John Gordon Ross

A Man for All Reasons

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Language Stuff

Almost everyone uses language, so inevitably almost everyone thinks they are an expert in it. I don’t consider myself an expert, though most of my work requires at least language competence and sometimes actual skill, but I do follow the blogs featured on this feeds page.

(If you are wondering where the translation-related feeds have all gone, I have put them on their own page.)

Most of the blogs represented here are in English, most of the time, but don’t be surprised to find other languages used. Go with the flow – I occasionally find myself pleasantly surprised at how much I can grasp in languages I have never seen before.

Language On the Net

Language Log » Attachment ambiguity of the week

Sunday 26 March 22:35:32 UTC 2017

"Congressional Republicans want to fight on, but the White House says Obamacare repeal is dead", Vox 3/26/2017: But Mulvaney’s remarks raise a question: If “fixing the system” is a major legislative priority, why is Trump leaving it unfinished? Mulvaney’s answer — that Trump “is not willing to do what other politicians would do” — in that context actually sounds like … [Link]

Language Log » The miracle of reading and writing Chinese characters

Sunday 26 March 14:35:10 UTC 2017

We have the testimony of a colleague whose ability to write Chinese characters has been adversely affected by her not being able to visualize them in her mind's eye. See: "Aphantasia — absence of the mind's eye" (3/24/17) This prompts me to ponder: just how do people who are literate in Chinese characters recall them? Of course, now that computers … [Link]

Language Log » Age, sex, and f0

Sunday 26 March 11:56:34 UTC 2017

I've recently been working with Naomi Nevler and others from Penn's Frontotemporal Degeneration Center on quantifying the diverse effects in speech and language of various neurodegenerative conditions. As part of an effort to establish baselines, I turned to the English-language part of the "Fisher" datasets of conversational telephone speech (LDC2004S13, LDC2004T19, LDC2005S13, LDC2005T19), where we have basic demographic information for … [Link]

Omniglot blog » Language quiz

Sunday 26 March 11:38:02 UTC 2017

Language quiz image Here’s a recording in a mystery language. Can you identify the language, and do you know where it’s spoken? [Link]

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