Study of Words

What is Linguistics?

By Dr. Kim Johnson of The Lukeion Project

Linguistics is defined as “The study of language.” It might seem as though human beings are experts in language. In every human culture across the globe, people communicate using spoken or signed language. There are around 7,000 languages of various types and relationships around the globe. Human beings typically speak and listen to language for their entire lives.

How do we think of concepts and then use our mouths to create sounds that are then translated into similar concepts in the hearer’s brain? How do the mechanics of language work? Why is the plural of mouse “mice,” but the plural of house isn’t “hice”?  Even when we make the plural the same way for two words, why do we pronounce the s in “dogs” differently than the s in “cats?” 

To study language we break it down into its component parts, mimicking how children learn to speak. We can talk about how to turn sounds into words, how to give words meanings, and how to turn words into sentences. In each of these areas, sometimes linguists focus on parts that are specific to one language and sometimes focus on universal traits of language.

How language sounds: Phonetics

The basic building blocks of language are the sounds we make using the tools of our mouth, tongue, throat and nose. Linguists have attempted to categorize all the sounds humans could possibly make according to what shape our mouth is, how the air is flowing, whether we are vibrating our nasal tract, and so on. Once we have these bits, called phonemes, we can study how sounds in one language vary across regions (accents) and how different languages use different sounds.

What makes a word:  Morphology

In The Lukeion Project’s word roots program, Witty Wordsmith, students join Wilbur as he examines words and their classical Latin and Greek roots. Word roots are one part of the area of morphology, the study of how we use words in a language.

There are more parts to words than just the roots, though. If I say, “I really flugged yesterday during class,” you would probably guess that “flug” is a verb. On the other hand, if I talked about flugition, you would know that flugition was a noun (and you would know how to pronounce it!) even though you wouldn’t have any idea what the word meant. The suffixes -ed and -ition are examples of morphemes, the smallest units of words that have meaning. The “s” that I added to cats and dogs is also an example of a morpheme. Studying how languages create words gives insight into how they work.

How language works: Syntax

In Barbarian Diagrammarian, students, along with the Barbarian Leland and his faithful Lemur, break down English sentences into their component parts and visually chart their relationships.

Syntax is how languages express relationships between words. Some parts of syntax are specific to a particular language but linguists also consider what is common to all languages. All sentences can be analyzed by breaking them apart into pieces which make sense together. For example, “The Lukeion instructor ate the delicious peach” can be broken down like this: “[  [[the] [[Lukeion] [instructor]]] [[ate] [[the] [[delicious] [peach]]]]”. To cut down on brackets, we can use trees or other ways to show the relationships between words.

In English, the constituents are typically right next to each other. In Latin the adjective “delicious” would belong to “peach” by virtue of its gender and case. Every language studied so far has two parts of a sentence: the subject and the predicate. Everything can be broken down into its constituent parts in different ways depending on the grammar.

And beyond!

In addition to these main building blocks, there are dozens of other areas that are parts of the subject area of linguistics. Linguists study the history and development of language such as how languages change and combine to make new languages. They also study how language is used in different societies and cultures. Psycholinguistics is the study of what is going on in people’s brains as they use language. Linguists study signed languages as well as spoken language. Any aspect of human interaction involves language, and therefore can be studied by linguists.

Why might you need linguistics?

If you are planning on learning more than one language, studying linguistics can help you make connections and highlight differences between languages. Knowing the history of how Latin morphed into Spanish, Italian and French can make learning those languages easier. Another joy of linguistics is learning about obscure or extinct languages and how their structure can be completely unfamiliar.

For those of you who are writers, linguistics can help you to create bold new languages for your stories. J. R. R. Tolkien is the premier example of a writer using language in his creation of a literary world. There are many other examples from Klingon (which is a language you can actually learn to speak) to even Parseltongue from the Harry Potter books.

These days, there is a great interest in trying to help computers understand and create language. It turns out that human beings bring a lot of complex background to understanding even simple sentences that cause computers a lot of trouble. To understand how to “teach” a computer to be better at understanding language, we must understand it better ourselves.

Of course, one of the best reasons to learn something is for the joy of learning something interesting and new. As I study linguistics to advise the Lukeion Linguistic Club, I am constantly amazed by the variety and complexity of the ways human beings communicate. My eyes are being opened to things that have always confused me but turn out to have rational explanations. Linguistics puzzles resemble mathematics puzzles in many ways. However, where competition math puzzles seem to rely on tricks and advanced knowledge, linguistics puzzles often rely on our human instinct as a speaker of a language.

What is the Lukeion Linguistics Club about?

Lukeion’s Linguistics Club serves a couple of purposes. First off, and importantly, it offers a space for students of Lukeion to get together in a less formal space and have some fun!  But that’s not all we do.

We talk some each week about various aspects of linguistics. So far, we have explored the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), some ambiguous sentences, and how to build meaning from words and suffixes. We plan on talking about constructed languages, language acquisition, and some of the history of English.

We also spend some time solving puzzles from the International Linguistics Olympiad. These are logical-language puzzles that highlight aspects of language like word order, declensions, affixes, and so on. Homeschool students can sign up to compete in these national and international linguistics competitions. The puzzles are fun for their own sake---they involve languages from across the globe and many interesting constructions.

If any of this strikes your fancy, all current Lukeion students are invited to join us for linguistics club. We meet on Fridays from 1-2 PM (Eastern time). Email me to join the mailing list, class web page, and address for our Adobe Connect meeting room.

 

 

 

Laistrygonians, Cyclops, and Angry Poseidon

Welcome Adventurers! 

By Dr. Susan Fisher at The Lukeion Project

You may not be boarding a physical ship for ports unknown, but the beginning of a new school year is its own odyssey.

Plans are made, provisions are gathered, and expectations are set, by both you and your crew of parents, teachers, coaches, and even admissions departments for some. In this sea of new syllabi, schedules, and deadlines it can become all too easy to see your year as a set of boxes to check off or a race to the finish line. It is important to meet your deadlines - this will make your journey way more pleasant and productive – but your upcoming year is about so much more than crossing t’s and dotting i’s. This school year is about the journey as much as the destination.

One who understood this concept better than many was the late 19th – early 20th century Greek poet, Constantine Kavafys. Drawing on his Classical heritage, Kavafys wrote his now-famous poem, Ithaka, about the importance of the journey. More specifically, the importance of mindset for the journey.

Ithaka  

-- By Constantine Kavafys (Translated from Greek by Edmund Keeley)

As you set out for Ithaka

hope your road is a long one,

full of adventure, full of discovery.

Laistrygonians, Cyclops,

angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:

you’ll never find things like that on your way

as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,

as long as a rare excitement

stirs your spirit and your body.

Laistrygonians, Cyclops,

wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them

unless you bring them along inside your soul,

unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

 

Hope your road is a long one.

May there be many summer mornings when,

with what pleasure, what joy,

you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time;

may you stop at Phoenician trading stations

to buy fine things,

mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,

sensual perfume of every kind—

as many sensual perfumes as you can;

and may you visit many Egyptian cities

to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

 

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.

Arriving there is what you’re destined for.

But don’t hurry the journey at all.

Better if it lasts for years,

so you’re old by the time you reach the island,

wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,

not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

 

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.

Without her you wouldn't have set out.

She has nothing left to give you now.

 

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.

Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,

you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

 

You may have read that first stanza and thought, “Do I really hope this journey is long?” Summer and sleeping in is pretty fabulous after all. But do you really want the journey to be short, without enough time to soak up all you’re doing and let it impact you? Wonder, learning, growth all take time. Plus, there are roses to be sniffed and songs to be sung along the way and gathering treasures takes time too.

What might those treasures be that you will be gathering? Not likely ebony or mother-of-pearl, but perhaps new facts, new skills, new knowledge about yourself, your abilities, your hopes and dreams. These are infinitely more precious, I dare say.

Gathering these treasures takes work and perseverance. It often involves battling monsters seen and unseen as well. Your foes – your Laistrygonians, Cyclops and angry Poseidon – might be internet outages or ornery platforms. Or these monsters may rear their heads in the form of procrastination, perfectionism, a lack of confidence, or something else. These are the enemies Kavafys is writing about – the ones we bring along in our own souls that can sabotage our journeys.

Do not fret, brave adventurer, if you encounter any of these monsters, because you already possess the ability to defeat them. How? Follow the advice of Kavafys! Keep your thoughts raised high – higher than the to-do list and negative self-talk – and let the excitement of what you are learning and who you are becoming be your guides.

Like Odysseus, you will reach your Ithaka – the end of this year – and you will already be rich from the many things you have gained along the way. How exciting this adventure will be and we at the Lukeion Project are thrilled to be on it with you!

 

Learn the Rules and Tools for Good Academic Writing

Focus, Development, Organization, Sources, Technique, Editing

 By Randee Baty at The Lukeion Project

    “My teacher just doesn’t like my writing style!” I remember my daughter coming home from college with this complaint about her English professor.

    Most writing instructors and professors don’t care about style, at least not as students think about "writing style.” Those that evaluate student writing for a living have fairly objective criteria for judging a student’s work, whether it is creative, academic, or any other type of writing. Parents and students alike can learn to apply the same criteria to any writing project to see if something is objectively well-written or poorly written.

    Writing instructors, at least the kind most likely to help build strong student writing skills, typically use rubrics to grade writing. If they don’t use a rubric, they have some sort of checklist that keeps them focused on objectively analyzing student writing. Our rubric for research writing at The Lukeion Project has six criteria: focus, development, organization, use of sources, technique, and editing. These guideposts provide clear goals for students to meet without worrying whether the instructor “likes” their “style” or even agrees with their conclusions!

Focus

    The paper should relentlessly focus on the prompt given. For instance, if a student is asked to analyze Moby-Dick, they are not being asked for a biography of Herman Melville. That is extraneous information unless something in Moby-Dick specifically relates to the author’s life. Then the student would need to give enough information to relate those elements together, but not more. Analyze the prompt, know what you are being asked, and don’t stray away from the prompt as you devise your answer. If you do, the instructor will deduct points because of a lack of focus. Well-written papers are focused.

Development   

    Whatever point the writer wishes to make requires evidence or analytical reasoning to back it up. Unsupported statements or claims will not fly in academic writing. If a student says that Julius Caesar was an ambitious leader on his way to becoming a tyrant, he must provide plenty of evidence to support his conclusion. The student can’t, like Brutus and Cassius, simply make guesses about Caesar’s plans. Students should give examples of his behavior and use analysis of his behavior and accomplishments to make their point. Vague thoughts or feelings won’t work. It’s all about evidence and analysis. Whether or not the instructor agrees with conclusions does not matter in the paper’s grade as long as the writer has strong support and evidence to back up the argument. Well-written papers have evidence and analysis to support the author’s point.

Organization

    A good paper will have proper essay structure, paragraph structure, and reasonable progression through the argument being made. The essay needs to begin with an introduction that ends in a thesis statement. Well-developed body paragraphs must follow with relevant evidence. Evidence and analysis must relate back to the thesis statement without getting off track. The conclusion should tie all the evidence together and answer the “so what?” test (your readers should never wonder “so what?” after reading your work).

    Paragraphs should begin with a topic sentence, and everything in that paragraph must relate to that topic sentence. One point of the student’s argument must logically follow the previous point. If a student argues that settling Mars is too expensive for NASA to consider, she shouldn’t follow that conclusion by listing the benefits of settling Mars. Simply following logical thought-progressions will go a long way to improve a good analytical project. Check through the paper to ensure it progresses in an organized manner toward the conclusion. Well-written papers are organized and flow from one point to the next.

Excellent Sources

  Use sources appropriate to the paper. Always use them in a way that enhances the argument rather than hijacking it. Always cite the sources are appropriately. Appropriate sources offer credibility to the written project, but students struggle to understand what sources trustworthy and which ones are best left out. For example, some hobbyist’s blog or opinion piece won’t offer much credibility but a source written by a person with a proven academic track record as an expert in the topic will be best for a good academic assignment. Check the credentials of the writer so you are only using the best and most reliable expert sources. If you can’t tell who the author is or find out that author’s background in that subject area, don’t use that source! 

Works that are older than about 25 years should be used with caution on many academic topics to avoid using out-of-date information. Only use an older source if you can verify that that source is foundational and formative for an understanding of your subject matter. If you aren’t aware how much more we’ve come to know about most subjects over the last 25 years, you are the perfect candidate to avoid all older academic sources! In that span of time, we’ve gone from email being new and optional to vast libraries of data being accessible at every laptop in mere seconds after a few keystrokes. Most 16-year-old writers can’t appreciate what data-accessibility has done to change the shape of research in the last two decades. Parents, here’s where you get to entertain your student with stories about life before technology!   

Once you accumulate several reliable researchers in your subject matter, don’t let those sources replace the point that you want to make. Quoting extensively from a biography on J.R.R. Tolkien must never replace the argument you were supposed to be making on the influences of Finnish authors on The Lord of the Rings. Quotations or information from any source must enhance what the student has already observed from their reading of Tolkien. Don’t let one (or two or three) sources hijack a paper. An author must always do her own analysis. Too many quotations turn the paper into a wiki rather than an academic research paper and will show the instructor that you are more focused on hitting the word-count rather than examining and analyzing relevant information.  

Part of using sources well is mastering how to cite sources well. Citing your sources is a foundational principle in academic writing but it strikes fear in the heart of student and parent alike primarily due to a lack of experience with citation. The good news is this: methods for citing are set. Students should learn either MLA or APA formatting as early as possible during late middle school and high school. MLA is the most used formatting method in the humanities and by most colleges. Various resources are available to help students learn these methods but writing that doesn’t cite sources will be graded very harshly. Good writing uses sources must support rather than hijack an argument and all sources must be cited whether they are being quoted or employed to supply any relevant data.

Technique

There are several essential writing conventions that young authors must learn, master, and employ evermore. These are the basic rules of academic writing. These techniques are fairly different from casual writing (like this blog) or creative composition. Being aware of these academic writing laws show that the student writer comprehends the task well and is writing skillfully.  These are things that can be objectively graded because good writing uses the techniques expected when one scholar writes to another. Here are a few of the biggies on the list of academic writing laws:

• Always write in third person (he, she, it, they) with no first (I, we) or second person (you) ever appearing in any academic writing.
• Keep writing concise. Use no unnecessary words such as “very,” “interestingly,” “in conclusion,” “furthermore,” or “really.” In fact, simply eliminate 95% of your modifiers and intensifiers. They always clutter and conceal rather than enhance. You might arrive at your word count faster by including them, but your work will be judged more harshly.
• Remove all slang, cliches, or casual language. There’s plenty of room in casual and creative writing for these things. They don’t belong in academic writing.
• Keep the writing in an academic tone while you avoid sounding pompous or pretentious.
• Use the shortest word that fits the sentence rather than the longest word (use “use” rather than utilize “utilize.”). The reader should be able to read without stumbling over difficult constructions or long rambling sentences with too many clauses.

Proofreading

         Employ proper spelling, punctuation, and grammar always. Use proper formatting according to MLA, APA, or whatever format the instructor requires (and remember that everything in a paper is formatted). Edit your work several times before handing it off to somebody else to read. If you really want to catch all errors, have that person read your work out loud to you. No matter how many times you edit your work by reading it silently to yourself, an objective reader will always find areas that need work.

         As you can read, nothing here says anything about “style” per se. Grading for academic work is clear-cut and nothing is subjective or based on mood, whim, or personality. If you get a lower-than-preferred score, it is because one or more of these areas are lacking, not because the instructor dislikes your style. By focusing on these aspects, you’ll be able to objectively help your student--or help yourself--become a better writer.