I’ve never written a TV or movie review before. My relationship with TV shows and movies is generally one of shallow passive consumption; I watch purely for entertainment. I don’t discuss or critique the things I watch, and I certainly don’t have very discerning taste in this arena (…in contrast to my engaged, critical relationship…
Have you ever experienced something from the written page come to life? I have. No, I didn’t see the purple dragon from my teen fantasy novels, or communicate with an unfolded-refolded nine-dimensional sophon from Trisolaris (hey…it’s been forever since my last post, I’m way overdue for a bit of nerding out). No – I’m talking…
I was a yoga skeptic for years, until I got pregnant and tried a prenatal yoga class. The teacher was magnificent. I attended once a week throughout pregnancy, and although physically I grew heavier and heavier, each class left me feeling buoyant. After my son was born, I went back for “mama and baby” classes,…
Perusal through the material on this blog will quickly show that my interests trend towards words and language acquisition. This post combines the two topics: the first section has some interesting morsels on word learning from a book (that I’m reading) by Yale psychologist Paul Bloom, called How children learn the meanings of words; the…
September was National Deaf Awareness Month. I tried to post this piece before the month ended, but alas! Better late than never. I’d like to discuss and dispel some of the many misconceptions around signed languages. Here are a few of the most common: Sign language is universal – there is only one Sign languages…
Okay, “smörgåsbord” is a Swedish borrowing, but close enough. It’s appropriate for this post, which will be a buffet of miscellaneous facts about the Norwegian language. I became interested in and started learning Norwegian because my brother has been living in Oslo for the past several years, where he is getting his Ph.D. in lichenology.[1]…
Digital voice agents like Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant are all the rage these days. But when we talk to our smart devices, are they actually “understanding” our speech in the same way that another human understands it? Take the command, “Find flights from Chicago to New York on February 21.” We can easily comprehend…
You’re probably familiar with the old adage “the only thing that’s constant is change.” Still, so many people tend to think about language as a relatively fixed affair. I’ve said it before (and will inevitably say it again): all living languages change all the time, and at all levels – phonological (sounds!), morphological (word-bits!), lexical…
I love patterns. They’re how we learn and evolve, and they’re everywhere. Here’s a pattern for you. When I tell someone new that I do linguistics, their response often goes like this: Nod and/or smile and/or give small verbal acknowledgment. Slight awkward pause. “And what is linguistics again exactly?”[1] People know that linguistics has to…
