Final Summary

Finally, the concluding chapters were less about the roots of linguistics and monster syntax trees which made my eyes cross. The concluding chapters were about something that had peaked my interest when I first started this class and about an issue I had questions about when I began reading this book. In the beginning of the book Mr. pinker goes into great detail trying to support his theory that there is a language instinct. That babies are born with this magical ability to process and churn out wonderfully constructed grammatically correct language without so much of a blink of an eye, when second language learners, later in life, can spend years of tireless effort trying to learn a new language and still come up short. In the chapter Baby Born Talking-Describes Heaven, the author addresses a loophole in his argument so far, why don't babies, if they truly have this instinct, come straight out the womb talking? In an article from The Sun, they claimed that a baby had begun to speak about heaven “Life in heaven is grand, a baby told an astounded obstetrical team seconds after birth. Tiny Naomi Monstefusco literally came into the world singing praises of God's firmament. The miracle so shocked the delivery room team, one nurse ran screaming down the hall.”(pinker 265). The only explanation for this event and others like it, is that once in the womb the baby can actually hear echos of their mother's speech and since babies are born with the ability to produce common sounds, it is somewhat likely that these stories are not complete fiction and do have some merit. My real question was though, how do babies really develop language if the “instinct” does not just automatically generate it. Through another concluding chapter called Language Organs and Grammar Genes, in which pinker discussed how the brain actually had specific parts that have shown evidence to be part of understanding speech, producing it, and making it grammatical. These parts of the brain are in the frontal lobe and are called Broca's area and Wernicke's area. Pinker vaguely answered my questioned by stating that babies do not develop language on their own using these unique instinct in their brain, but their instinct is fueled by the language the baby is exposed to, that in fact, motherese was helpful even if not grammatically correct. What I found most interesting was that how the babies were exposed to language greatly affected how much of the language the child would learn if the child would learn it at all. In fact, several experiments were conducted where babies were only exposed to language through television and these babies never developed any language, as opposed to babies raised with Motherese who were very linguisticly advanced. I am still unsure of the connection between how babies learn language and how this relates to the language instinct. If I could speak to Mr. pinker I would ask him about the best environment for babies to learn language and how this directly affected the parts of the brain pinker identified as being responsible for the language instinct. My question about the nature of language would be the best way in which children should acquire language, under what circumstances, and how that relates to the language instinct portions of the brain.

Oh my God, you are acting like such a JAp, if you didn't want to get your 10,000 dollar purse dirty, you should not have used it as a backpack!

JAp is considered to have multiple processes because it is an acronym, Jewish American princess, and is a derivation when it gains the suffix “-ish” to become Japish. The etymology of this word is that it is a derogatory term which was attested in the last 1970's. When used, it usually refers to a Jewish woman who is pampered and take the material advantages she has for granted. I grew up in an environment in which this word was used quite often. I went to Jewish private schools where the girls in my school were mostly Jap's, these girls differed from the average jewish girls in the school, because they seemed to flaunt the wealth that they had excessively and act very stuck up. The regular Jewish girls, however, were not called Jap's, because even though some did have a fair amount of money, they were very down to earth and did not flaunt their wealth like the Japish girls did, always complaining about how they were not able to get the newest louie voutton bag until the day after it was released or the fact they were not capable of holding a conversation in which they did not name drop or gush about their lavish life. However, when I came to LaGuardia, I became quickly aware that not everyone is familiar with this definition of JAp . Most of the people I came into contact believed it was a derogatory term towards Japanese people. In fact, in the first week of going out with my boyfriend I mentioned how one girl I knew acted like a total Jap. My boyfriend was immediately astonished and said, “WHAT?! You don't like Japanese people?!”. I of course was completely confused and said no this girl was not even Japanese. He then was relieved that I was not a racist Japanese hating girlfriend and we are still together to this day.

Option #3 "Dr. Jerskey Has a Bad Day"

Dr. Jerskey Has a Bad Day
In the lobby of the C building
(Jonathan rushes to get to class and hits Dr. Jerskey waiting for the elevator)
Jonathan: Sorry Dr. Jerskey!
Dr. Jerskey: It's fine Jonathan...why are you in such a hurry? Class does not start for 10 minutes.
Jonathan:Oh really? (checks watch) No, I don't think so...My watch says its 1:10...(Shows Watch)
Dr. Jerskey: Well (laughs) I guess its a little late because my watch says (looks at watch)...12:30...My watch must have stopped! Oh no, I hope everyone is still upstairs!
Jonathan: Yeah I think s...(school guard interrupts)
School Guard: I'm sorry ladies and gentlemen but we have an elevator malfunction so please use the stairs until we can get them fixed.
Dr. Jerskey: Oh well, this is just great!
Jonathan: Ohhh it's not so bad, we usually walk up the stairs anyway!
Dr. Jerskey: (sighs) Sure, you're right, lets go upstairs.
(walking up the first floor)
Dr. Jerskey: So Jonathan, what did you think of Cosette's presentation?
Jonathan: Oh...I really liked it, I thought it was really interesting! Her book, The Language Instinct, seems to have a really interesting theory.
Dr. Jerskey: (laughs) Oh, really?
Jonathan: Yeah....I agree with it. I mean I think learning a language is pretty hard, you know? It's hard for anyone of any age to learn a language, their must be something in our brains that help babies along to learn it, otherwise it wouldn’t make sense.
Dr. Jerskey: (stops walking) Don't be silly Jonathan, don't believe blindly believe his theory, you honestly think there is this secret part of our brain that helps us understand language and help us create it? If there was, why hasn't anyone found it yet?!
Jonathan: Well, I don't know Dr. Jerskey they are finding more and more about the brain everyday, but their seems to be a lot of evidence to back that pinker guy's theory up.
Dr. Jerskey: What evidence?! You call his little stories evidence?
Jonathan: Well, hes a doctor and a very established linguist, I don't think he would just make stuff up without any merit. A lot of research went into his theory and he is not the only one who follows it, that Chomsky guy does too.
Dr. Jerskey: Just because he is a doctor does not make him smart Jonathan...
Jonathan: You're a doctor though, Dr. Jerskey.
Dr. Jerskey: That's beside the point! What real concrete evidence does he show that a direct link between this “instinct” and language exists!? That it is not just the child's ability to learn language through their normal thinking and comprehension? I think because he does not understand how babies could learn language that he made up this theory. Maybe he is just underestimating the power of the brain at that age.
Jonathan: But what about the children who speak creole when their parents spoke pidgin? How were they able to manage that if not for a born instinct, because if they just learned the language their parents spoke with no instinct, how were they able to speak creole?
Dr. Jerskey: Well, maybe they learned it from the public outside, who spoke the language perfectly?
Jonathan: But what about those deaf children? Who were only exposed to their parents pidgin sign language yet able to produce way more grammatical and correct sign language?
Dr. Jerskey: But...!
Jonathan: How are you able to explain how children, only exposed to motherese, are able to fit enough language knowledge to fit as much information as our own college linguistic textbook?
Dr. Jerskey: Well...!
Jonathan: And how would you explain language impairment diseases, how those people have perfect IQ in everything but language, but fail to understand how to make a plural. Or how some people can not even function in everyday society, yet they can speak beautiful language. How is any of that possible without their being some concrete entity in our brain that is responsible for our language abilities?
Dr. Jerskey:....I..(Carlos, Eric, and Carolina walk down the stairs along with the rest of the class)
Carlos: Dr. Jerskey?! We thought you were sick today, we waited all class for you!
Dr. Jerskey: Sorry guys...I'll make it up to you next class!
(everyone disperses besides Jonathan)
Jonathan: Well, its been nice talking to you, see you next class!
(Dr. Jerskey turns and starts walking up the next flight and stops)
Dr. Jerskey: Jonathan?
Jonathan: Yes
Dr. Jerskey: I'm still marking you late.

A, highly, caffeine induced and sleep deprived summary.

This 2/5 of the book describes basically the mechanics of sentence structure and I will do my best to try to summarize the key concepts discussed. First, there are two kinds of phrases, a noun phrase and a verb phrase. A noun phrase consists of an optional, "determinator", otherwise known as an article, like "the" or "a", any number of adjectives and then a noun. An example of a noun phrase would be, "The sad boy". A verb phrase is a verb followed by the noun phrase, like "Eats sour candy". What makes these phrases turn into sentences is when a noun phrase is followed by a verb phrase, like "The sad boy eats sour candy." A sentence can consist of the word either, followed by a sentence, followed by the word or, followed by another sentence. Also, a sentence can consist of the word if, followed by a sentence, followed by the word then, followed by another sentence. A noun is not what you have previously believed, it is not just the name of any thing, it can also be an action, a path, a quality, a measurement in space, a measurement in time, a category, an event, an abstract concept or even have no meaning at all. This goes the same for verbs, verbs can be more than just words for things being done, but they can also be mental states, like know or like, possession, like own or have, and abstract relations among ideas, like falsify or prove. To get more in depth, the noun phrase is very intricate. The noun in a noun phrase is considered the "head", where everything else in that sentence, is filed with that word in memory pertaining to that word, like "the fish in the ditch". This same principle can be applied to the verb phrase, like "crying before the monster kills him". Another principle, known as "role-players" or arguments, that allow the phrases to refer not just to one thing or action, but to sets of players that interact with each other, each with their own role, like "Bethany(the giver) gave the police man(the receiver) a cookie(the gift), so he would not tell her parole officer she broke her parole." The third is the ingredient to a phrase is one or more modifiers, usually called "adjuncts", these modifiers are like as ons to the role-players, a little extra information about it, like Bethany, ave the police man a cookie, so he would not tell her parole officer she broke her parole, at the precinct".

How to say Cosette

I have come to the point in which I have given up telling people my name. To me it sounds simple to say but whenever I meet someone new, they without fail, no matter where they are from, mispronounce it. They do not mispronounce it once, however, they actually never really learn to say my name and even some,like Dr. Jerskey, misspell my name. Some even continue to mispronounce and misspell my name after knowing me over 10 years. There has even been instances in which I would go to a Jamba Juice, state my order, usually something with raspberries, and then have to state my name for the order, only to receive my order moments later by being called Jose. So, I hope with my explanation both the people of Nagaland, my fellow classmates and my linguist professor will be able to properly pronounce and spell my name. To a linguist I would describe my name by saying the first syllable of Cosette is has the onset of a voiceless, velar stop, with a rhyme of a mid, back vowel, "co". The next syllables onset is a voiceless, alveolar fricative, with a rhyme of a mid, front vowel, "se". The last syllable is the consonant that is a voiceless, alveolar stop. [kosɛt]. For a non-linguist, I would say for them to stop their air stream briefly then let it go, while making a k sound while having the back part of your tongue in the mid position, "o" sound, which when both these sounds are said together, they should sound like the first syllable of coke. Then for them to say the next part of my name "se" they would have to put the front part of their tongue right behind the above upper teeth, on the bony ridge of the tongue, to say the "s" sound then for them to say an "eh" sound using the back part of their tongue in the mid position, which should sound like the first syllable of said. Finally, to finish pronouncing my name, one should again put their tongue behind and above their upper front teeth on the bony ridge, to make a "t" sound, like the last syllable of set.

I wish I knew how to properly do a summary c.c

The book I am reading, The Language Instinct How the Mind Creates Language, is more like the title than I thought it would be. This book actually goes into the detail of how our minds are like little machines creating and formulating our language and since I've started reading this book, I give my mind a lot more credit. First the author, Steven pinker, debunks the origins of language. It is not just a cultural instinct, but it manifests itself out of a special human instinct. He also states that these languages, no matter from what culture they originate or which seems to be more advanced, all these languages are equal in sophistication. This also branches over to those who are thought to have poor education or are working-class, speak a courser or simpler language. However, these underestimated people, have a dialect all their own that is just as complicated as standard English. For example, black English vernacular, has just as many grammatical rules for sentence structure as English, and the words and sentences constructed are just as correct as English. Next he discusses how language is formed, that children actually reinvent language generation after generation all on their own, with no help from how their parents speak to them, "Look at the doggy! See the pretty doggy? Look at the doooooooooooooogggyyyy.", otherwise known as "motherese". The key example given is how children who have parents that speak a sort of broken language, a language that is not their mother tongue and that they have learned through attempting to pick up words around them, those children develop a much more refined and grammatical version called creole. These children obviously did not learn it from their parents, so the deduction is that there is an innate grammatical machine in the brain that takes I what the child has learned from the parent and creates a new more advanced form. Children are wired with a logic of language that helps to create more grammatical and clearer sentences, sentences the child could never have learned from motherese, but from that child's own mind. The theory that language comes from IQ is also being questioned as people with a certain disease, Williams syndrome, where their IQ is less than 50, yet they have amazing language skills, even better than most people of average IQ, because these individuals speak very artfully with very advanced vocabulary. With this information, it can be deduced that IQ and language abilities are separate entities and that there very well could be a part of the brain, that Williams syndrome does not effect, that preserves this ability for language but takes away the ability to even do basic functions. In terms of how language effects the individual, it has been said that certain cultures effect the kind of language they speak and therefore effect the people and their thought patterns, however, this is not true. The key argument for this was that old fable that eskimos have over 100 words for snow and it is so easy to believe since they live in such snowy places. However, this has actually been debunked and eskimos have no more words for varieties of snow than us English language speakers do. Also, people have believed that individuals thoughts are effected by their language. Like italian speakers are more sexist because their language is genderized, however, this has also been disproven. There is a language, in which no mention of what time the event occurred was mentioned, so it was assumed those people had no concept of the future or past, however, once they were tested they were shown to have a full understand of past present and future. What I found most interesting was that thought is what influences language. Without thought to digest and manipulate what is said to us, to give context, we would have a very difficult time really understanding what anybody says to us. Like in terms of ambiguous news lines like "Iraqi head seeks arms", without having our thoughts to digest what is being said this sentence could be very confusing. Also that language is not always explicit, one must fill in the blanks in order to understand what is being said like "John is an elephant. Elephants live in Africa. Elephants have tusks.", without the use of our critical thinking, we would not be able to string together this sentence in a way that will be able to fully describe John. Finally, there is a discussion about how a computer could easily be an advanced speaker by just giving charts of words that generally follow each other or could go with each other, therefore making us no better than the computer, but we are better than the computer. We can make sentences that are more than just a string of words, words that would normally have no probability to be together in a sentence, can still be grammatical in English. Also, the computer only understands a certain number of possible sentence structures and can not keep track of what already was said in the sentence, so it avoids the possiblities of any discrepancies by not making those sentences at all. The human mind is much more advanced than the computer and unlike the computer it is utterly limitless.

My research book

To be frank, when we were told we had to do a research paper I was mortified. In the first week of classes I was already being bombarded by all my other proffesors over tests and quizzes that were coming up very soon. My first instinct, though childish, was to choose the shortest book I could find, so I would not have to stress about finishing it so much, since I tend to take my time with reading. I thought this way i'd be able to handle all my classes with ease and maybe even have time to read the book that I actually want to finish, Infinite Jest, which has been gathering dust in my house since school started. However, looking through the books I realized what an opportunity this research paper really was. I began to think of this research paper as a means to really further understand language, more so than what an oversimplified textbook and condensed course could teach me. I figured I needed to find the book that would coincide with what we learned in class, as well as enhance other areas of the subject. First I considered that baby book everybody else in the class and their mother have chosen so far, the scientist in the crib, it had many good reviews and the overall consensus of those reviews was that it was a fun read. However, I felt that just learning how babies learn language or anything related to that was not enough. Even though, as a psychology major who wants to go into education psychology, I will probably have to learn a lot about that topic, I wanted to find a book that also contained information on how babies learned language, but more so about language in general, a sort of language reference book. I found exactly what I was looking for in The Language Instinct How the Mind Creates Language, by Steven pinker. This book excited me because it was about language described almost like a journey through all aspects of language. This book is like a scavenger hunt to find the true origins of language whether it is from some genetic making when we are born or if we just acquire it from our environment. This book not only discusses how babies talk but also how people make sense of what their talking about. This book even further dives into neuroscience, going into all the language centers of the brain and genes that might be responsible for controlling grammar and speech. I am excited for what I will learn through this book and what I will learn from the rest of you.

Autobiographical Reflection

Ever since I was a child, I hated that I spoke English. I felt that English was the white bread of the world whereas people who spoke different languages were far more interesting, more like a whole grain made with a mish mosh of just about everything, like sunflowers seeds, flaxseeds and even honey. But no, I was stuck being born into a boring chemically processed and nutrient lacking language, I, like how I thought of English, was boring and dull. Though my father knew Italian and many other languages, he never spoke it unless asked to or it was required. My mother was never taught her native Serbian language, though she still claims she is French and speaks French, yet can only speak a few words. I was sent to a Jewish school starting from kindergarten until 10^th grade, since my mom was Jewish and wanted me to learn the culture. In this school they gave us a bilingual education of the language native to Jews, Hebrew, as well as English. Most of the children I attended school with had Barents that spoke Hebrew at home, or at least knew it pretty well. This is partly what set off the isolation I felt in school for many years, since my Barents never knew Hebrew and every Hebrew class was completely foreign to me, though it was just as simple as English to my classmates. I never tried very hard towards my Hebrew studied because since I felt so different from everyone that knew how to speak Hebrew, I would never be able to learn it like them. This led to me not trying hard in school at all, but teachers never reprimanded me r gave me the bad grades I know now I probably deserved. I even got special tutoring for my English classes, even though if I even paid the slightest attention to what the teacher was saying or even looked at my homework, I would have never been given the tutors. Though their extra attention probably gave me an edge at my English, since in 10^th grade, I had a teacher tell me, for the first time ever, that I in fact wrote extraordinarily well, in his English Literature class, and that I was not at all boring for how I used English. He also said that my English was, in fact, overflowing with color and personality. It was with his encouragement that I finally felt that thought I still felt different from the other students, that maybe being different, was my edge over everyone else that just tried to blend into the woodwork. With this newfound confidence, I tried hard in all my classes and got A’s for the first time in my life. I feel that my own brand of English speaking and of writing it, just like Deutscher said in his article “Does Your Language Shape How You Think?”, has shaped me as a person for my focus on the more eclectic words in the dictionary, often reflect who I am in the sense that, in life, I am always searching for and am appreciative of all that is different, unique and even little weird, just like me.