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Hockett on arbitrariness and iconicity
Charles Hockett had interesting views on the relation between iconicity and arbitrariness. Here is a key quote: The difference of dimensionality means that signages1 can be iconic to an extent to which languages cannot; and they are, even though, as Frishberg (1975) tells us, the trend in Ameslan for over a century has been towards more and more conventionalization.…
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African ideophones and their contribution to linguistics — workshop at WOCAL8 in Kyoto, Aug 2015
Organisers Dr. Mark Dingemanse (Max Planck Institute, Nijmegen) Prof. Sharon Rose (University of California, San Diego) African ideophones and their contribution to linguistics Africa’s linguistic diversity has impacted the study of language in many ways. The articulatory phonetics of the Khoi and San languages prompted methodological innovations in phonetics, the tonal systems of West-African languages spurred the…
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Universal Social Rules Underlie Languages
The September/October issue of Scientific American MIND features an article written by me and N.J. Enfield entitled “Universal Social Rules Underlie Languages”. We review recent research on conversation across cultures, including work on turn-taking, timing, and other-initiated repair. Scientific American MIND is a psychology/brain-themed offshoot of the well-known Scientific American magazine. We’re proud to publish in the pages of…
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Abercrombie on ‘paralanguage’
There is an urgent need for the comparative study, over as much of the world as possible, of the full range of paralinguistic phenomena — the kind of thing for which the linguistic field-worker is best fitted. Fact-finding, not theorising, is what is wanted at this present juncture. Abercrombie, David. 1968. “Paralanguage.” International Journal of…
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Media als middel
Veel wetenschappers onderhouden een haat-liefde verhouding met de media. Media-aandacht is moeilijk te krijgen en als je het eenmaal hebt nog moeilijker te controleren. Wanneer zet je door en wanneer zeg je nee? Hoe vind je de balans tussen bijsturen en meebewegen? Deze en andere vragen bespreek ik aan de hand van een concreet voorbeeld:…
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Zbikowski on music and social interaction
Instead of probing the cultural or historical context for musical utterances, or the complex networks of social interaction that give rise to musical behavior, music theory continues to focus on details of musical discourse with an obsessiveness that is both maddening and quixotic to cultural and social theorists. Zbikowski, Lawrence Michael. 2002. Conceptualizing music : cognitive…
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Von Humboldt on depiction in speech
Where moderation is not utterly overstepped, the wealth of sound in languages can be compared to coloration in painting. The impression of both evokes a similar feeling; and even thought reacts differently if, like a mere outline, it emerges in greater nakedness, or appears, if we may so put it, more coloured by language. Wilhelm…
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Malinowski on observing ‘performance’
There is no doubt, from all points of sociological, or psychological analysis, and in any question of theory, the manner and type of behaviour observed in the performance of an act is of the highest importance. Indeed behaviour is a fact, a relevant fact, and one that can be recorded. And foolish indeed and short-sighted…
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Sound symbolism in language: Does nurunuru mean dry or slimy?
Guest posting by Gwilym Lockwood, PhD student in the Neurobiology of Language Department at the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. Note: We have since published several papers showing that people can indeed guess and learn the meaning of ideophones at a level above chance: Dingemanse, Mark & Schuerman, Will & Reinisch, Eva & Tufvesson, Sylvia…
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How to paint with language
Words evolve not as blobs of ink on paper but in face to face interaction. The nature of language as fundamentally interactive and multimodal is shown by the study of ideophones, vivid sensory words that thrive in conversations around the world. The ways in which these “Lautbilder” enable precise communication about sensory knowledge has now…
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An ode to Narita Airport Resthouse
I just got back from Japan. Because of an early flight out, I booked an overnight stay at Narita Airport Resthouse, a hotel located —as the name suggests— right at the airport. My booking website asked me to review the hotel; here’s what I wrote. Narita Airport Resthouse review Great if you like dilapidated buildings,…
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Wetenschapper+Weblog
Gisteren was ik op de eerste vakconferentie Wetenschapscommunicatie in de Van Nelle Ontwerpfabriek in Rotterdam. Samen met een aantal collega’s sprak ik in een sessie over ‘wat motiveert wetenschappers?’. Mjin bijdrage ging over Wetenschapper + Weblog. Hier is mijn boodschap in 79 woorden: Bloggen is geweldig, roept de technofetisjist. Zonde van de tijd, bromt de technopessimist.…
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Taal in de reageerbuis
Gek op cross-overs van kunst en wetenschap, muziek en experiment? Ik ook. Daarom organiseer ik met mijn collega’s Tessa Verhoef en Seán Roberts een experiment op het Discovery Festival in Amsterdam — hét festival voor interessante kruisbestuivingen, rare muziek, en nieuwe experimenten. Ons experiment is vermomd als game en, afgaand op de pilots die we…
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Expressiveness and system integration
Just a heads-up to let interested readers know of a newish article on the morphosyntactic typology of ideophones by yours truly: Expressiveness and system integration. On the typology of ideophones, with special reference to Siwu (PDF). Completed in May 2012, it has been peer reviewed and accepted, and is due to appear in a special issue…
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Ideophones in Bakairi, Brasil, 1894
Last year Sabine Reiter defended an interesting PhD thesis on ideophones in Awetí, a Tupian language spoken in the Upper Xingu area of central Brazil. In the introduction, she mentions an early source on ideophones in this area. It’s a vivid description of a native of Xingu felling a tree, and it’s full of ideophones…
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Waarom roep je ‘au’ bij plotselinge pijn?
Voor het Kennislink Vragenboek beantwoordde ik de vraag: “Waarom roep je ‘au!’ bij plotselinge pijn?”. Dat is kennelijk een vraag die nogal leeft, want vorig jaar stelde Labyrint radio me dezelfde vraag en dit voorjaar was het raak op Hoe?Zo! radio. Daarom hier, als service voor zoekers, tweeters en andere au-gefascineerden, mijn antwoord. In deze…
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On “unwritten” and “oral” languages
The world’s many endangered languages are often characterized as “unwritten” and “oral” languages. Both of these terms reveal the language ideologies still implicit in many academic approaches to language: “unwritten” defines by negation, revealing a bias towards stable, standardized abstractions of communicative behaviour (away from a dynamic conception of situated talk-in-interaction); and “oral” defines by…
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Better science through listening to lay people
Slides for a presentation given at the ECSITE 2013 Annual Conference on science communication. I spoke in a session convened by Alex Verkade (De Praktijk) and Jen Wong (Guerilla Science). The other speakers in the session were Bas Haring on ‘Ignorance is a virtue’, and Jen Wong on ‘Mixing science with art, music and play’. We…
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A poster on ideophones
No matter how large or complex a PhD thesis, it should be possible to present an outline of the main argument on a simple poster. On that note, here’s a 1-page summary of some of the key findings from my thesis on the meaning and use of ideophones. The occassion is a festive one: I’ve…
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Evolving words — now on DLC
“A struggle for life is constantly going on among quotations in academic writings. The better, the shorter, the easier forms are constantly gaining the upper hand and they owe their success to their own inherent virtue.” Sounds familiar? Perhaps because it’s a variation on a bon mot attributed to Charles Darwin that you may have seen in…