Alden McCollum: On the Mutability of Accents

Accents, when defined in their most general sense as manners of pronunciation, (or, as the text book defines them, as “systematic phonological variations”), are inextricably linked with speech. There is no spoken language entirely devoid of an accent. Even a so-called “standard” or “neutral” pronunciation is an accent. You cannot speak without an accent; nor can an accent be an utterance on its own. Speech and accents are mutually implicatory – each requires the existence of the other.

                Because accents are so integral to speech, in this post I’d like to discuss several concepts related to the ways that accents can and cannot change over time. (These ideas are somewhat related to Marco’s post from a few weeks ago.) Most of the observations in this post are based on my own personal experience – on my observation of my own accent and those of my friends and family. My observations aren’t meant as broad generalizations, but rather as starting points for discussion as to whether or not these trends might be generalizable.

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I think it is possible (though not easy or inevitable) to learn native-sounding pronunciation of a second language later in life – to learn to pronounce a language naturally enough that native speakers will mistake you for a native speaker. And, in my own experience, I’ve noticed that my accent tends to be fairly mutable depending on which accents and languages I’m surrounded by on a daily basis. Overall, I would argue that accents can and do change continually.

                Yet at the same time, to a certain degree, our accents are fixed in the sense that there are certain ways we naturally pronounce certain sounds and there are certain sounds that we can’t produce without some influence of our native tongue. It is very difficult to entirely erase someone’s native accent. An individual’s pronunciation tropes are deeply engrained, and often a person isn’t even fully aware of his/her own method of pronunciation – one naturally pronounces things in some way, without consciously deciding to pronounce each word a certain way each and every time it is pronounced. So, in this way, certain aspects of pronunciation are difficult to alter.

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I started learning Spanish when I was about 13, and while my pronunciation was strange at first, it gradually improved. I would by no means say that my pronunciation of Spanish is perfect – to me, my Spanish still sounds like that of a foreigner attempting to speak Spanish. Yet, when I lived in Colombia, I repeatedly had native Spanish speakers ask me how I had learned English, assuming that Spanish was my first language and English my second. (And I wonder how much of this had to do with perception; if someone inferred based on the context in which he/she met me that I was a native Spanish speaker, would he/she then, as a result, perceive my accent as more native sounding, just because of having met me in a certain context? Or is my accent truly natural enough for someone to mistake me for a native speaker? [And I really don’t think it is.])

                Later, when I began to study French, I noticed a sort of retroactive interference – for the first few weeks that I studied French, my Spanish pronunciation changed and started to sound less native. But my accent didn’t revert to its former “gringo” state; rather it turned into some new combination of Colombian Spanish pronunciation rules mixed with occasional French inflections and oddly-nasalized vowels. And it wasn’t a systematic change; I didn’t start pronouncing every Spanish word with a French accent, just occasional ones.

                Even later, when I began to study Portuguese pronunciation, I found it strange that I noticed it interfering with my pronunciation of English (my first language). The interference was only sporadic and didn’t last very long; but, after an hour or two of immersing myself in Portuguese pronunciation, I would find myself mispronouncing vowel sounds in English, which had not happened when I was learning Spanish and French.

I’ve also noticed similar changes in my accent even when I’m not learning a new language. I’ve noticed that when, over a long period of time, I spend a lot of time talking to someone who has a certain accent, that accent begins to influence my own. When the differences between my own accent and that of the person I’m speaking to are minimal, I don’t notice a change. (i.e.: When I spend time speaking to a Canadian from Toronto, whose pronunciation varies from mine on certain words, but is overall fairly similar, I don’t really notice any change in my accent.) Yet, when the difference between my own accent and the other person’s (or peoples’) is larger, my accent seems to be more strongly affected.

                For example, for about six months I lived in an apartment with several Australians, and theirs was the only English I heard during those six months (as I was not living in an English-speaking country at the time). Even after just a few weeks, I found myself pronouncing certain words with an Australian accent; but I couldn’t necessarily reproduce those pronunciations now – it was something that happened subconsciously and seemingly sporadically, and any conscious attempt I might make at an Australian accent would likely sound very unnatural.

                For another example, when I spent a significant amount of time speaking Spanish with an Italian friend of mine, who speaks Spanish with a very heavy Italian accent, I noticed that I temporarily started to add some Italian-sounding inflections to my Spanish. Without actually knowing Italian myself, I accidentally began to incorporate some of its pronunciation rules into Spanish.

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So, in general, my observations (based solely on my personal experience) are:

1. There can be retroactive interference not only in the acquisition of vocabulary and grammar, but also in pronunciation and accents.

2. Accents are in some ways fixed but, overall, are mutable.

And, as I’ve said, these observations are based solely on my personal experiences with language learning and language speaking, and on my observations of others learning second (or 3^rd, 4^th, etc.) languages, and not on any formal studies or experiments. But I think it’s interesting to wonder about to what degree these observations are universally observable, and what factors influence them, and to consider why it is that it’s possible for accents to change, but is often so difficult (if not impossible) to adopt a native-sounding accent when learning a foreign language.

Several related questions/ideas arise, among them the following two:

1.       How does accent mutability relate to multilingualism? Is a multilingual person’s accent inherently more mutable, since that person has already learned to speak in more than one language and with more than one accent? Or does having learnt more than one language enable you to better separate accents rather than mixing them together?

2.       Is there a relationship between the degree of mutability of someone’s accent and that individual’s personality? (I’m not referring so much to someone’s ability to deliberately learn a new accent, but more to the spontaneous accent alterations that, at least in my personal experience, occur when someone is surrounded by different accents.) For example, did I begin to incorporate Italian inflections into my Spanish because I tend to defer to the habits of those around me? Or would similar trends be observed in someone who is more self-assertive than I am?

Bilingualism, Aging, and Monolingual Bias in the US

I just came across a couple of articles that talk about the correlation between speaking multiple languages and slower rates of cognitive decline in aging adults.  Specifically, one study showed that bilingualism was linked to higher executive function performance in older adults and another study suggested that speaking more than one language prevented the onset of dementia by an average of 4.5 years.  I found this particularly interesting when put in the context of the larger debate over whether bilingual education is a good idea.  This article nicely summarizes both sides of the debate.  It seems to me that the core argument against bilingual education is a practical one: encouraging a bilingual education for non-native English speakers wastes valuable resources since these children will inevitably grow up to speak English anyway.  Yet when it comes to wealthier school districts teaching mostly native English speakers, it seems that the research comes more into play.  Learning a second language in school is considered academically-enriching and promotes long-term cognitive health, as mentioned above.  So why the discrepancy?  Valerie Strauss, the author of the article linked above, argues that this reflects a monolingual bias in the United States.  Could we be subconsciously biased toward promoting multilingualism when the second language is not English, but averse to preserving non-native English speakers' first language simply by virtue of that language not being English, despite the growing evidence of the universal health benefits of multilingualism?  I would love to hear other peoples' thoughts!

Griffin Dietz: Learning to Understand vs. Learning to Speak

How do children learn their first language? Most people don’t remember learning how to speak, so our answers to these questions are largely from observation. My situation is slightly different.

While I don’t remember learning to understand English, I do remember learning to speak it. You see, I was born with severe speech apraxia, which is basically a fancy way of saying that my brain didn’t know how to properly move the body parts needed for speech. When my frustration in my inability to communicate led me to develop my own simplistic sign language, my parents took my to see a speech pathologist. That was right around my second birthday.

For the next three years I learned to talk sound by sound. To me, the process seemed like a bunch of games. I distinctly remember being given multicolor licorice, with the colors designating not flavor, but how difficult that given piece was to chew (an exercise in muscle strengthening). We started with the simple sounds, which I now can name as vowels, as well as both labial and dental nasals and stops. Next came the velar and palatal stops as well as voiced labial and dental fricatives. And finally, I learned the hardest sounds, the voiceless fricatives and approximants, with the true test being in the [ɹ] sound.

It’s no coincidence that when you hear a toddler speak that “fish” might become “pish”, or that “three” is often pronounced “twee.” We learn sounds in order of difficulty. I’ve always found it rather ironic that my speech teacher was named Ruth; I can’t think of a harder name to say.

This whole anecdote has led up to this idea that we might learn to understand and speak with different trajectories. I believe speech is learned from the bottom up. Babies typically make sounds even before they can talk. At first they just cry, and soon after begin to make accidental sounds as they move about. Then comes babbling: “Babababa.” Until the babbling turns into a collection of different syllables: “Mababada.” And this is all just practice for putting actual sounds together to make words, and then those words together to make cohesive thoughts or sentences. There is an order that we learn sounds, both naturally and when taught, and young children will simplify words with place assimilation until they learn the proper sound.

However, before any cohesive sentences we must first have a level of understanding of a language. The theory of language acquisition proposed by Noam Chomsky is that of the Universal Grammar. It is contains the idea that we all have an idea of innate and biological core grammatical categories that assist children with language development and adults with language processing. Under this theory a child would know instinctively how to combines types of word to share thoughts due to a few rules true for all human languages, and the only task they have is to simply learn the words of their language.

However, this is not the only theory of language acquisition out there and I am not entirely convinced of its veracity, especially considering different languages have different sentence structures, phonology, semantics, and more. Another theory, called morphology acquisition, which I’d tend to agree with, is that we learn to understand a language, we do so from the top down, by which I mean we learn to identify morphemes within sentences. Babies hear everyone talking around them in complete sentences, to them just a long, cohesive string of sounds. With enough repetition, we can break those sentences down into words, and from there we can further derive meaning from particular morphemes. These morphemes, I believe, lend comprehension to a language and form the basis for our speech. Thus, our language learning would be from pulling a sentence apart into morphemes and sounds, and our speech would arise out of combining simple sounds to build sentences back up.

To consider: Do you agree with the Universal Grammar theory, or the morphology acquisition theory of language acquisition? Is it reasonable to say that we learn to understand language from the top down but to speak from the bottom up as described? Do you agree we learn sounds in order by their simplicity, or do you believe we do so in a different order?

Sources:

http://www.simplypsychology.org/language.html

http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/linguistics/learn.jsp

Tom Cao: Why do we need (to teach) linguistic theory?

And in general, why do we need to teach theory at all?

In our section right after the lesson on syntax, many of us proposed very interesting and thought-provoking questions concerning how the kind of tree diagrams we learned in our lesson and in the textbook seemed to have failed to demonstrate certain syntactic information. For one particular rule, S → NP + VP, one asked why only some NPs (noun phrases) can serve as the subject of a sentence whereas other NPs cannot. We may say “the apple is delicious” or “apples are delicious,” but an utterance like “apple is delicious” sounds somewhat wrong to native speakers of English. If we regarded “the apple,” “apples,” and “apple” all as phrases of the same category, it would be extremely difficult the account for the observation above. Another student wondered how we could distinguish sentences such as “we run,” “we ran,” and “we are running.” In the final instance, there even does’t seem to be a way to represent its structure, as the “are” in “we are running” apparently differs from that in “we are runners” from a syntactic perspective. An even more interesting topic would be to distinguish the two senses of “the vase is broken”: denoting a condition (where “broken” serves as an adjective) or an action (where “is broken” is passive voice).

These are all issues that have been largely solved ever since the structures introduced in our textbook emerged in the 1950s. Many different theories, in fact, are based on such primitive tree diagrams, which is probably why the authors of the textbook, and Stanford’s linguistics department, believe it’s a good idea to offer a general introduction by going back to history.

Indeed, offering a theory-neutral introductory course is a great thing if all students are to further pursue more advanced courses in the discipline. Though I have no concrete evidence suggesting otherwise, however, I do not believe that this is the case for LING 1. (I should note that I most certainly believe Prof. Meghan Sumner and our conscientious TAs, SK, Lelia, and Olek, have done an amazing job teaching and providing help.) A friend of mine is taking this course only to fulfill her symbolic systems minor requirement, and this is probably going to be the only linguistics course she will ever take in her life. Imagine, if you can only take one biology course throughout your life, do you want to take a theory-neutral course that strives to be compatible with both creationism and different versions of evolutionary theories (including Lamarck’s)? True, up till now we still do not have sufficient electrophysiological evidence to prove or disprove any linguistic theory of serious complexity. But in my opinion, the fact that something is merely a theory, as opposed to a fact, and we have competing theories against it cannot translate into an automatic rejection. Rather, we need to examine one thing: whether the theory has enough explanatory power to help students better understand the facts in a systematic way.

Recent frameworks of Generative Grammar, for instance, have done a generally successful way in explaining the structural reasons behind the seemingly irregular phenomena I listed above. The incorporation of determiner phrases, the introduction of IP (or TP) and CP, and the X-bar schema and its extensions are all examples of the theoretical repertoire we now possess to better understand and analyze the underlying the structures of phrases (including words and sentences), and how their meaning can be affected with changes in phrasal structures, at an invisible level (say, the two meanings of “the person is too nice to kill”). It is worth noting that such theories often also work very well crosslinguistically, so that they can reveal even more than what students would usually expect about language, and the science behind it.

Finally, is a theoretically motivated course going to be much more difficult for both the students and the teachers? I honestly do not think so. Sure, one could say, if students at MIT and other peer institutions can do it, why can’t us? But I can argue with more convincing reason than just school pride. Last year I taught a introductory elective course in linguistics to 20 high school sophomores in China. (We mainly focused on presenting the syntactic structures of modern standard Chinese from a Minimalist viewpoint.) In the second lesson, I explained the fundamental operation of merge, how X-bar schema work based on merge, and how to draw tree diagrams in accordance with X-bar schema. Then, when I gradually introduced examples from different categories, the students could come up with their analyses considerably accurately without much additional guidance. Of course, as a 20-period course, we skipped a lot of advanced topics (for the record, we covered some phonology and semantics in 2 period and no pragmatics or sociolinguistics at all, mainly because I knew very little about these fields; we also focused on different writing systems and solving problems from Linguistics Olympiads), but in general, the students felt illuminated by the basic ideas and even fell in love with linguistics. So, all in all, at least it was an successful experiment per se.

Nathan Tindall: The Symbolic Significance of Nouns

As humans, we strive to maintain a positive image of the self. Our self-image is influenced by many things, but is strongly affected by a desire to maintain a perception of competency and morality. Additionally, humans have a desire to be accepted by a social group by performing socially desirable actions. In the wake of the midterm election, I would like to bring to light a fascinating study I found that demonstrates how linguistic cues can influence behavior.

A study conducted in 2008 by researchers collaborating from Stanford and Harvard found that subtle linguistic cues increase voting and related behavior (Bryan, C. J., Walton, G. M., Rogers, T., & Dweck, C. S.; 2011). The researchers conducted three studies: in each, participants received one of two surveys. In one survey, the questions were phrased in a way that incorporated a self-relevant noun (i.e. “How important is it to you to be a voter in the upcoming election); in the other survey, questions were phrased in a way that emphasizes the action of voting (i.e. “How important is it to you to vote in the upcoming election”). This study builds on earlier research that lexicalization (using a noun label to refer to someone with a certain property, i.e. “voter”) influences the inferences that people derive from a sentence.

The researchers found that those who were asked if they would be a “voter” were significantly more likely to vote than those who were asked if they would “vote.” The researchers posit that people’s desire to maintain their self-identity through the aggregation of noun phrases (i.e. singer, voter, student) can be used in order to motivate behavior that is congruent with a positive image of the self. Thus, the mere act of asking someone “Will you be a voter?” makes them more likely to actually vote than asking them “Will you vote?” The researchers emphasize, however, that the opposite effect would be expected if people were asked, “Are you going to cheat?” versus “Are you going to be a cheater?” because this lexicalized phrase has a meaning that is incongruent with a positive self-image.

Relating this research to our class, I think this study really highlights how subtle linguistic changes can cause shifts in semantic meaning, especially with respect to quantity. For example, children believe that someone described as a “carrot eater” likes carrots more than someone who “eats carrots whenever they can” (Gelman S.A., Heyman G.D.; 1999). These researchers hypothesized that the lexicalized nouns were associated with stable personality characteristics.

Interestingly, the properties that delineate positive-associated noun phrases from negatively associated ones vary widely by context. The pragmatic implication of “Are you going to quit?” and “Are you going to be a quitter?” changes depending on whether they are used as the slogan of an anti-smoking campaign or asked of an athlete as they are approaching the finish line. In either case however, the present research supports the idea that we consider the lexicalized noun-phrase to be weightier because it brushes our desire to maintain our self-concept.

Opening this question up to larger discussion, to what extent do you consider yourself a VERB-er rather than one who VERBs, and have these two categories ever come into conflict? If so, why? Do you agree that the lexicalized noun-phrase has a more permanent connotation, as the research suggests?

Works Cited

Bryan, C. J., Walton, G. M., Rogers, T., & Dweck, C. S. (2011). Motivating voter turnout by invoking the self. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(31), 12653-12656.

Gelman, S.A., & Heyman, G.D. (1999). Carrot-eaters and creature-believers: The effects of lexicalization on children's inferences about social categories. Psychological Science, 10(6), 489-493.

Steven Pinker: What our language habits reveal

I just discovered this Ted talk online and thought I'd share it!  In this short talk, Steven Pinker shows how language is like "a window on to human nature." He shows how subtle differences in the way we express ideas actually give us valuable insights into the way we think and function as humans.  For example, Pinker points out that the difference between the verb usage in each of the following sentences:

Give the muffin to a mouse.
Give the mouse a muffin.

He claims that the first sentence denotes causation: "cause X to go to Y", while the second indicates "cause Y to have X".  This subtle difference can be further put under the microscope to reveal that "there's a level of fine-grained conceptual structure, which we automatically and unconsciously compute ever time we produce or utter a sentence, that governs our use of language."  This offers a framework for human thought, which, Pinker argues, sheds lights on some of the most philosophical questions of human nature.

Pinker also shows that the different ways that we can use language to conceive thoughts are a basis for argumentation in times when the facts may not differ, but the interpretation of the facts do immensely.  For example, "invading Iraq" and "liberating Iraq" in our society refers to the same action, but construed in entirely different ways.  

If you're interested in the intersection of philosophy, psychology, and linguistics, definitely check it out!

Virgil Zanders: Alzheimer's, the Highly Educated and the Linguistics Workout

Research has shown the more education a person has, the lower their risk for getting Alzheimer’s disease.  Much of this is attributed to the “cognitive reserve” theory.  This theory asserts that people who are more educated are able to function normally, even when the protein plaques that cause Alzheimer’s disease begin to afflict their brains.  The brains of the higher educated are better equipped to work around any Alzheimer's related brain afflictions, thereby keeping them mentally and verbally sharp. 

A tremendous amount of emphasis is placed on the importance of reading and cogitation in maintaining mental acuity and combating Alzheimer’s.  But I often wonder how much we are underestimating the role of linguistics and the cerebral and physical workouts the higher educated give their brains and bodies every time they speak.  Upon close examination, cognition, word choice and the resulting manners of articulation are incredibly intense forms of workouts that strengthen various muscles in our bodies and a specific part of our brains. These linguistic workouts may also be instrumental in aiding the higher educated in keeping Alzheimer’s at bay.  Let me explain.

The tongue is the strongest muscle in the body.  This incredible muscle, however, does not act alone when helping us create speech.  To utter the simplest sentence the human body enlists the coordinated assistance of nearly one hundred muscles in the chest, neck, jaw, and lips.  Every word or phrase we think to speak is stored in the speech area of the brain called the Broca’s area.  This area of the brain controls speech production, language processing and facial neuron control.  It is also the area of the brain that degenerates with the onset of Alzheimer’s disease.

We all recognize the role exercise plays in overall physical health and longevity.  It stands to reason that speech and its associative linguistic exercises play an integral role in keeping our brains strong and healthy.  People with higher education tend to use more complex phraseology and syntax, working the muscles associated with speaking more rigorously.  This stimulates greater health in the Broca’s area of the brain, which may possibly help keep Alzheimer’s degeneration at bay.  This is just my theory of course.  Speaking and manner of articulation as a form of exercise best practiced by those with higher education may seem far-fetched.  But given that so many muscles are used for speaking, I think acknowledging linguistics as a legitimate form of “exercise” may be something worth researching.  If more overt forms of exercise like running and swimming nourish the brain, surely speaking and linguistics can be viewed as playing a pivotal role in cerebral health as well.