A Couple Study for Forensic Students

A student sent me a link to an interesting story shared on Fox News a couple months ago about how couples, when they are happy together, use similar language. The researchers involved in the study claim that even famous poets have a writing style that is similar to their significant other's when they are in a happy period of the relationship. People are taking this one step further to say that it might be possible to make predictions about the success rate of a couple's relationship based on a comparison of their writing styles and language usage. Here is a link to the original story.

What do you think? Is it possible to tell if a couple is happy together based on linguistic analysis? Is your language usage similar to that of your significant other?

I'm off to find a writing sample of my husband's to compare to mine...

Syllabus of Linguistics of Invented Languages

You can find the syllabus for ENG 442-090: Topics in Linguistics (Linguistics of Invented Languages) at this link. We are still a few students shy of making the minimum required for the course to run as scheduled. If you know of anyone interested, please pass along this information so that they can see what will be covered in the course to decide if they would like to join in on the creative linguistic fun next semester. There are no prerequisites for the course (even though two are listed with the registrar's office)--you'll simply need to e-mail me (samsj@sfasu.edu) with your name and student ID# if you are interested in registering so that any holds can be lifted, which will enable you to register for the course.

Save the Words!

In an attempt to keep English words from going extinct, Oxford Dictionaries is sponsoring a website where you can adopt an endangered English word; by adopting a word, you are promising to use the word in your speech and writing.

Screenshot from Save the Words website

I am having fun exploring the website--not just because it is really well made and fun to look at, but also because it is full of fabulous words. On the website, you can find words as diverse as starrify, radicarian, and antipelargy, none of which are recognized by spellcheck.

I hope you have fun exploring the website--let me know in the comments if you adopt a word (and which one you chose to adopt). I am now the proud adoptive parent of nepheliad, which is a cloud-nymph. So when I start lecturing about nepheliads next week in class, you'll know why.

Linguistics of Invented Languages Poster

Comparative Romance Linguistics Poster

Spring 2011 Courses

Following are descriptions of the courses that will be offered Spring 2011:

ENG 344-001 Structures of English (MWF 9:00-9:50)

Linguistic study of English, including phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics.  Includes an examination of several applied topics, focusing on topics such as English stylistics, language acquisition as it pertains to structures English, English dialects, and history of English.

ENG 341 Introduction to Linguistics

• 341-001 MWF 10:00-10:50
• 341-090 TR 9:30-10:45 (writing enhanced)

*Used to be ENG 441.

Introduction to the core concepts of linguistic study, including phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics, and to the application of those concepts, such as language acquisition, language disorders, sociolinguistics, and language change.  Analyses of linguistic concepts and applications focus on data from languages spoken around the world (i.e., will not focus on or be limited to English).

Prerequisites: None

ENG 442-090: Topics in Linguistics: Linguistics of Invented Languages (TR 11:00-12:15)
(writing enhanced)

Examination of how language works and typical features of world languages in order to construct an invented language; also, examination of famous constructed languages (including Elvish, Na'vi, and Esperanto) in order to compare features of invented languages to those of natural languages. The final project of the course will involve students constructing their own languages to better understand the challenges of constructing a language and linguistic principles at work in natural languages.

ENG 442-002: Topics in Linguistics: Comparative Romance Linguistics (TR 9:30-10:45)

In this course we will begin with a look at the Latin language (no prior knowledge of Latin assumed) and its transformation into the Romance languages from a socio-historical perspective. We will then concentrate on selected linguistic phenomena of some of the Romance languages (mainly French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish) from a comparative standpoint. For example, how do French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish pluralize nouns? How does determiner, noun, and adjective agreement work? What options are available for past tense formation (e.g., simple (preterite), compound, or both)? How is negation accomplished? What are the sound correspondences between languages (e.g., the Latin ct in NOCTEM ‘night’ became tt  in Italian notte, ch in Spanish noche, and it in French ‘nuit < nueit’ and Portuguese noite)? How did the T/V (politeness) pronouns come about? One of the course assignments will deal with independently researching a less commonly researched Romance language (e.g., Romanian, Catalan, Occitan, Gascon, Corsican, or one of the so called “dialects” of Italian). Course materials will be provided by the instructor. There is no prerequisite; however, intermediate to advanced reading knowledge of a modern Romance language would be advantageous. The class will be taught in English. 

If you have any questions, let me or Chris know!

Language Fail via YouTube

Thanks to a student, I am sharing a video with you that I've now watched several times and laughed every one of them. The humor is based on misparsing words in a song--when you hear a string of sounds, you may hear something different than what was originally said. For instance, many kids grow up thinking the "Star Spangled Banner" starts out with "Jose, can you see?", and I was convinced that a donzerly was a type of light because of that song. Another famous mistaken lyric is in Creedence Clearwater Revival's song "Bad Moon on the Rise"; many people think the chorus is saying "there's a bathroom on the right." While misparsings often lead to humorous results, I don't think I've ever seen one as humorous as this.



Challenge yourself to see if you can--without looking at the lyrics to the song--figure out what English words the singer is trying to sing. Can you tell where she is misparsing the words to create nonsense words?