Saturday, 30 March 2024 ------------------------ Hello. All is well. I'm now reading "The Study of Language" by George Yule. It's a book about language I believe, or an introduction to linguistics. In chapter one, we discuss the origins of language. Spoken language arrived 50-100k years ago, and 5k years ago for written language. There are several theories of its origin. I found the connection to tool making interesting, language use sharing similar brain circuits. As we combine materials to make tools, we combine sounds to make words. Physical adaptions by evolution, has several implications on our ability to speak language. By being upright, on two legs, our breathing becomes asynchronous with movement. The importance of this becomes evident when you consider while talking, we're exhaling 90% of time, with quick inhalations in between. Differences in our lips, teeth, mouth, and tongue compared to other primates, allow us to make more sounds. The larynx, our vocal folds, is placed lower compared to other primates, allowing for greater vocal range, with the downside of choking on food, but I guess that hazard was worth it. A testament to the power of language. Infants begin with gestures and babbling, putting together syllables, ma-ma, da-da. We like to combine stuff. We adopted gestures in written language with emojis, and those we combine as well for more expression. Deaf people use sign language, blind people use braille. By having the ability put to things together, humans can form complex language, which ties together with what we learned previously about the brain's ability to construct and combine concepts. Chapter two talks about what makes human language distinct, mentioning six properties, a non-exhaustive list. The first is reflexivity, the ability to review and reflect on language. Second is displacement, the ability to not only speak about present, but past, future, or any fantasy of our imagination. Third is arbitrariness, that linguistic form can be arbitrary to meaning associated. The words, or the letters do not require to have any connection by their form to the concepts they represent. Fourth is cultural transmission, that we learn languages from our environment. We're only born with the ability to learn languages, not the languages themselves. Fifth is productivity, that we can produce infinite utterances by levels of combination. Sixth is duality, that language exists on two levels. The first being the sounds the instrument can produce, and the second being the music you can produce with the sounds, e.g. our voice to words, hands to gestures. Only human language has all these properties, you'll find if animals has any of these properties, they're highly limited. Usually they have a set of signals. We must understand the difference between communicative (intentional) and informative (unintentional) signals. We may pick up signals from humans or other animals that were not communicated by intention. I also think we'll pick up information wrongly as we perceive from previous experience of what signals may inform us about that are not innate for humans or animals altogether. In chapter three, we look into phonetics, specifically articulatory phonetics, how we pronounce or articulate sounds. There's also acoustic phonetics (physical matter, sound waves), and auditory phonetics (perception, ear processing). Articulation of consonants has three features. The first is distinction between voiced and voiceless sound. Airflow begins from lungs, and passes through the larynx, the place with our vocal folds. If we adjust folds to be apart, air flows freely, causing voiceless sound, e.g. 'S' sound. Whereas if we adjust them to be together, they constrict airflow, requiring the air to push them apart, causing a vibrating effect or voiced sound, e.g. 'Z' sound. The third is place of articulation. In the human vocal tract, there's a bunch of different muscles, like the tongue, from the back of the mouth to the front. Depending on where air flow is constricted, a different sound is produced. The third is manner of articulation. Depending on how long we constrict airflow, how much we constrict airflow, and the shape we form at a specific place for the air to flow through, we produce even more distinct and varied sounds. For vowels, they're voiced / vibrating vocal folds. Sound differences in vowels is mainly controlled by the tongue. Interestingly, combinations of vowels are called diphthongs, for example combining 'a' and 'i' for hi and bye. I never thought about that, but that makes it obvious why you'd, for fun, spell hi like hai and bye as bai. This book goes more into the formal symbols from International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to describe the precise articulations, but I won't spend time to learn that for now. Furthermore, articulation of vowels vary by accent, including smaller distinctions by person. My native language is Danish but my accent is relatively weak. It's interesting what makes our accent flexible. I'm a terrible singer. I'm generally quite poor when it comes to any type of complex movement, or it depends, I think, having conflicting memories right now. There's many factors involved. The more social cooperation or communication involved in the activity, the poorer I seem to do. Yes, a common theme it seems, heh. I don't find singing or dancing interesting alone. I assume for most, it's primarily a form of social communication. Therefore, I think to some extent it's valid to fear it, if you're genuinely unable to perform it for this purpose. If the goal is social communication, and you fail at this, it's not a matter of caring too much about what others think, as that's the purpose of it, right? It's nonsense to think otherwise. If the fear is debilitating by itself, then yes, it's more valid to question it. This confusion made me believe my social anxiety was the cause of my inability to connect socially, when in reality, it was a valid emotion to warn me I couldn't socialize. The anxiety was very flexible and responsive to the social context. I "survived" because of my anxiety guiding me, and when I ignored it, things got worse. I don't have any anxiety today because I stopped deluding myself, and changed my environment and expectations. The idea that it's all about pushing the boundaries of your comfort zone is a bit of a silly oversimplification.