The 5-Minute Linguist; Bite-sized Essays on Language and Languages; Myrick; Wolfram

Edited by

Caroline Myrick [+–]

North Carolina State University

Caroline Myrick holds a PhD from the Department of Sociology at North Carolina State University, with specializations in sociolinguistics and social inequality. Her research addresses language variation and change in the Caribbean as well as language and gender ideologies.

Walt Wolfram [+–]

North Carolina State University

Walt Wolfram is a William C. Friday Distinguished Professor of English Linguistics at North Carolina State University. Although he is most noted for his research on American dialects, his sociolinguistic career started with the study of speaking in tongues.

The Five-Minute Linguist provides a lively, reader-friendly introduction to the subject of language suitable for the general reader and beginning students. The book offers brief essays on more than 60 intriguing questions such as “What’s the difference between a language and a dialect?” Can animals understand us?” “What causes foreign accents?” and “How is language used on social media?” These are conveniently organized into 12 topical areas that include What is Linguistics, Language and Thought, Language and Society, and Language and Technology, among others.

Each essay is written by a leading authority in the specialization who offers succinct, insightful answers to questions that most of us have wondered about, with follow-up references to more in-depth reading on each question. The third edition adds new topics now at the forefront of linguistics and updates others, serving as an unrivaled introduction to the mysteries and intrigue of language. The third edition of this book was produced under the sponsorship of the Linguistic Society of America.

Foreword

Foreword [+–] xiii-xvi

Ben Zimmer

Journalist

Ben Zimmer is a linguist, lexicographer, and all-around word nut. He is the language columnist for The Wall Street Journal and a contributing editor to The Atlantic. He serves as chair of the New Words Committee of the American Dialect Society and is the recipient of the Linguistic Society of America’s first-ever Linguistics Journalism Award.

The 5-Minute Linguist provides a lively, reader-friendly introduction to the subject of language suitable for the general reader and beginning students. The book offers brief essays on more than 60 intriguing questions such as “What’s the difference between a language and a dialect?” Can animals understand us?” “What causes foreign accents?” and “How is language used on social media?” These are conveniently organized into 12 topical areas that include What is Linguistics, Language and Thought, Language and Society, and Language and Technology, among others. Each essay is written by a leading authority in the specialization who offers succinct, insightful answers to questions that most of us have wondered about, with follow-up references to more in-depth reading on each question. The third edition adds new topics now at the forefront of linguistics and updates others, serving as an unrivaled introduction to the mysteries and intrigue of language. The third edition of this book was produced under the sponsorship of the Linguistic Society of America.

Introduction

Introduction [+–] 1-4

Caroline Myrick,Walt Wolfram

North Carolina State University

What is Linguistics?

1. Why Learn about Language? [+–] 7-10

Robert Rodman†

Robert Rodman was a UCLA-trained linguist and professor in the Department of Computer Science at North Carolina State University. He was co-author of a best-selling linguistics textbook, An Introduction to Language. Rodman was also a forensic linguist and consulted with the judiciary in matters involving language and the legal system. In 2009, he was elected into the American Academy of Social Sciences for his achievements in Computational Forensic Linguistics.

This chapter emphasizes the fact that what distinguishes us from all the other creatures is language. It points out some of the issues to be addressed in the book and the manner in which they will be addressed.

2. You’re a Linguist? How Many Languages do You Speak? [+–] 11-15

Paul Chapin†

Paul Chapin received his Ph.D. in linguistics from MIT in 1967. After eight years on the faculty at the University of California at San Diego, he went to the National Science Foundation in 1975, where he became the first NSF Program Director for Linguistics. When he retired from the NSF in 2001, he received the Director’s Superior Accomplishment Award. That same year, the LSA awarded him the first Victoria A. Fromkin Award for Distinguished Service to the Profession.

People who speak multiple languages are called ‘polyglots’. Many linguists work on describing particular languages. Some linguists work at the more abstract level of linguistic theory, while others study speech or historical linguistics. Psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, sociolinguistics are other disciplines that explore what language is about.

3. What’s the Difference between Dialects and Languages? [+–] 16-20

G. Tucker Childs

Portland State University

G. Tucker Childs is a professor and chair in the Applied Linguistics Department of Portland State University in Portland, Oregon, where he teaches courses in phonetics, phonology, language variation, pidgins and creoles, African American English, and sociolinguistics. He and several of his students have done research on the dialects of Portland, realized as the ‘Portland Dialect Study’ (www.pds.pdx.edu). His interests, however, focus on African languages, including the pidgins and new urban varieties spoken on the continent, his most recent book in that area being An Introduction to African Languages (2003). More recently he has been documenting dying languages in Guinea (www.ling.pdx.edu/childs/MDP.html) and Sierra Leone (www.pdx.edu/dkb), for which he recently received the Kenneth L. Hale Award from the LSA. He has taught at universities in the United States, Canada, Europe and Africa, and has been a visiting researcher at France’s National Council for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Paris, at Fourah Bay College (Sierra Leone), and at the University of Conakry (Guinea).

While there is no generally agreed-upon way to distinguish between a ‘language’ and a ‘dialect’, language can mean the generally accepted standard (the variety sanctioned by the government and/or the media), while dialects are versions of the standard that vary from region to region. Language varieties tend to be labeled dialects rather than languages for non-linguistic reasons, usually political or ideological.

4. Do All Languages have the Same Grammar? [+–] 21-24

Mark C. Baker

Rutgers University

Mark Baker was trained in linguistics at MIT under Noam Chomsky. He is now professor of linguistics and cognitive science at Rutgers University, where he specializes in the word structure and sentence structure of less-studied languages, especially those spoken in Africa and the Americas.

Languages seem to have as many similarities in their structure as they have differences. While it is not quite true that all languages have the same grammar, it is much closer to being true than you might have thought.

5. How Many Languages are there in the World? [+–] 25-29

M. Paul Lewis

SIL International

M. Paul Lewis is a senior consultant in sociolinguistics with SIL International (a nonprofit faith-based language development organization) and from 2005–2016 was the editor of Ethnologue: Languages of the World. He is the co-author, with Gary F. Simons, of Sustaining Language Use: Perspectives on Community-Based Language Development (2016, Dallas: SIL International). He holds a Ph.D. in linguistics from Georgetown University. The twenty-first edition of Ethnologue was published in 2018.

Counting languages is a matter of definitions. How many languages there are depends on how you define “a language” and when you count. Languages, like people, are born, change and grow, sometimes have offspring, and eventually die.

6. Why is Chomsky Such a Big Deal in Linguistics? [+–] 30-34

Greg Carlson

University of Rochester

Greg Carlson is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics, Philosophy, and Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the University of Rochester, where he has been since 1987. He has taught at the University of California at Irvine, the University of Iowa, Wayne State University, the LSA Summer Institute, the European Summer School, the University of Wisconsin, and the University of Trondheim (Norway), and visited at the Max Planck Institute (Netherlands). His research interests focus on natural language semantics with a special interest in generics; he also conducts research in experimental psycholinguistics, with other strong interests in philosophy and computer science. Publications include Reference to Kinds in English (Garland, 1980), The Generic Book (Chicago, 1995), and Sold on Language: How Advertisers Talk to You and What This Says About You (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010). He served as editor in chief of Linguistics and Philosophy (1992-1997) and editor of Language (2009-2017). His dissertation advisor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Prof. Barbara Partee, was one of Chomsky’s earliest students.

Noam Chomsky is one of the most well-known names in linguistics—in fact, he is possibly the world’s most famous linguist of all time. This chapter breaks down two of Chomsky’s biggest contributions to the field of linguistics: his theories of ‘transformational-generative grammar’ and ‘universal grammar’.

Language Structure

7. How are the Sounds of a Language Made? [+–] 37-40

Peter Ladefoged†

Peter Ladefoged, Professor of Phonetics Emeritus at UCLA, was the world’s foremost linguistic phonetician and one of the most important figures in linguistics in the twentieth century. He published 10 books and 130 scholarly articles on various aspects of the theory and practice of phonetics and the phonetic properties of specific languages. The essay above was one of the last pieces he wrote before his death in early 2006.

There are so many languages and dialects, the vocal apparatus can produce such a wide variety of sounds, and each of us has a different way of speaking our own language. Thus, describing the sounds of the world’s languages is an infinitely challenging task and one of the most fascinating aspects of the study of language.

8. Is there a Right Way to Put Words Together? [+–] 41-44

Dennis Preston

Oklahoma State University

View Website

Dennis R. Preston is Regents Professor, Oklahoma State University and University Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Michigan State University. He served as visiting professor at several U.S. universities and in Poland, Brazil, New Zealand, and Denmark. He was President of the American Dialect Society and served on the board of that society and the Linguistic Society of America, as well as the editorial boards of Language and others. His work focused on sociolinguistics, dialectology, and minority varieties and education. He revitalized folk linguistics and has provided variationist accounts of second-language acquisition. Some publications are, with Nancy Niedzielski, Folk Linguistics (2000), with Daniel Long, A Handbook of Perceptual Dialectology II (2002), Needed Research in American Dialects (2003), with Brian Joseph and Carol Preston, Linguistic Diversity in Michigan and Ohio (2005), with James Stanford, Variation in Indigenous Minority Languages (2009), and, with Nancy Niedzielski, A Reader in Sociophonetics (2010). He is a fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and holds the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Polish Republic.

Words and combinations of words don’t have a ‘real’ meaning. They only mean what we agree they’ll mean, and different groups may come to different agreements. Besides, language isn’t a fixed system. It evolves.

9. What Makes a Word ‘Real’? [+–] 45-49

Anne Curzan

University of Michigan

Anne Curzan is Geneva Smitherman Collegiate Professor at the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on the history of the English language, language and gender, lexicography, and pedagogy; her most recent book is Fixing English: Prescriptivism and Language History (2014). She also appears weekly on the segment “That’s What They Say” on local NPR station Michigan Radio.

One could argue that slang words like ‘hangry,’ ‘defriend’ and ‘adorkable’ fill crucial meaning gaps in the English language, even if they don’t appear in the dictionary. After all, who actually decides which words make it into those pages? What makes a word real?

10. What is Grammatical Gender? [+–] 50-53

Caroline Myrick

North Carolina State University

Languages have ‘natural gender’ if animate males are assigned the masculine, animate females the feminine, and inanimate objects are assigned the neuter gender. Languages have ‘formal gender’ if they assign a gender to nouns arbitrarily. But is formal gender completely arbitrary? Some argue that the gendering of nouns has cognitive implications for speakers.

11. What is an Artificial Language? [+–] 54-57

Christopher Moseley

Independent scholar

Christopher Moseley is a university lecturer, writer and freelance translator, editor of the Encyclopedia of the World’s Endangered Languages (2006) and the UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger (2009), as well as co-editor of the Atlas of the World’s Languages (1993). He has a special interest in artificial languages (and has created one himself).

How and why do people invent languages? This chapter discusses fictional languages—such as Klingon and Dothraki—as well as attempts made at an international language, like Esperanto.

12. Do Animals Use Language? [+–] 58-62

Donna Jo Napoli

Swarthmore College

Donna Jo Napoli is Professor of Linguistics at Swarthmore College. She publishes primarily on the structure of Italian and of sign languages. She also writes children’s fiction: http://www.swarthmore.edu/donna-jo-napoli.

Animals communicate with one another in ways that meet some, but not all criteria of a human language. Most language researchers agree that this means animals don’t use language.

Language and Communication

13. What Happens if You are Raised without Language? [+–] 65-68

Susan Curtiss

UCLA

Susan Curtiss is Professor Emerita of Linguistics at UCLA. She is the author of Genie: A Psycholinguistic Study of a Modern-Day ‘Wild Child’, as well as of close to one hundred journal articles and book chapters. She has also authored numerous language tests, including the Curtiss-Yamada Comprehensive Language Evaluation (the CYCLE), used by researchers across the U.S. and overseas. Her research spans the study of language and mind, the ‘critical period’ for first language acquisition, Specific Language Impairment (SLI), mental retardation, epilepsy, adult aphasia, progressive dementia, the genetics of language, and language development following hemispherectomy (removal of one hemisphere of the brain) in childhood. Her current work focuses on mapping grammar onto the brain in normal and epileptic adults.

This chapter provides a description of language deprivation using examples from both individual cases and the deaf population. The consequences of language deprivation FOR the development of grammar as well as the lateralization of language in the brain are briefly discussed. The possibility that development of grammar during early childhood may trigger the pre-programmed lateralization of all higher-level cognition in the brain is raised.

14. Can Animals Understand Us? [+–] 69-73

Robin Queen

University of Michigan

Robin Queen is an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and Professor of Linguistics, German, English and the Honors Program at the University of Michigan. She is the author of Vox Popular: The Surprising Life of Language and the Media (2015); co-author of Through the Golden Door: Educational Approaches for Immigrant Adolescents (1998) and author or co-author of publications in the areas of language contact; language, gender, and sexuality; and language in the mass media. She was the co-editor with Anne Curzan of the Journal of English Linguistics (2006-2012) and is a Fellow of the Linguistic Society of America. She has been researching, documenting and theorizing shepherds’ communication with sheepdogs since 2012 and competes in sheep herding competitions with her border collies. She lives on a small hobby farm with a merry band of cats, dogs, chickens, and sheep.

When your dog or cat (or parrot or iguana) stares deeply into your eyes while you pour out your deepest secrets, it seems obvious that animals understand us humans. Yet, when it comes to language, things get a bit more complicated. This chapter discusses what exactly non-human animals can understand of what we say to them, as well as why they can’t understand even more.

15. What is ‘Speaking in Tongues’? [+–] 74-77

Walt Wolfram

North Carolina State University

‘Speaking in tongues’, or, more technically, ‘glossolalia’, is not an uncommon linguistic phenomenon. Glossolalia has been documented in Christianity as well as other religions and in some non-religious practices.

16. How Many Kinds of Writing Systems are there? [+–] 78-82

Peter T. Daniels

Independent Scholar

Peter T. Daniels, the world’s leading expert on writing systems, holds degrees in linguistics from Cornell University and the University of Chicago. His first interests were in Comparative Semitic linguistics, which built to the study of writing and decipherment. His challenge to his teacher I. J. Gelb’s influential theories of the evolution of scripts has led to a persistent search for legitimate principles of the nature and development of writing. He is co-editor (with William Bright) of and principal contributor to The World’s Writing Systems (1996) and is hte author of An Exploration of Writing (Equinox, 2018).

People used to say that there are three kinds of writing systems—the Chinese kind, the Indian kind, and the Hebrew and English kind (logographies, syllabaries, and alphabets). But when we look more closely, we find that we need to name five kinds, recognizing that Hebrew and English writing, and Indian and Japanese writing, use quite different kinds of writing system. Different kinds work better for different languages.

17. What Ever Happened to Esperanto? [+–] 83-86

Arika Okrent,E. M. Rickerson

Journalist

Arika Okrent received a joint Ph.D. in the Department of Linguistics and the Department of Psychology’s Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience Program at the University of Chicago. She has written about language for The American Scholar, Tin House, and Slate. In the course of writing her 2009 book In the Land of Invented Languages, she earned a first-level certification in Klingon. She is editor-at-large of The Week, and is a frequent contributor to Mental Floss. In 2015 she received LSA Linguistics Journalism Award.

College of Charleston

E. M. (‘Rick’) Rickerson served as the General Editor of the first and second editions of this book. He is Professor Emeritus of German, Director Emeritus of the award-winning language program at the College of Charleston (South Carolina), a former Deputy Director of the U.S. government’s Center for the Advancement of Language Learning, and an Associate of the National Museum of Language. In 2005 he created the radio series on languages (Talkin’ about Talk) from which The Five-Minute Linguist was been adapted. He is currently retired in the mountains of North Carolina.

The only proposal of an international language that had lasting success was Esperanto, invented in Poland in the late nineteenth century by Ludwig Zamenhof. It was created in 1887, got a boost in popularity in the 1920s and even became a candidate to be the official language of the League of Nations. Esperanto is by far the most successful language in the long history of language invention. It isn’t a universal language, and it’s unlikely to become one, but it has become a living language.

Language and Thought

18. Why Do Linguists Study Brains? [+–] 89-92

Lise Menn

University of Colorado, Boulder

Lise Menn is a linguist who worked as a neuropsychology technician and research neurolinguist at the Harold Goodglass Aphasia Research Center of the Boston University School of Medicine before starting her teaching career in the Linguistics Department at the University of Colorado, Boulder, in 1986. Her research has focused on normal language development in young children and on the psycholinguistics of adult aphasia caused by strokes. Many of her books and research papers have been co-authored with psychologists and speech-language pathologists.

Everything we know and everything we know how to do must be stored in our brains. So language and everything we know about it is in our brains: how to pronounce words, what they mean, how to put them together to make sentences, and how to use sentences plus tone of voice, loudness, etc. to communicate our thoughts. Linguists study brains for two reasons: Some join teams of clinical researchers working to understand how particular brain injuries cause particular language problems. Other linguists study brains because they want to know whether language is stored in our brains in separate parts, ‘knowledge’ and ‘mechanisms for speaking and understanding’, or as a single integrated system for speaking and understanding.

19. Does our Language Affect the Way We Think? [+–] 93-97

Geoffrey K. Pullum

University of Edinburgh

Geoffrey K. Pullum was a professional rock musician for five years before doing a B.A. degree in Language at the University of York and earning the Ph.D. in General Linguistics at the University of London. For many years he worked as a professor of linguistics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2003. After moving to the University of Edinburgh in 2007, he became Head of Linguistics and English Language, and was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2009. He has published about 280 articles and books on many topics in linguistics, including a major reference grammar of English, The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (2002, co-authored with Rodney Huddleston), which was awarded the LSA’s Leonard Bloomfield Book Award in January 2004. His latest book is Linguistics: Why It Matters (Polity, 2018).

Language and thought are closely related. Language helps us to represent thought explicitly in our minds. It helps us reason, plan, remember, and communicate. However, the idea that our language shapes or determines how we think is pure speculation, and it’s hard to imagine what could possibly support that speculation even in principle.

20. How does the Brain Handle Multiple Languages? [+–] 98-102

Judith Kroll,Kinsey Bice

University of California, Riverside

Judith F. Kroll is Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Riverside and the former director of the Center for Language Science at Pennsylvania State University. The research that she and her students conduct concerns the way that bilinguals juggle the presence of two languages in one mind and brain. Their work, supported by NSF and NIH, shows that bilingualism provides a tool for revealing the interplay between language and cognition that is otherwise obscure in speakers of one language alone. She is a Fellow of the AAAS, the APA, the APS, the Psychonomic Society, and the Society of Experimental Psychologists. She was one of the founding editors of the journal Bilingualism: Language and Cognition (Cambridge University Press), a founding organizer of Women in Cognitive Science, a group developed to promote the advancement of women in the cognitive sciences and supported by NSF (http://womenincogsci.org/), and a co-founder of Bilingualism Matters at UC Riverside (www.bilingualismmatters.ucr.edu).

University of Washington

Kinsey Bice is a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Psychology at the University of Washington. Her research considers what individual differences make it easier or better to learn a new language later in life, and also how to put people into the right state of mind to maximize language learning. She received her Ph.D. from the Department of Psychology at Pennsylvania State University with a dual title in Language Science and a specialization in Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. Her work has been supported by the NSF, the Dingwall Foundation and the Washington Research Foundation. As a member of Bilingualism Matters, she seeks to dispel myths about bilingualism and language learning to illuminate how bilingualism is not only normal, but most likely beneficial for children, adults, and society.

More people in the world are bilingual than monolingual, suggesting that learning and using two languages is common. The brain can easily juggle two languages but bilingualism has consequences for cognition and for the interplay across the two languages themselves.

21. Can You Lose Language? [+–] 103-107

Daniel Kempler,Mira Goral

Emerson College

Daniel Kempler is Professor Emeritus at Emerson College, and trained as a linguist and speech-language pathologist. His research has focused on neurologically based communication disorders and he has published widely on aphasia, dementia, Parkinson’s disease and is the author of Neurocognitive Disorders in Aging (2005). His teaching and clinical work has emphasized voice disorders. He has held the positions of Chief of Speech Pathology at USC and Professor and Chair of Communication Sciences and Disorders at Emerson College.

City University of New York

Mira Goral, Ph.D., CCC-SLP, is a Professor of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences at Lehman College and the Executive Officer of the Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences program at the Graduate Center of The City University of New York. She is also an Adjunct Professor at The Center for Multilingualism in Society across the Lifespan, the University of Oslo. She has published journal articles and book chapters in the areas of bilingualism, multilingualism, aphasia, language attrition, and language and cognition in aging, and has co-edited two books, Aspects of Multilingual Aphasia (2012) and Bilingualism: A Framework for Understanding the Mental Lexicon (2017).

This chapter addresses language loss as the result of a neurological condition, such as aphasia and dementia, as well as the loss of one’s first language as a result of migration and/or increased dominance of another language.

History of Language

22. What was the Original Language? [+–] 111-114

Barry Hilton

Independent scholar

Barry Hilton served as the Associate Editor of the first and second editions of this book and was a member of the review board of the radio series from which it was adapted. He is a freelance writer/editor and independent scholar living in Maine. He is an honors graduate of Harvard College who, after graduate studies at Cornell, Yale, and George Washington Universities and the Foreign Service Institute, has travelled extensively and lived in both Europe and Asia. In a variety of U.S. government assignments, he has made professional use of Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, French and German. He describes himself as an ‘armchair philologist and recovering polyglot’.

The chapter presents the opinions of various researchers regarding the emergence of language. Thus, studies of historical linguists, paleontologists, anatomists as well as multidisciplinary efforts are considered in order to explore the way in which the earliest language functioned.

23. Do All Languages Come from the Same Source? [+–] 115-119

Allan R. Bomhard

Independent scholar

Allan R. Bomhard is a linguist living in Florence, South Carolina. His main areas of interest are distant linguistic relationship and Indo-European comparative linguistics. He has published over eighty articles and thirteen books.

The Indo-European language family is the most widely spoken group of languages in the world today. Non-Indo-European languages can be grouped together or, according to some theorists, all of the world languages can be grouped together into a giant family.

24. What Language did Adam and Eve Speak? [+–] 120-123

E. M. Rickerson

College of Charleston

None of the languages currently spoken on the planet bears any resemblance to what may have been spoken in the legendary Garden of Eden.

25. Where Does Grammar Come From? [+–] 124-127

Joan Bybee

University of New Mexico

Joan Bybee (Ph.D., UCLA) is Distinguished Emerita Professor of Linguistics at the University of New Mexico. At the University of New Mexico she has served as Associate Dean and Department Chair. In 2004 she served as President of the Linguistic Society of America. Professor Bybee is considered a leader in the study of the way language use impacts language structure. She has authored books and articles on phonology, morphology, language typology and language change. Her book The Evolution of Grammar (1994) uses a database of seventy-six languages to study the way in which languages spontaneously develop new grammatical structures.

All languages have grammar and they develop it in the same way. We know this because we can observe how grammar changes over time in many different languages.

26. Where did Writing Come From? [+–] 128-131

Peter T. Daniels

Independent Scholar

Writing begins when a society has developed a complex enough culture (“urbanization”)—and when that culture’s language is “monosyllabic.” This happened, we know, in ancient Mesopotamia, China, and Mesoamerica. Once writing has developed, neighboring peoples (perhaps they didn’t meet the two criteria) can borrow, and often adapt, writing for their own.

27. Where did English Come From? [+–] 132-135

John Algeo

University of Georgia

John Algeo is Professor Emeritus at the University of Georgia. He is the author of British or American English? A Handbook of Word and Grammar Patterns (2006) and The Origins and Development of the English Language (sixth edition 2010), and editor of The Cambridge History of the English Language: Volume 6, English in North America (2002) and Fifty Years Among the New Words (1993). He was past president of the Dictionary Society of North America, the American Dialect Society, and the American Name Society. He and his wife, Adele, wrote ‘Among the New Words’ in the journal American Speech for ten years.

In the fifth century, Germanic tribes took over the British Isles where Celts were living. Two of the main tribes came from regions called Angeln and Saxony, which is why the language they brought to Britain was called ‘Anglo-Saxon’.

28. Is Latin Really Dead? [+–] 136-139

Frank Morris

College of Charleston

Frank Morris earned a Ph.D. in Classics from the University of Cincinnati and taught Latin and Greek at the College of Charleston in Charleston, SC from 1978 until his retirement in 2010. He continues to serve as Director of the Charleston Latin Program, and has been training teachers to teach Latin in elementary schools since the mid-1980s.

While most believe that Latin is a dead language vital only for philologists and specialized historians and archaeologists, Latin is alive and at work in many and interesting ways in the modern world. This chapter addresses its many functions.

Language Variation and Change

29. Do Languages Have to Change? [+–] 143-146

John McWhorter

Columbia University

John McWhorter, a contributing editor at The Atlantic who also teaches linguistics at Columbia, earned his Ph.D. in linguistics from Stanford University in 1993 and became Associate Professor of Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley, after teaching at Cornell. His academic specialty is language change and language contact. He is the author of Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold Story of English (2008); The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language (2003); Words on the Move (2016); The Language Hoax (2015); and Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music in America and Why We Should, Like, Care (2003). He has written books on Black English such as Talking Back, Talking Black (2016) and on creoles such as The Creole Debate (2018). Dr. McWhorter has appeared on radio and television programs such as The Colbert Report, Late Night with Don Lemon, AM Joy with Joy Reid, The Jim Lehrer NewsHour, and All Things Considered, and he hosts Slate’s linguistics podcast, Lexicon Valley.

Languages are always changing. Every language is in the process of changing into a new one.

30. Aren’t Pidgins and Creoles Just Bad English? [+–] 147-150

John M. Lipski

The Pennsylvania State University

View Website

John M. Lipski is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Spanish Linguistics in the Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese and director of the Program in Linguistics at Pennsylvania State University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Alberta, Canada. His research interests include Spanish phonology, Spanish and Portuguese dialectology and language variation, the linguistic aspects of bilingualism, and the African contribution to Spanish and Portuguese. He is the author of twelve books and more than 250 articles on all aspects of linguistics. He has served as editor of the journal Hispanic Linguistics and as associate editor of Hispania, and is currently acquisitions editor for the Spanish linguistics monograph series at Georgetown University Press. He has done fieldwork in Spain (including the Canary Islands), Africa, Brazil and all Spanish-speaking countries in Latin America, the Philippines, Guam, and many Spanish-speaking communities within the United States.

A pidgin is a language formed among people who share no native language and are forced to communicate using elements of one that none of them speaks well. The new languages, spoken natively by the next generation in the family, are called creole languages by linguists.

31. Do Deaf People Everywhere Use the Same Sign Language? [+–] 151-155

Leila Monaghan

Northern Arizona University

Leila Monaghan teaches Anthropology at Northern Arizona University. She received her Ph.D. in linguistic anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles and her dissertation work was with the New Zealand Deaf community. She also has a recent MA in history from the University of Wyoming. Her publications include a co-edited book Many Ways to be Deaf (Gallaudet University Press, 2003), a 2002 Annual Review of Anthropology article on Deaf communities with Richard Senghas, HIV/AIDS and Deafness (co-edited with Constanze Schmaling, Forest Books, 2006), and “Women at Little Bighorn” in Montana Magazine of Western History (2017).

Sign languages have all the linguistic features that spoken languages have (except sound). Sign languages have complex grammars, so that words can be strung together into sentences, and sentences into stories. With signs, any topic, from concrete to abstract, from street slang to physics can be discussed. Moreover, sign languages vary, just as spoken languages do.

32. Do Men and Women Talk Differently? [+–] 156-159

Deborah Cameron

Oxford University

Deborah Cameron is Professor of Language and Communication at Oxford University in England, where she teaches linguistics and women’s studies. Her main research interest is the relationship between language and gender: her books include The Myth of Mars and Venus: Do Men and Women Really Speak Different Languages? (2007), and most recently, with Sylvia Shaw, Gender, Power and Political Speech (2016). She broadcasts regularly on BBC radio, and occasionally on US National Public Radio. Her blog, Language: a feminist guide, aims to make language and gender research accessible to readers around the world.

Linguistic research supports the belief that men and women talk differently—but the differences are small, the reasons for them are complicated, and they don’t always fit with the popular belief that ‘men are from Mars, women are from Venus’.

33. Can Someone ‘Sound Gay’? [+–] 160-162

Rusty Barrett

University of Kentucky

Rusty Barrett is an Associate Professor in the Linguistics Department at the University of Kentucky. His research focuses on language and gender, language and sexuality, Mayan languages, and language revitalization. He is the author of From Drag Queens to Leathermen: Language, Gender, and Gay Male Subcultures (Oxford University Press) and (with Kira Hall) is a co-editor of the (forthcoming) Oxford Handbook of Language and Sexuality.

Whether someone can ‘sound gay’ depends on a listener having stereotyped assumptions of how gay people supposedly talk. Because such judgements are based on stereotypes, there is no direct relationship between how one speaks and their sexual orientation.

34. Why Do Languages Die? [+–] 163-166

Christopher Moseley

Independent scholar

Languages that are no longer passed on to younger speakers, and eventually only the elderly speakers are left to speak them, die out. Languages can also die because of epidemics, human invasions or nature itself can swallow up languages.

Language Learning

35. How Do Babies Learn Their Mother Tongue? [+–] 169-173

Lauren J. Stites,Roberta Michnick Golinkoff,Kathryn Hirsh-Pasek

Temple University

Lauren J. Stites is an instructor at Georgia State University, where she obtained her Ph.D. and was a graduate fellow in the Challenges in the Acquisition of Language and Literacy Institute. She was a postdoctoral researcher at the Temple Infant and Child Lab (TICL). Her background focused on research methodology, specifically looking at parental interactions with their children. Her research has concentrated on language acquisition as well as the role of gesture in children’s later language.

University of Delaware

Roberta Michnick Golinkoff holds the Unidel H. Rodney Sharp Chair in the School of Education at the University of Delaware and is also a member of the Departments of Psychological and Brain Sciences and Linguistics and Cognitive Science. She directs the Child’s Play, Learning and Development Laboratory, whose goal it is to understand how children tackle the amazing feat of learning language. Having obtained her Ph.D. at Cornell University, she has written 16 books— some for lay readers like How Babies Talk, and dozens of research articles, many with her long-standing collaborator, Kathy Hirsh-Pasek. The recipient of a prestigious John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship and a James McKeen Cattell Sabbatical award, Golinkoff blogs for the Huffington Post and is frequently quoted in newspapers and magazines.

Temple University

Kathy Hirsh-Pasek is the Stanley and Debra Lefkowitz Professor in the Department of Psychology at Temple University, Pennsylvania, where she serves as Director of the Temple Infant and Child Lab (TICL). She is also a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute. Her joint research projects with Golinkoff in the areas of early language development and infant cognition have been funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and Human Development, the Institute of Education Sciences, and the Bezos Foundation. Her work has resulted in 14 books and numerous journal publications. She has appeared on Today, 20/20, and other national television programs and is often quoted in newspapers and magazines.

At first, language is only like a melody for babies, but they enter the world prepared to learn any of the world’s nearly seven thousand languages.

36. How Many Languages Can a Person Learn? [+–] 174-178

Richard Hudson

University College London

Richard Hudson is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics in the Department of Phonetics and Linguistics at University College, London, where he worked from 1964 through 2004. He has a B.A. in Modern and Medieval Languages from Cambridge and a Ph.D. from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, with a thesis on the grammar of the Cushitic language of the Beja (or Bedawie) people in the north-east of the Sudan.

We are all born as potential polyglots. Learning five or six languages is completely within the normal range, and requires no skills other than those we use when we learn our first language in childhood.

37. What Causes Foreign Accents? [+–] 179-182

Steven H. Weinberger

George Mason University

Steven H. Weinberger is Associate Professor and Director of the Linguistics program at George Mason University in Virginia. He teaches courses in phonetics, phonology, and second language acquisition. His principal research deals with language sound systems and foreign accents. He is co-editor of Interlanguage Phonology: The Acquisition of a Second Language Sound System (1987), and he is the founder and curator of the Speech Accent Archive (http://accent.gmu.edu/), a Web database of thousands of different accents in English.

Foreign accents have been around for as long as humans have had language. As humans, we immediately notice them, and as linguists, we find them theoretically interesting. While many factors influence foreign accents, much of the answer lies in something linguists call ‘cross-linguistic interference’.

38. What Does it Mean to be Bilingual? [+–] 183-186

Agnes Bolonyai

North Carolina State University

Agnes Bolonyai is Associate Professor of Linguistics at North Carolina State University. Her current research interests include issues of language, identity, mobility, and migration, in particular code-switching and other language contact phenomena, bi-/multilingual discourse, and identity practices and linguistic landscapes in sociolinguistic contexts of globalization and transnational migration. Her empirical work has mostly focused on Hungarian-English bilingualism. She is also interested in right-wing populist political discourse. Her work has appeared in Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, the International Journal of Bilingualism, The Cambridge Handbook of Code-Switching, Journal of Sociolinguistics, Language in Society, and Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict.

About two-thirds of the world’s population uses two or more languages in their everyday lives: they are bi- or multi-linguals. Being bilingual offers a unique way for the creative and purposeful use of one’s language resources to ‘do’ things in social life, to express one’s linguistic and cultural identities, and to make sense of social reality. This chapter discusses what it means to be bilingual from a linguistic, socio-cultural, developmental and cognitive perspective. It aims to misspell some common misconceptions about bilinguals and their often-stigmatized language practices such as code-switching, while addressing the challenges and advantages of becoming, being and staying bilingual over the lifespan.

39. What Makes Some Languages Harder to Learn than Others? [+–] 187-190

Barry Hilton

Independent scholar

Most professional linguists would probably say that every language is complex in some ways and simple in others, but Chinese can be considered the hardest for native English speakers to learn.

40. Can Monolingualism be Cured? [+–] 191-194

Katherine Sprang

Foreign Service Institute

Katherine Sprang holds a Ph.D. from the German Department at Georgetown University, with primary specialization in Second Language Acquisition (SLA). She is particularly interested in how excellence in teaching can help language students achieve superior foreign language skills. She works currently at the Foreign Service Institute, U.S. Department of State, as Coordinator of FSI Regional Programs and Training.

Adults and children learn languages in very different ways. Children have a sponge-like ability to absorb linguistic information, but that does not mean that adults can’t learn languages and learn them very well. However, to a great extent, speaking, writing, and understanding a foreign language are a matter of developing skills—like learning to play the piano—that can’t be mastered without practice.

41. How Have Our Ideas about Language Learning Changed through the Years? [+–] 195-199

June K. Phillips

Weber State University

June K. Phillips is Professor and Dean of Arts & Humanities Emeritus from Weber State University in Utah. She has taught French (at the junior high school through college levels) and methods of foreign language teaching. She served as President of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) in 2001. She was ACTFL’s project director for the National Standards for Foreign Language Education and was co-director of a project looking at their influence after a decade or more; she also co-chaired the development of Program Standards for the Preparation of Foreign Language Teachers, jointly promulgated by ACTFL and the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education. She served as a consultant to the National Assessment of Educational Progress evaluation of Spanish teaching in the U.S. and to the WGBH/Annenberg Video Library for Foreign Languages, a nonprofit educational resource. She has published and edited extensively on pedagogical topics.

In the early days of the colonies, languages were learned to survive in a new environment and culture. Soon, language learning shifted to an academic enterprise with an emphasis on how the language worked and on reading it. From World War II onward, people were encouraged to learn to communicate, to use the language actively. Today’s students go far beyond that as they discover and work with authentic materials, oral and written, from the internet and become adept with the tools offered by technology. Teachers, curriculum, programs have to use those resources skillfully to advance language acquisition.

Language and Society

42. What is the Connection between Language and Society? [+–] 203-207

Jon K. Forrest

University of Georgia

Jon Forrest is assistant professor of linguistics at the University of Georgia, and he received his PhD in Sociology from North Carolina State University. His research examines the social reasons for language variation and change, especially in urban centers of the U.S. South. His most recent work investigates differences in dialect production within the workplace, as well as the ways in which dialects and accents can affect workplace experiences for employees.

Language and society are deeply intertwined. Our social background, like our ethnicity, social class, or gender identity, conditions how we speak. Conversely, we tend to evaluate the speech of others based on social judgements, reinforcing existing social inequalities.

43. What are Lingua Francas? [+–] 208-212

Nicholas Ostler

Foundation for Endangered Languages

Nicholas Ostler holds degrees in Greek, Latin, philosophy, and economics from Balliol College, Oxford, and a Ph.D. in linguistics and Sanskrit from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he studied under Noam Chomsky. He is the author of Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World (2005), Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin (2007), The Last Lingua Franca: English until the Return of Babel (2010) and Passwords to Paradise: How Languages have Re-invented World Religions (2016). In addition to these four books, he has published, as author or editor, some five dozen scholarly articles, book chapters, book reviews, and general magazine articles on topics ranging from language history to language technology to general linguistics. He is currently the chairman of the Foundation for Endangered Languages, and lives in Hungerford, England.

When different communities are in contact, they often resort to a lingua franca, a kind of ‘bridge’ language that is distinct from the mother tongues of each group. People learn lingua francas deliberately, in order to achieve some purpose; this means that a lingua franca’s fate in the long term is vulnerable to changes in the balance of wealth and power. Along with the current example of English, past examples of Classic Chinese, Persian, Latin, French, and Spanish are discussed.

44. How Can a Country Function with More than One Official Language? [+–] 213-217

Vijay Gambhir

University of Pennsylvania

Dr. Vijay Gambhir is a retired professor of South Asian languages and linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania. She received her MA in linguistics from Delhi University and Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania. Her areas of interest include syntax, second language acquisition, assessment and heritage language learning. She has published articles in scholarly journals and books. She is the editor of the book ‘Teaching and Acquisition of South Asian Languages’ published by the University of Pennsylvania Press. She is also guest editor of ‘Teaching and Learning South Asian Heritage Languages’, the first volume of the online journal South Asia Language Pedagogy and Technology.

Countries with multiple languages and strong regional, linguistic or cultural identities often have to settle with more than one official language. This essay describes how pluralistic India functions with its two official languages and multiple other languages recognized by the Constitution of India.

45. Why Do People Fight Over Language? [+–] 218-223

Paul B. Garrett

Temple University

Paul B. Garrett is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Temple University and a linguistic anthropologist whose research focuses on the creole languages and cultures of the Caribbean. His other interests include language contact, ideologies of language, and interspecies communication.

Language differences tend to be powerful markers of social, cultural, and political differences. Where there are conflicts over language, there are typically also struggles over territory, religion, political power, and other matters. Such conflicts may give rise to tensions that persist for many years, affecting the lives of millions on a daily basis. If they go unresolved, they may even lead to large-scale violence such as war and genocide.

46. What is Gendered Language? [+–] 224-228

Caroline Myrick

North Carolina State University

Gendered language refers to language that privileges one gender or sex over the other. This happens with many language patterns and traditions—in English and many other languages—that treat men or the masculine as the default. Luckily, in English, inclusive language solutions are fairly easy; and speakers of other languages are finding creative linguistic alternatives in order to promote gender inclusivity.

Language in the U.S.

47. What is the Language of the United States? [+–] 231-235

David Goldberg

Independent scholar

David Goldberg retired in 2016 from the position of Associate Director of the Office of Foreign Language Programs and the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages (ADFL) at the Modern Language Association, where he was responsible for the development of the MLA Language Map. Goldberg holds a Ph.D. in Yiddish Studies and has taught Yiddish language and literature in heritage language schools and at Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of an intermediate-level Yiddish textbook published by Yale University Press.

Although the U.S. has long been described as a cultural melting pot into which languages other than English disappear, the Modern Language Association of America Language Map uses US Census data to reveal that this is far from being the case.

48. Is there a Language Crisis in the United States? [+–] 236-240

Julie Tetel-Andresen

Duke University

Julie Tetel Andresen is Professor of English and Linguistics at Duke University. She holds an M.A. in French Language and Literature from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana and a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She is the author of Linguistics in American 1769-1924: A Critical History (Routledge, 1990), Linguistics and Evolution. A Developmental Approach (Cambridge, 2014) and Languages in the World. How History, Culture and Politics Shape Language with Phillip M. Carter (Wiley-Blackwell, 2016).

This chapter highlights the fact that there is a serious language problem in the United States. The effectiveness of world language education is considered an issue in the first place. Thus, in order to produce capable, well-educated, bilingual professionals the US is considered to benefit from serious investment in training.

49. Are American Dialects Dying? [+–] 241-244

Walt Wolfram

North Carolina State University

This chapter discusses dialects and the possibility of their dying out. Thus, the chance of disappearing of some traditional dialects is considered, as well as their replacement by new dialects. Additionally, dialects are argued to remain alive, and an important part of the regional and sociocultural landscape.

50. How Many Native American Languages are there? [+–] 245-249

Marianne Mithun

University of California, Santa Barbara

Marianne Mithun is Professor of Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her work covers such areas as morphology (word structure), relations between grammar and discourse, language typology, language contact, and language change, particularly the mechanisms by which grammatical structures evolve. She has worked with speakers of a number of North American languages, including Mohawk, Cayuga, Tuscarora, Seneca, Lakota, Central Alaskan Yup’ik, and Navajo, as well as several Austronesian languages. She has also worked with a number of communities on projects aimed at documenting their traditional languages and training speakers to teach them to younger generations.

Many people believe there is just one language native to the U.S.: ‘Indian’. However, there is evidence of nearly three hundred languages spoken north of Mexico before the arrival of Europeans. Each shows us unique ways of looking at the world, ways that have been shaped by millennia of daily interactions among their speakers.

51. What is African American English? [+–] 250-253

Nicole Holliday

Pomona College

Nicole Holliday is an assistant professor of linguistics at Pomona College in Claremont, California, where she teaches courses on sociolinguistics, phonetics, and linguistic discrimination. She received her Ph.D. in linguistics from New York University in 2016. Her academic specialties are African American Language, linguistic profiling and discrimination, sociophonetics, and intonational phonology. She is especially interested in prosodic variation among individuals and communities with multiple and complex racial identities. Her work has appeared in venues such as American Speech and the Journal of the International Phonetic Association, as well as popular venues such as NPR, Dictionary.com, and the Oxford Dictionaries blog.

African American English, or the variety of English spoken in many predominantly African American communities, has long been of great interest to linguists and the public. However, AAE’s origins and structures are often stigmatized and misunderstood, resulting in linguistic prejudice and discrimination. This chapter discusses the history of AAE, some of its structural features, and its integral position in modern American society.

52. What is the Future of Spanish in the United States? [+–] 254-259

Maria Carreira

California State University, Long Beach

Maria Carreira is professor of Spanish linguistics at California State University, Long Beach and Co-Director of the National Heritage Language Research Center at UCLA. Her publications focus on Spanish in the United States and Spanish as a world language. She has co-authored four college-level Spanish textbooks: Nexos (2015), Alianzas (2013), Cuadros (2013) and Sí se puede (2008). She is also a co-author of Voces, Latinos Students on Life in the United States (Praeger, 2014) and co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Heritage Language Education (2017). Dr. Carreira received her Ph.D. in linguistics from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.

This chapter focuses on the latest linguistic projections of the US Census, and the implications of these projection for the future of U.S. Spanish. An update on the status of Spanish in U.S. institutions of learning is provided, which presents a mixed picture: enrollments are down overall, but there are more Spanish-language courses for bilingual Latinos (heritage speakers). Finally, the chapter discusses projections for Spanish as a world language and relate that to the future of Spanish in the U.S.

Language and Technology

53. How is Language Used on Social Media? [+–] 263-266

Lauren Squires

The Ohio State University

Lauren Squires is Associate Professor in the Department of English at The Ohio State University, where she teaches courses in English linguistics (including the grammar and history of English) and language and media (including digital media). Her research interests include the sociolinguistics of computer-mediated communication, language in media and popular culture, language ideologies, and sociolinguistic processing of dialect differences.

Language in social media is much the same as language in other contexts: it exhibits variation that reflects individual and group identities, users shape it to serve their communicative purposes, and it intimately reflects the foundational knowledge speakers have of their language. Yet language in social media is also shaped by other factors, including literacy—navigating social media draws on multiple literacies—and the affordances of whatever medium is under consideration—such as character allotments, reply structures, degrees of publicness, and features such as hashtags. Thus, social media users produce language that is simultaneously “just like” language everywhere else, but also subject to “special” considerations.

54. Can Computers Teach Languages Faster and Better? [+–] 267-270

Trude Heift

Simon Fraser University

View Website

Trude Heift is Professor of Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics at Simon Fraser University, Canada. Her main research areas focus on the design as well as the evaluation of CALL systems by combining aspects of applied and computational linguistics. From an SLA perspective, her work examines learner-computer interactions, corrective feedback and error analysis. From a computational point of view, she is interested in the automatic analysis of learner language and learner modeling. She is currently co-editor of Language Learning & Technology.

There are vast claims about the speed and quality of instruction that can be provided by computers. Commercial software often uses those two parameters as selling points and many of the claims have reached absurd and rather comical levels. What exactly are the claims and can they be backed up by research? How do some of the millennials who live and breathe technology answer this question?

55. How Good is Machine Translation? [+–] 271-274

Kevin Knight

University of Southern California

Kevin Knight is Research Professor, Computer Science Department, University of Southern California.

Automatic translation of human languages has been a challenge for artificial intelligence since the 1950s. Around 2010, translation software suddenly reached usable quality levels and began processing billions of words per day, including speech and text. The main breakthrough has been programming machines to learn translation rules autonomously from large quantities of human-translated material. Still, systems can only translate a fraction of the world’s languages.

56. Is Text Messaging Changing How I Write and Speak? [+–] 275-279

Joel Schneier

University of Central Florida

Joel Schneier received his Ph.D. from North Carolina State University in Communication, Rhetoric, & Digital Media. He is currently a lecturer at the University of Central Florida in the Department of Writing & Rhetoric.

Until the late-20th century, most people would write for work or school and occasionally for personal or social reasons. However, after the digital media boom, email, instant messaging, and text messaging made writing an integral part of communicating in people’s everyday lives. But how do these kinds of writing, particularly text messaging, affect how people write and speak in other areas of their lives? This chapter examines what language things people learn from texting, how they may use this language to represent themselves, and why the myth that texting is ruining writing is just that: a myth.

Language and Education

57. Why Should Teachers Care about Linguistics? [+–] 283-287

Anne H. Charity Hudley,Christine Mallinson

University of California, Santa Barbara

Anne Charity Hudley is the North Hall Endowed Chair in the Linguistics of African America at the University of California, Santa Barbara and Director of Undergraduate Research for the College of Letters and Science. Her research and publications address the relationship between English language variation and K-16 educational practices and policies. She is the co-author of three books: The Indispensable Guide to Undergraduate Research: Success in and Beyond College, Understanding English Language Variation in U.S. Schools, and We Do Language: English Language Variation in the Secondary English Classroom. She is the author or co-author of over 25 articles and book chapters. She has worked with K-12 educators through lectures and workshops sponsored by public and independent schools throughout the country. Charity Hudley is a member of the Executive Committee of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) and has served as a consultant to the National Research Council Committee on Language and Education and to the National Science Foundation’s Committee on Broadening Participation in the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) sciences.

University of Maryland

Christine Mallinson is director of the Center for Social Science Scholarship, Professor of Language, Literacy and Culture and Affiliate Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). Her interdisciplinary research examines the intersections of language, culture, and education, focusing on English language diversity in the United States. Among other publications, she is also the co-author of Understanding English Language Variation in U.S. Schools and We Do Language: English Language Variation in the Secondary English Classroom, as well as the co-editor of Data Collection in Sociolinguistics: Methods and Applications, 2nd edition. Mallinson is the chair of the Ethics Committee of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) and is a member of the editorial advisory board of three journals, Language & Linguistics Compass, Voice & Speech Review, and American Speech, for which also she previously served a 10-year term as the journal’s associate editor.

This chapter explains why all educators should care about linguistics and gives specific suggestion that all teachers can use to employ culturally and linguistically sustaining teaching in their schools and communities. The chapter gives specific recommendations to help educators take language into account in their teaching praxis.

58. Should Schools Teach Grammar? [+–] 288-291

Richard Hudson

University College London

The teaching of grammar dates from 2,000 BC Babylon, and for thousands of years grammar was the most important subject in the school curriculum, and in many countries grammar teaching flourishes. But the UK and the USA largely abandoned it around 1970 because the teaching had lost its way for lack of academic support. Now that grammar flourishes in our universities, it is time for a rethink. Grammar teaching is good for development of the first language, for helping to learn foreign languages and for developing thinking skills; and it can be taught in child-friendly ways. The main challenge is the lack of teachers who know enough grammar to do this.

59. Is Elementary School too Early to Teach Foreign Languages? [+–] 292-298

Gladys C. Lipton

National FLES* Institute

Gladys Lipton is the Director of America’s National FLES* Institute, and serves as a consultant to schools, school Districts and other agencies. She has directed national teacher development institutes at the University of Maryland. Her past leadership positions include Program Coordinator in Foreign Languages and ESOL for the Anne Arundel County Public Schools in Maryland, and Director of Foreign Languages for the New York City Public Schools. Dr. Lipton has served as Editor of the newsletter of the Northeast Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. She has chaired the national FLES* committees of both the AATSP and the AATF. She has also served as an Associate Editor of the AATSP journal Hispania, and as national president of the AATF. She has received many awards for her work in the profession, including ACTFL’s Steiner Leadership Award and, in 2010, the award of Commandeur dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques, from the French government. In 2015, she was awarded the Médaille de Mérite from La Renaissance Française.

This chapter provides answers to the question in the title of this chapter in the form of updated research, and major trends. The new trends include 1) creating opportunities for reaching parents and the public, 2) establishing curriculum proficiency/performance language activities that are content-based or content-related, 3) addressing the issue of teacher shortages at this level, 4) creating appropriate student and program assessments and 5) addressing the growth of dual language or bilingual education, all in the context of defining and exploring the goals of elementary school foreign language programs in today’s and tomorrow’s schools.

60. Why Study Languages Abroad? [+–] 299-303

Sheri Spaine Long

Independent scholar

Sheri Spaine Long (Ph.D., UCLA) is executive director of the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese. She is editor of Hispania, the scholarly journal of the American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese. Formerly a faculty member, department chair, and study abroad program director, Dr. Long rose to the rank of (Full) Professor of Spanish at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She was invited and subsequently appointed as Distinguished Visiting Professor of Spanish at the United States Air Force Academy. Most recently Long served as Professor and Chair of the Department of Languages and Culture Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Her publications include seven co-authored college Spanish textbooks as well as numerous scholarly articles, notes and reviews on Spanish literature and culture, language pedagogy and policy.

Study abroad can accelerate the language learning process and provide authentic cultural context to develop cross-cultural skills. There are variables such as learning styles, readiness, duration, and contact with the language that effect results.

61. What is Bilingual Education? [+–] 304-308

Phillip M. Carter

Florida International University

Phillip M. Carter is an Associate Professor of Linguistics at Florida International University in Miami. He is an expert on issues related to multilingualism, language diversity, and language contact. Carter is co-author of Languages in the World: How History, Culture, and Politics Shape Language (Wiley-Blackwell, 2016).

The vast majority of the world’s population is multilingual, but children aren’t always educated in their home language or even the primary language of their community. This chapter discusses the need for bilingual education and the various ways multilingualism works in education, including transitional bilingual education, dual language immersion programs, and translanguaging.

Application

62. How are Dictionaries Made? [+–] 311-315

Erin McKean

Wordnik

Erin McKean is the founder of the non-profit online dictionary Wordnik. Previously she was the Editor in Chief of U.S. Dictionaries for Oxford University Press and the Editor of VERBATIM: The Language Quarterly. She is also the author of Weird and Wonderful Words, More Weird and Wonderful Words, Totally Weird and Wonderful Words, and That’s Amore (also about words), as well as two books about dresses (the novel The Secret Lives of Dresses and The Hundred Dresses, a field guide to dress archetypes). She has a B.A. and M.A. in Linguistics from the University of Chicago, where she wrote her M.A. thesis on the treatment of phrasal verbs (verbs like ‘act up’, ‘act out’, and, of course, ‘look up’) in children’s dictionaries. She lives in California. Please send her evidence of new words you’ve found, by e-mail, to [email protected].

Modern dictionaries are built by teams of talented people relying on evidence found in huge collections of written and spoken language. Traditional dictionaries rely more on editors and online dictionaries more on crowdsourcing and machine learning, but both have the same goal: to describe what words mean and how they are used.

63. Why Do We Need Translators if We Have Dictionaries? [+–] 316-320

Kevin Hendzel

Independent scholar

Kevin Hendzel is a graduate of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and was formerly head linguist on the technical translation staff of the Presidential Hotline between the White House and the Kremlin. He served as National Media Spokesman for the American Translators Association for over a decade (2001-2012) and continues to appear on BBC, NPR and other national media outlets as a well-known commentator on translation and interpreting issues. His translations from Russian into English include thirty-four books and twenty-two hundred articles published in the areas of physics, technology, and law. He continues to work as a translator, currently specializing in national security areas. These range from nuclear weapons dismantlement and disposition programs in the former Soviet Union to U.S.-sponsored programs aimed at preventing the proliferation of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons worldwide.

The interpreter’s job is to convey meaning. And since a lot of meaning is expressed by tone of voice or the nuance of words and phrases, his or her job is far more than translating word for word.

64. How are Endangered and Sleeping Languages Being Revitalized? [+–] 321-326

Tracy Hirata-Edds,Mary Linn,Marcellino Berardo,Lizette Peter,Gloria Sly,Tracy Williams

University of Kansas

Tracy Hirata-Edds (Applied English Center, University of Kansas) partners with Native communities to enhance opportunities for culture and language learning/teaching, teacher training, and revitalization. Her interests include endangered languages, documentation, and language development.

Smithsonian Museum

Mary S. Linn (Curator of Cultural and Linguistic Revitalization at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage) researches effective grassroots strategies in language and cultural sustainability and training in community-based language documentation and archiving in Oklahoma and worldwide.

University of Kansas

Marcellino Berardo (Applied English Center, University of Kansas) has been active in U.S. language revitalization programs and second language pedagogy. His specialties include language description and advanced second language teaching/learning.

University of Kansas

Lizette Peter (Department of Teaching and Leadership, University of Kansas) is Associate Professor of second language acquisition, teaching, and learning. She has collaborated with several communities on endangered language revitalization initiatives.

Independent scholar

Gloria Sly (Tahlequah, Oklahoma) initiated and guided various language programs of the Cherokee Nation.

Oneida Language Department

Tracy Williams (Director of the Oneida Language Department in Oneida, Wisconsin, and doctoral student, University of Arizona) has been engaged in revitalizing her language, Oneida, and is currently pursuing a PhD in Indigenous language education.

Languages of the world vary in their vitality. Communities with threatened, endangered, and sleeping languages envision and cultivate meaningful contemporary contexts and strategies for using their languages.

65. Can You Use Languages to Solve Crimes? [+–] 327-330

Natalie Schilling

Georgetown University

Natalie Schilling is a Professor of Linguistics at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. She has authored and co-authored books, articles and chapters on a wide range of topics connected to the study of language variation and change. Her publications include Sociolinguistic Fieldwork (2013, Cambridge University Press), American English: Dialects and Variation (with Walt Wolfram, 3rd edition, 2016, Wiley-Blackwell), The Handbook of Language Variation and Change (co-editor, with J.K. Chambers, 2nd edition, 2013, Wiley-Blackwell), and English in America: A Linguistic History, an audio-video course with The Great Courses. She has served as a forensic linguistic expert in cases involving authorship attribution, speaker profiling, and possible false confessions. She regularly teaches forensic linguistics, to audiences ranging from university students to FBI agents, to incarcerated individuals. Composite characters based on Dr. Schilling have in two TV series – once in the CBS series Criminal Minds (Alex Blake, FBI agent/Georgetown linguistics professor) and once in the Discovery Channel’s miniseries Manhunt: Unabomber (Natalie Rogers, a linguist at Stanford University).

When there’s linguistic evidence at a crime scene, or when language itself constitutes the crime, linguists can use their expertise in the structure, meaning, and use of language to help investigators solve crimes. Forensic linguistics can involve author or speaker profiling, authorship attribution, and voice identification. While linguistic analysis of language evidence can be invaluable, forensic linguistics is not DNA analysis, and an individual’s distinctive linguistic patterns do not constitute a ‘linguistic fingerprint’. That being said, criminals still leave behind important language clues, and forensic linguistics can go a long way toward uncovering them.

66. How Can You Keep Languages in a Museum? [+–] 331-334

Jill Robbins,Pat Barr-Harrison,Gregory Nedved

National Museum of Language

Dr. Jill Robbins is a former president and currently chief technology officer of the National Museum of Language. She develops online learning materials for English learners and language teachers at Voice of America. She is co-author of several textbooks for learners and teachers of English as a Second Language, including a contribution to the 2019 volume, Learning Strategy Instruction in the Language Classroom.

Independent scholar

Dr. Pat Barr-Harrison is Director of Outreach for the National Museum of Language (NML). She served as Supervisor of Foreign Language for Prince George’s County, Maryland, as well as president of the NML. She has been president of The National Association of District Supervisors of Foreign Languages in the US (NADSFL) and of The Greater Washington Association of Teachers of Foreign Languages (GWATFL).

National Museum of Language

Gregory J. Nedved has served at the Museum in numerous capacities since 2008 (his position at the time of this publication was Museum Vice President). He has over 25 years of experience as a Chinese-Mandarin instructor, translator and interpreter for the Department of Defense (DoD). He is the author of the 2016 book, Presidential Foreign Language Trivia.

The National Museum of Language combines virtual exhibits, outreach and community engagement to inspire an appreciation for the magic and beauty of language. These efforts include a movable museum, summer language camps, a speaker series and a website featuring world language themes, articles, blogs and information that appeal to a national audience. Online exhibits make the history of developing the Dictionary of American Regional English come to life.

End Matter

Index [+–] 335-345

Caroline Myrick,Walt Wolfram

North Carolina State University

The Five-Minute Linguist provides a lively, reader-friendly introduction to the subject of language suitable for the general reader and beginning students. The book offers brief essays on more than 60 intriguing questions such as “What’s the difference between a language and a dialect?” Can animals understand us?” “What causes foreign accents?” and “How is language used on social media?” These are conveniently organized into 12 topical areas that include What is Linguistics, Language and Thought, Language and Society, and Language and Technology, among others. Each essay is written by a leading authority in the specialization who offers succinct, insightful answers to questions that most of us have wondered about, with follow-up references to more in-depth reading on each question. The third edition adds new topics now at the forefront of linguistics and updates others, serving as an unrivaled introduction to the mysteries and intrigue of language. The third edition of this book was produced under the sponsorship of the Linguistic Society of America.

Reviews

Everyone knows at least one language, but not everyone has in-depth knowledge of linguistics-i.e., the study of various aspects of human language. Sponsored by the Linguistic Society of America, this informative, entertaining book-a handy introduction for anyone curious about linguistics-is an excellent example of how experts in a specialized discipline can transmit their scholarship to the public sphere. The collection comprises 66 brief essays, grouped into 12 categories, and works like an FAQ on all things language related. Writing in a tone that is casual and occasionally funny, the contributors, recognized authorities on their topics, explain facets of linguistics in an easy-to-understand way. Readers will learn about, for example, where foreign accents originate, how babies learn language, whether texting is affecting English, and why Noam Chomsky is such a big name in the field. (The last of these does an excellent job of summarizing Chomsky's major contributions to linguistics in basic, nontechnical terms.) Originating as a radio series in 2005, The Five-Minute Linguist was first published in 2006, ed. by E. M. Rickerson and Barry Hilton (CH, Jul'07, 44-6071). This latest edition updates essays in the second edition (2012) and adds new entries on social media, gender issues, and other contemporary topics. Each entry includes suggestions for further reading.
Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers.
CHOICE

Reviews of Previous Editions
An excellent, very accessible, and extremely easy- and fun-to-read introduction to some of the basic questions (and misconceptions) regarding language, language learning, and linguistics. The book clearly meets the editors’ intended goals; with each essay, the reader is engaged in a five-minute, light and informal conversation about the passionate topic of language.
Linguist List

This book is for anyone who has a question about languages or the nature of language—which means just about all of us. But it’s not just a musty academic text for specialists. While written by leading experts on the subject of language,The Five-Minute Linguist is a user-friendly exploration of the basics, a linguistic start-up kit for general readers. It assumes nothing on your part except interest in the subject. Its bite-sized chapters (no more than 3-4 pages each) give authoritative answers to the most frequently asked questions people have about language, and tell the story in a lively and colloquial style. It is a delightful read.
From the Foreword by Bret Lovejoy, Executive Director, American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Language

What a gift to those who love language and those who are simply curious about it. Leading experts each tackle an intriguing question, and explain it in straightforward, delightful prose. Read it from cover to cover or keep it by your bed to dip into for endless fascination.
Deborah Tannen, Professor of Linguistics, Georgetown University, and author of You Just Don't Understand

This is a marvellous collection of informative, provocative and stimulating essays. The topics that were selected are both timely, and timeless, and the essays are sure to pique the curiosity of a broad range of readers. The material is accessible and the suggestions for further reading are wonderful pointers to additional exploration. This collection certainly has my five-star recommendation.
G. Richard Tucker, Paul Mellon University Professor of Applied Linguistics, Carnegie Mellon University

...recommended for language majors, and attractive to language afficionados and mavens. Essential.
Choice

Each of the 66 chapters of the book contributes to the overall praiseworthiness of the book. While individual chapters were selected to illustrate particular strengths of the book above, there is no implication that the other chapters contribute less to the end product. There are no weak links in the chain, and that is an impressive feat considering the number of chapters in the book. There is every reason to believe that this book will be well received by a wide audience of non-linguists. It is hoped (and expected) that the readership includes interested individuals in the general public as well as students in basic social science or humanities classes where the curriculum has a unit (or units) calling for an introductory knowledge of language/linguistics.
A very solid work, one which sets out to achieve a very worthy goal and indisputably succeeds in that effort.
LinguistList

Every Chapter here is a good read. The price of the paperback edition works out at about 25p per chapter. Well worth the money for any language practitioner who is involved in professional development – their own or that of others.
Language Issues

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Books and Journals in Humanities, Social Science and Performing Arts

The Five-Minute Linguist

Bite-sized Essays on Language and Languages

Third Edition

Caroline Myrick [+–]

North Carolina State University

Walt Wolfram [+–]

North Carolina State University

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