UWYO Linguistic Anthropology Spring 2018

TheHindu recently posted an article confirming a statement that has supposedly been long held. They said that they had finally proven that all of Australia's native languages had descended from a single language. This language formed around 12,000 years ago, and  from time until the British started colonizing Australia in the last 1700s had splintered into around 250 languages. Linguists in Sydney found out that this relates almost directly to the findings that all native Australians come from one people who landed on the Island around 650,000 years ago. This got me thinking about the all but debunked theory of a proto-human language or what could be the first language. It made me think if when people first settled the Island, but a little more than 600,000 years later that they were all still in close enough quarters to have  one Universal Language, why couldn't the original language families that Linguists have reconstructed originated from a single source.

A topic I have found particularly interesting in linguistic anthropology is the concept of pidgin languages or pidgins. A pidgin language refers to a language created as a means of communication between two groups who speak different languages. Pidgins do not have native speakers and are developed for the sole purpose of communicating for a specific task. For the development of a pidgin, the groups must be in regular contact and have a need to communicate. A significant use of pidgin is the trade of resources and information across separate cultures. Pidgins emerged within trade colonies formed around trade forts. For example, pidgins developed on whaling ships of the South Pacific (Mufwene, 2015). Due to their purpose being mainly trade, pidgins typically had “ reduced structures and restricted functions” . The vocabulary of pidgins typically only expanded only to the minimum means necessary to understand trade and whaling activities (Mufwene, 2015). I find this topic interesting ...

Based on last class, I would like to discuss the linguistic properties of expressions of popular culture. Believe it or not, “YEET” has become a more common phrase, even if most people who know of this word use it ironically. For example, my friends and I use “Yeet” when we need to get each other’s attention, locate the other, or just as an acknowledgement that we are in fact speaking to each other. If she says my name, I sometimes respond with “Yeet?” Even if it’s in our tiny subculture of a clique, references and memes are an effective way for us to communicate. The origin of this word is in the link. Note that there is one curse word.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Bjy5YQ5xPc We can assume it’s an exclamation, commonly one of frustration or of effort, like when a person grunts when physically exerting themselves. However, as it seems to be a made-up word, can we count this as an example of the facets of linguistics and the development of human speech? One o...

The most fascinating thing about language is how intricately communication is interwoven with the use of images. But before any specific words can actually begin to make sense or hold any meaning, they have to begin with an idea. These ideas are the basis of every word in every language, and when we put a word to those ideas, they are connected and go together as image, thought, and word. For example, if I were to say, “That tree is gigantic,” you would all imagine a huge tree reaching skyward, right? Right. Now, of course, no two of you would ever picture the same exact tree, but the word still holds the same meaning and you can picture a tree, whichever kind it may be. This is only one of many examples of a sign used in communication. In languages there are hundreds of thousands of signs, including but not limited to: pictures, words, sounds, and body language. Nearly everything and anything that can be seen, heard, or felt is a sign. Daniel Chandler wrote in Semiotics for B...

The section that I like the most that we have covered was "The Development and Evolution of Language." I think this is just an interesting subject, because the natural evolution of our language occurs every day. I never had looked at the birth of language really, but the evolution and death I had covered in history classes before. The evolution and death of languages are noted by many assimilation processes, that brought a language under their control. My favorite example is the Romans, who assimilated languages from all around the known world and later created the romance languages in certain areas. These languages went through many changes, with words taken from their former language and adding Latin words. Then their death as this assemblage of languages. This is when the new language emerged as a romance language, which still showed resemblance to both original languages, but became its own language. So, the death of those two original languages died out, but were the...

Tangier is an island off the coast of Virginia, in the Chesapeake Bay. Examining the accents of its residents, this place is seemingly frozen in time; they speak in an unusual, notably British-sounding, dialect. Their strange accent has attracted linguists, who chalk the dialect up to early British settlement patterns in America. Because the island is isolated (only accessible from the mainland by boat or plane), the British accent of the original settlers has remained, and grows stronger amongst today’s Tangier youth. The Tangier dialect has thrived, leftover from British settlers, but is threatened by an unexpected source: climate change. For this blog post, I’ve read a 2016 New York Times article raising awareness of the dangers of a rising sea level that Tangier residents face.  Several reported flooding in their own yards, which is sure to worsen as the Bay encroaches upon their small island. According to the article, the island has lost “two-thirds of its landmass since 1850...

I have a good friend that loves Sporcle quizzes, I personally am horrible with most of these quizzes because they range from geography to sports. The only ones that I am pretty good at are word ladder quizzes. It fascinates me that you can start out with a word such as "line" and ending with "cake" by only changing one letter at a time. linguistically it also fascinates me that languages have words that sound similar but have drastic differences in meaning such as "like" and "lake". Not only is it neat that we can detect the slight changes in sound to tell these words that are slightly different apart, but also being able to connect them together by only changing one letter or changing one small sound in the pronunciation within the word. This goes to show how advanced our speech organs are as well as the advanced communication sections of the human brain. While we are born with these physical adaptations for speech, such as the mouth, but t...

So far in Linguistic Anthropology class, I was interested in the use of pidgins and their eventual turning into creoles. In classes in high school and college about how the triangular trade system worked and how there was an inevitable mixing of cultures that are still prevalent today. In fact, some of my favorite foods are created from the mixing of cultures like Cajun food. When I lived in Texas, I had the opportunity to go and eat a lot of authentic Cajun food like crawfish and gumbo. I also had the chance to realize that even though being from the south my whole life, I could still not understand what the people who were serving me food were saying to me. These people were Creoles, which I would later learn had French heritage mixed African or Caribbean descents. I also thought that the video that we watched recently in class about the uses of pidgins and creoles in other parts of the world like in Africa where the first contact with European settlers made for new pidgins that ...

One of the main topics in Linguistic Anthropology is the idea of Language Death. When someone thinks about extinction or death it’s associated with an animal species extinction or the death of a person; however, languages don’t come to mind. According to The New Republic Linguists estimate that 50% of the languages spoken today will disappear in the next 100 years. Often times political, economic, or culture changes are reasons for the death of a language. One example is teaching the younger generation in the family the dominant language rather than the minority language in the case of achieving economic success. One other cause of a language death that isn’t always thought of is natural disasters. For instance, plate tectonic movements causing parts of islands to sink leading to cultures having to move further inland. Many linguists are worried about the increase of global warming is going to further accelerate the disappearance and death of many languages. This is becaus...