Cell hypothesis – with regards to globalisation of English

Some fascinating ideas from Liling’s blog, lilinguistics (see sidebar).

Cell hypothesis – a novel model formulated by Duh liLinguistics

Traditionally, a language has been analogized to an organism. However linguists have rejected the idea of the organism analogy because it prevented historical linguists from identifying the real cause of language change; the analogy is also “inconsistent with the reality of idiolects.” (c.f. Mufwene, 2001) Mufwene (2001) hypothesized language as a parasitic species, whose makeup can change several times in its lifetime, whose life depends on its hosts (i.e. speakers of the language, society formed by the speakers and culture in which the speakers live).

This discussion introduces the Cell hypothesis as a tool to examine languages, particularly New Englishes (NE). Cell hypothesis defines languages as “lects”, each NE is an ecolect (language spoken in a particular ecology). The theory also acknowledges the presence of a communelect (language spoken by a particular speech community in an ecology). Lastly Cell hypothesis refers to idiolect as a cell, the most basic unit of an ecolect.

The Cell hypothesis studies

Another Upcoming Linguistics Seminar!

Hello all!

Hope you’re having a good weekend because it seems that next week we’ll be quite busy, what with classes and seminars and other events! I’m sure all fellow NTU students have gotten this eflyer in your NTU email but just to publicize this even more, there’s a seminar on tone development in Southeast Asian languages by Prof. Jan-Olof Svantesson coming up on 24Aug, 1600-1730 at HSS Seminar Room 4. You can read more about the talk and the speaker here.

See you there!

Simin, Year 4

The Power of Language

Mark Pagel speaks, from a biological/anthropological point of view, at a TED Conference on how language aided human cooperation leading to the transformation of humanity, and allowing humans to develop far beyond any other animal species possibly could. His ideas are not entirely new to me – and in fact, this kind of reminds me of Robin Dunbar’s research, which postulates that in spite of language, individuals cannot interact with more than 100-230 people due to the limitations of our cognitive prowess (Note: the oft-quoted awesome Dunbar’s Number is 150). So, I present to you 2 videos. The first, about the incredible power of language, the second, about the limitations nonetheless (so this post is not really about language, but about human society).

Mark Pagel:

Robin Dunbar:

 

Simin, Year 4

The Origin of Language

Weekend Today, 16-17 April 2011

I’m sure anyone doing HG420 or have used WALS will know Dr Martin Haspelmath. His name crops up everywhere when it comes to typology.

Si Min, Year 3

Professor Wang’s Second Lecture

The first reaction I had as soon as the first ten minutes of the talk was over was “Damn? Why did I miss the first one!” Yes! Ladies and Gentlemen, Prof Wang’s area of expertise, Language evolution is a rather fascinating one. At several different times during his presentation, I found my jaw dropping in awe at one revelation or another.

Prof Wang opened his lecture by disproving the theory of animal language using a number of cute examples. He said something along the lines of  “Monkey cannot say to another monkey… Yesterday got big snake”. He used this example to show that animal calls are usually not displaced.