This week we explored linguistic typology, near-synonyms, and morphemes and lexemes. Haspelmath taught us the basics: how lexemes are ‘dictionary words,’ how word forms are ‘text words,’ how words are easily split up into meaningful parts called morphemes (like we talked about in class previously), and so on. Atkins examined near-synonyms and their ability to distinguish differences and meaning and account. He finds that near-synonyms differ syntactically despite their semantic closeness because of the semantic concept of internal vs. external causation. Slobin, our third and final author of this week’s papers, examined linguistic typology through the framework of the frog story. All of these authors' works combined gave us great introduction to the topic of the week: word trees.
For me, it was Slobin’s reading was the most interesting. Slobin’s article detailed the examination of different languages through storytelling, specifically the frog story. Slobin found if languages were verb-framed or satellite-framed by analyzing the story in different languages. Verb-framed means that the path is expressed by the main verb in a clause (i.e. ‘ascend’) and satellite-framed languages have the path of motion expressed in a separate particle (i.e. ‘go up’). Slobin was even able to ultimately suggest a new typology: the equipollently-framed language where path and manner are expressed by equivalent grammatical forms.
Ever since the guest lecture on linguistic fieldwork, I have been thinking a lot about how linguistics relates to anthropology. Storytelling allows humans, regardless of their native language, to reach a common ground. Thus, by having people tell stories in their native language, you can gain a lot of really interesting linguistic and anthropological data. As I understand it, the purpose of storytelling to pass along important cultural information from generation to generation. Thus, the way people say their stories can differ in really culturally telling ways. What words does the person include or exclude? How does the arrangement of the words in the sentence emphasize or de-emphasize a word? By careful analysis, we can determine information that can aid both linguists and anthropologists. There seems to be a real interdisciplinary connection between the two fields that I’d love to explore further.
I love what you mentioned in your final paragraph, Caroline. Very interesting point that an anthropological story can in fact be told through syntax. What I find especially intriguing is what we can glean from languages that place little to no emphasis on sentence structure, such as Russian. The words that come at the end of the sentence are typically regarded as being of greater significance. Syntax can subconsciously reveal psychological thought processes, too!
ReplyDeleteI had a similar reaction to the guest lecture as well Caroline! It's fascinating that meaning changes so much even without conscious intention to change the meaning, but just because translation across languages is never perfect. Therefore, as you suggest, you can tell a lot about a culture based on the subconscious cues and subtleties contained in stories and communication. What I found really interesting and somewhat related is that when my Dad tells my siblings and me a story about his day at work, he'll tell it normally. But then later that night, when he tells my (Indian) grandparents the same story, still in English, he'll naturally and unconsciously drop all of the articles in his speech, without really changing much else. I wonder if it's because in Gujarati (which is what my grandparents and father know how to speak) they don't emphasize articles as much?
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