Recently I've been alerted to the new inclusions in the latest version of the Oxford English Dictionary. In keeping with my previous blog entry, appetites for documenting language change are very strong – regardless of whether we're looking at historical linguistics; or looking at the present or the near future to see where we're heading. So what do the new words for June 2013 tell us about the zeitgeist and who we are?
Well, from the 1200 new or amended words, it's hardly surprising that media reports have tended to focus on terms such as crowdsourcing, flash mob, geekery and terms related to social media – follow and follower, for example. To me, such examples demonstrate media outlets' own intentions to be cutting edge, on trend – or another vacuous term to separate the leaders from the easily led. Other terms not in the spotlight seem to have been in widespread usage for a great deal longer – head space, jolly hockey sticks or live blog. This is because the policy adopted when compiling lists of new words saw fit to only include those words that had already been in use for a certain period of time. That policy has now changed slightly, as revealed by the dictionary's Chief Editor, John Simpson:
"The noun and verb tweet (in the social-networking sense) has just been added to the OED.
This breaks at least one OED rule, namely that a new word needs to be
current for ten years before consideration for inclusion. But it seems
to be catching on."
To include a term purely because it "[...] seems to be catching on" is rather misguided, in my view. Twitter may prove itself as a durable social media platform. However, as we have seen with other portals and sites; it may yet be superseded by a brighter, better, platform. This process would then have given undue prominence to a piece of ephemera unable to hold its own. Similarly, any dictionary can only document usage retrospectively. If you compile a dictionary this month, it can only be a record of language usage from June 2013 and earlier. At least if a word has flourished for ten years, speakers have assigned it a value and a purpose.
But by concentrating on all that is new, we do not have the full story. If the latest imprint of the second edition of the OED now contains a total of 823,000 entries, who is documenting those words and phrases deemed to have fallen out of common usage altogether? What do we know about these words? Surely it is the relationship between neologisms and these obsolete words and phrases that best illustrates how a language is gradually changing? It will be this information that tells us the most about how certain social and cultural forces dominate others through language, and – since neologisms generally arise from a communicative need not adequately addressed by language to date – even how effective a language is as a means of communication for the people it serves.
Sunday 23 June 2013
Thursday 13 June 2013
We are family
Back in August last year, I wrote a blog entry about cognates (It's all relative, 25 August 2012), which referred to new research indicating that Indo-European languages (of which English is one) may be as much as 9000 years old. A friend alerted me to recent research, summarised in The Guardian, that had been undertaken by some of the same researchers. Their work, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of the United States of America (PNAS), takes the links between languages and language families much further. By applying a statistical model to examine the frequency of certain cognates in everyday speech across seven language families, the researchers assert that high-frequency cognates signify a superfamily of languages that may have existed across Europe and Asia as far back as 15,000 years ago.
Having never conducted any statistical linguistic research myself, the methods outlined simply indicate an attempt by the researchers to counter the usual criticisms or shortcomings of this kind of work in historical linguistics. Having said that, the researchers' results left me feeling that actually, the most prevalent, significant cognates – with controls to take account of chance sound associations – they discovered were actually rather predictable. The list of 23 significant cognates identified, in order of frequency, reads as follows: thou, I not, that, we, to give, who, this, what, man/male, ye, old, mother, to hear, hand, fire, to pull, black, to flow, bark, ashes, to spit, worm. Displaying these words in a table detailing variables such as their respective frequency, half-life (the expected time in 1000s of years before one word has a 50% chance of being replaced by a new cognate word) and the part of speech they exemplify is interesting.
In my view, this is because when they are presented together, knowing that seven language families have been considered; the words invite us to search for universals. From a semantic perspective, it doesn't surprise me that personal pronouns, interpersonal relationships and elements of the natural world are represented – since these words are, and have always been, by virtue of their function, essential to human interaction and/or survival for millennia. The researchers may, essentially, only be revealing by statistical methods what we have always believed to be true. If the pronoun we ain't broke, why fix it, for example? But our non-scientific gut feeling then leads us to consider to spit and worm as anomalies in the context of the table, when further historical or anthropological research may provide further insight.
So for me, having never previously been interested in anything beyond cognates between modern English, German and French, this research will prove to be significant if its statistical model can be replicated and expanded in further studies. For if we are beginning to understand the rate of language change on a global scale from the distant past until the present; then the next step will surely be to apply the methodology to hopefully be better able to predict changes in languages and communication far into the future.
Having never conducted any statistical linguistic research myself, the methods outlined simply indicate an attempt by the researchers to counter the usual criticisms or shortcomings of this kind of work in historical linguistics. Having said that, the researchers' results left me feeling that actually, the most prevalent, significant cognates – with controls to take account of chance sound associations – they discovered were actually rather predictable. The list of 23 significant cognates identified, in order of frequency, reads as follows: thou, I not, that, we, to give, who, this, what, man/male, ye, old, mother, to hear, hand, fire, to pull, black, to flow, bark, ashes, to spit, worm. Displaying these words in a table detailing variables such as their respective frequency, half-life (the expected time in 1000s of years before one word has a 50% chance of being replaced by a new cognate word) and the part of speech they exemplify is interesting.
In my view, this is because when they are presented together, knowing that seven language families have been considered; the words invite us to search for universals. From a semantic perspective, it doesn't surprise me that personal pronouns, interpersonal relationships and elements of the natural world are represented – since these words are, and have always been, by virtue of their function, essential to human interaction and/or survival for millennia. The researchers may, essentially, only be revealing by statistical methods what we have always believed to be true. If the pronoun we ain't broke, why fix it, for example? But our non-scientific gut feeling then leads us to consider to spit and worm as anomalies in the context of the table, when further historical or anthropological research may provide further insight.
So for me, having never previously been interested in anything beyond cognates between modern English, German and French, this research will prove to be significant if its statistical model can be replicated and expanded in further studies. For if we are beginning to understand the rate of language change on a global scale from the distant past until the present; then the next step will surely be to apply the methodology to hopefully be better able to predict changes in languages and communication far into the future.
Tuesday 4 June 2013
Doing things differently
I'll never forget walking into the free school where I work here in Switzerland, going downstairs to the CDT workshop and seeing about 10 children crafting bows and arrows in wood. Jobsworths would never sanction the supervision or manufacture of such weapons by children in the UK! However, the children's pride in their work and the subsequent – safe – archery competition in a nearby field spoke volumes about the activity-based learning that free schools encourage.
From 2014 in the UK, 102 free schools will offer an alternative way of learning to children. I'm sure schools will still be required to cover national curriculum material – if only so that leavers are able to continue with different forms of education later. My hope for the UK is that people begin to recognise that a man or woman standing in front of a board lecturing young minds does not work for everyone. People often say that the most rewarding part of teaching is that moment when a child finally understands a concept for themselves. In cross-subject, activity-based learning where teachers are guides rather than all-knowing lecturers, these moments occur regularly.
During our weekly 'language morning' at school – where all students make plans and set goals for their own language learning – hearing a six-year-old say he wants to "learn all the languages in the world" makes me, as a teacher, want to work harder on his behalf. One seven-year-old is counting a million grains of rice simply because she wants to understand what one million looks like. According to a recent radio factoid, counting to one million, uninterrupted by sleep or eating, would take a person four months. But we patronise these youngsters and their efforts if we remain entrenched in the test-oriented, league-tabled sausage factory of the state school system. If we allow children the freedom, with guidance, to pursue their goals, even if these are overambitious; they will engage with learning on their own terms and will learn better.
Even the perceived lack of structure or rules at Summerhill in the UK is no longer true, if indeed it ever was. The children have a say in the running of their school. This tradition of direct democracy is also alive and well where I work – and includes agreeing rules for lessons, breaks and other activities. During my teenage years, the demands of our School Council for girls to wear trousers and for us to be allowed to remove our ties in hot weather (usually vetoed by teachers) seem laughable in comparison.
Students do succeed and go on to do apprenticeships, public language exams and/or university entrance exams. But I would argue that the goal-oriented, holistic approach to learning pupils and students experience at a free school makes them more independent and more responsible for their own learning – two skills which are vital to their future progress. The state system worked for me, though it doesn't work for everyone. So I think we should all at least have the courage to do things differently.
From 2014 in the UK, 102 free schools will offer an alternative way of learning to children. I'm sure schools will still be required to cover national curriculum material – if only so that leavers are able to continue with different forms of education later. My hope for the UK is that people begin to recognise that a man or woman standing in front of a board lecturing young minds does not work for everyone. People often say that the most rewarding part of teaching is that moment when a child finally understands a concept for themselves. In cross-subject, activity-based learning where teachers are guides rather than all-knowing lecturers, these moments occur regularly.
During our weekly 'language morning' at school – where all students make plans and set goals for their own language learning – hearing a six-year-old say he wants to "learn all the languages in the world" makes me, as a teacher, want to work harder on his behalf. One seven-year-old is counting a million grains of rice simply because she wants to understand what one million looks like. According to a recent radio factoid, counting to one million, uninterrupted by sleep or eating, would take a person four months. But we patronise these youngsters and their efforts if we remain entrenched in the test-oriented, league-tabled sausage factory of the state school system. If we allow children the freedom, with guidance, to pursue their goals, even if these are overambitious; they will engage with learning on their own terms and will learn better.
Even the perceived lack of structure or rules at Summerhill in the UK is no longer true, if indeed it ever was. The children have a say in the running of their school. This tradition of direct democracy is also alive and well where I work – and includes agreeing rules for lessons, breaks and other activities. During my teenage years, the demands of our School Council for girls to wear trousers and for us to be allowed to remove our ties in hot weather (usually vetoed by teachers) seem laughable in comparison.
Students do succeed and go on to do apprenticeships, public language exams and/or university entrance exams. But I would argue that the goal-oriented, holistic approach to learning pupils and students experience at a free school makes them more independent and more responsible for their own learning – two skills which are vital to their future progress. The state system worked for me, though it doesn't work for everyone. So I think we should all at least have the courage to do things differently.
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