I hadn't heard of before reading that post.

This morning I finally had some downtime to go check out Letters of Note, and I am fascinated by what's there. The website collects and posts personal letters (from what I've seen, all written in English) that are "correspondence deserving of a wider audience." I have tried and deleted several of my attempts to describe the types of letters on the website; I'll settle for saying that the letters are too diverse to categorize and are incredibly interesting to go through. The "Dejobbed, bewifed, and much childrenised" letter is worth the perusal alone, but you should also check out "My belly is too much swelling with jackfruit" and "It's more likely that I was doing 911km/h" if you're in the mood for a light pick-me-up. Then again, if you'd like something more serious, there are letters that are sad, sweet,  nostalgic, and uplifting.

I think the website (and eventual book) is a beautiful nod to the dying breed of handwritten personal letters, and it's making me want to go grab some stationery and start writing some of my own Letters of Note.

SpecGram Seeking Submissions

One of my favorite ways to kill a little time while remaining linguistically active is perusing the Speculative Grammarian, an online journal for satirical linguistics. In other words, it's a journal for linguists to poke fun of the field while also writing about real things. You might think of it like the linguistics version of The Onion.

Besides the awesome articles and fun linguistic-related puzzles, the Speculative Grammarian is also cool because it accepts articles from anyone who has a good idea for a linguistic-related article. You don't have to be a top scholar to have good ideas for a humorous article on linguistics--you just need knowledge of the field and a sense of humor.

If you have an idea for an article, you should go to this link and follow the directions there. While you're there, you should most definitely check out the Linguistics Career Chooser--especially if you're a minor wondering what to do with your background in linguistics (and in need of a laugh).