From Front Porch to Back Seat

Beth L. Bailey

In the 19th century, men came to "call" on women. WOmen were in control of who could come in and visit; it was in the "woman's sphere"; and a man could come to call with no money in their pockets.

However, people in the city often had no parlors for callers. They, often poor and lower-class, went out on "dates" to the movies, to dance halls, or to restuarants, where no "respectable" woman was allowed to go. This moved the courtship into the man's "sphere." He took economic responsibility to pay for things, and often the economic exchange was understood to be for sexual favors. This change gave the power of courtship to men.

The rise of cars was coincidental, but gave young people a lot of freedom.

Contrary to popular belief, in the 19th century women had a great deal of power over whom they chose to allow to court them.

Neural Substrates of Language Acquisition

Patricia Kuhl and Maritza Rivera-Gaxiola

Neuroimaging is being used with infants. "The goal on experiments on infants has been to determine whether the initial state and the learning mechanisms are speech specific and species specific."

"The combination of computational and social abilities may be exclusive to humans (Kuhl 2007)."

"The studies suggest that exposure to language in the first year of life begins to set the neural architecture in a way that vaults the infant forward in the acquisition of language."

EEG/ERP is inexpensive, noiseless, "excellent temporal resolution"

At birth infants are capable of distinguishing between all phonemes that are possible in human languages, but with exposure to the native language, infants learn to "tune out" the phonemes that are not distinguished in their native language.

"By the end of the first year, the infant brain is no longer universally prepared for all languages, but instead primed to acquire the language(s) to which the infant brain has been exposed."

So adults truly cannot learn a second language the same way infants learn their first.

In a study (Kuhl et al 2003), a group of infants exposed to a live person speaking Mandarin were able to distinguish Mandarin sounds, while groups exposed to television and audio Mandarin tested the same as groups that were never exposed to Mandarin at all. So social interaction is very important to infant language acquisition. This could be due to the ways humans learned language for centuries--we could be evolutionary accustomed NOT to learn language from computers.

"A sudden increase in vocabulary typically occurs between 18 and 24 months of age--a "vocabulary explosion" (Granger & Brent 2004, Fernald et al. 2006)--but word learning begins much earlier. Infants show recognition of their own name at four and a half months (Mandel et al. 1995)." p. 520

"new words may be encoded in the same neural regions as previously learned words."

""Newborns tested by Imada et ak showed no activation in motor speech areas for any signals, whereas auditory areas responded robustly to all signals, suggesting that perception-action linkages for speech develop by three months of age as infants produce vowel-like sounds."

"Studies across languages showed that by one year of age infants do not accept mispronunciations of common words, words in stressed syllables, or monosyllabic words, indicating that their representations of these words are well-specified by that age." references omitted

Researchers are "strongly interested" in which comes first: phonemes or words, or if learning is bidirectional.

Data on bilingual infants has conflicting results.

Some believe that it may take bilingual infants longer to accumulate a normal vocabulary in their native languages because of decreased input. There have not been many studies on bilingual infants.

Un nase or una nase? What gender marking within switched DPs reveals about the architecture of the bilingual language faculty

Katja Francesca Cantone and Natascha Muller

MacSwan (1999,2000) postulated that the grammars of each language in a bilingual mind are differentiated.

The authors examined the speech of bilingual German and Italian children from ages 1-5. In this paper, the children's DPs (determiner phrases?) were examined, particularly when the children used a noun from one language in an utterance that was primarily in the other language. Genders were sometimes switched along with the noun. The authors propose that this means that "gender is an abstract lexical feature of nouns which is stored in the lexicon and thus reject the view that gender is a functional head in syntax."

MacSwan (1999, 2000) argued that bilinguals have 2 seperate lexicons but "one and the same Computational System"

"it is not the noun endings -o and -a which carry gender"

They say that in one phase of growth, bilingual children mix up gendres between the two semi-autonomous systems.

Second language research using magnetoencephalography: a review

schmidt and roberts

This article first touts MEG as a very useful tool in studying SLA and neurolinguistics, then summarizes previous SLA MEG studies.

MEG is the magnetic version of EEg. Subjects are more comfortable doing an MEG than other neuroimaging devices. But it is expensive and subjects must stay very still.


Phiko and others (2001;2002) found that the L2 is processed more like the L3 than the L1 in early bilinguals.

Zhang and others (2001; 2005) found that Japanese can detect the difference in /r/ and /l/ when there is no vowel afterwards. This suggests "backward masking."


The MEG was used with Japanese and German speakers to determine that both groups recognized kanji "holistically, rather than piecemeal."


Ihara and Kakigi found that Koreans process Hangul and Kana in different parts of their brains.

Phonology can also be studied with the MEG. Differences in pitch changes resulting in changed meaning of words can be taught to SLL. French and Spanish speakers show different areas of the brain allotted to vowels because French has 7 more vowels than Spanish.

Bialystok et al 2005 examined whether bilinguals perform better than monolinguals at the Simon task. The two groups had speedy responses when different areas of the brain were activated. Bilinguals were fast when the "cingulate and superior and inferior frontal regions" and slower with the "right visual cortex." Monolinguals were fast with the "left middle frontal activation" and slow with the "right motor cortex."

Valaki et al (2004) found that Mandarin speakers' brains were less strongly lateralized.

Bilingual and Monolingual Brains Compared:

Bilingual and Monolingual Brains Compared: A
Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Investigation
of Syntactic Processing and a Possible ‘‘ Neural
Signature’’ of Bilingualism

Ioulia Kovelman1,2, Stephanie A. Baker1, and Laura-Ann Petitto

Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 2008

"Eleven Spanish-English right-handed bilinguals...and 10 English right-handed monolinguals" were asked to judge the plausibility of sentences containing relative clauses while in the fmri. OS and SO sentences were both used. Bilinguals judged twice as many sentences as monolinguals. Results indicate that bilinguals have differentiated language systems and use more left brain gray matter than monolinguals.

Because English is an analytic language and Spanish is syntactic, there was no difference in brain functioning when bilinguals were judging OS and SO in Spanish; English monolinguals showed more activity when processing SO ("difficult") than OS ("easy").

A Neurolinguistic Theory of Bilingualism: Neuroimaging studies of the Bilingual Brain

Michael Paradis

Chapter 6

Neuroimaging studies have neglected to replicate other studies; therefore, all findings from this field are not proved.

Surely the left-brain is associated with most aspects of language and the right brain kicks in when pragmatics is needed to understand--usually, when the L2 left-brain knowledge is insufficient.

Also, declarative and procedural memory is surely processed in different areas. If the left brain is damaged in early life, the right brain will take on language-learning tasks.

"...a natural (ecological) task such as the comprehension of a short story..."

Don't use single-word recognition, because this is not "language."

"The majority of studies to date (28) have used single words as stimuli (173)."

Paradis looks for converging evidence in the truly linguistic (e.g. ecological) tasks from published studies: procedural memory for language = perisylvian area

"declarative memory and hence metalinguistic knowledge"= parahippocampal gyri, mesial temporal lobes, anterior cingulate

pragmatics=areas of the right hemisphere

Paradis 2000a: "Comprehension is easier than production"

It is almost impossible to fully control for all areas of processing the task. :-(

I think my dissertation should test and retest and retest subjects to ensure validity.

The Language of Love: the Semantics of Passion in Conversational English

Zoltan Kovecses

The metaphors we use in everyday English to talk about relationships reveal that we imagine love as a journey, the heart as a container, etc.

The Unity Metaphor: "We Are One" reveals that we imagine there is only 1 person out there for us. No other will do. I think this is a cause of depression after a relationship ends.

Love is spoken of as loss of control or insanity.

There is an ideal model (love at first sight, passion never wanes) and a typical model ("Fiery Passions Turn Into Warm Affection").

Nonprototypical cases include the metaphor of Love as a Game.

Christian Fundamentalism and Prominent Sociopolitical Values among College Students in a South-Korean University

http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2007/2007-25.html

Eun Jung Oh, Stacy L. Bliss, and Robert L. Williams

The authors gave about 200 South Korean students a survey to see if their sociopolitical beliefs and religious affiliations had any correlation with American sociopolitical and religious beliefs, specifically that fundamentalist Christians are less tolerant of dissent than other religions and more nationalistic.

The students were Protestant, Catholic, Buddhist, and agnostic/atheist.

Protestant students in South Korea do not exhibit the same blind patriotism and disrespect for civil liberties as American fundamentalists. Dr. Seig: We worship different gods! Christianity in the two countries are not the same Christianity.

"One possibility strongly suggested by the comparison of the Korean sample with the previously studied American sample is that Christian fundamentalism may be associated with a different worldview in South Korea than in the U.S. It appears that Christian fundamentalism has become less negatively linked to such notions as respect for civil liberties and tolerance of dissent in South Korea than in the U.S. Thus, there appears to be less tension between Christian fundamentalism and democratic principles (e.g., respect for civil liberties and tolerance of dissent) in South Korea than in the U.S. 35"

"The current findings suggest that South-Korean Christians may be less inclined to use their Christian beliefs to restrict the personal and legal rights of individuals within a society than appears to be the case for American Christians having a fundamentalist perspective."

Words in Context: A Japanese perspective on language and culture

takao suzuki

The book includes an contrastive lexical study of the English lip and the Japanese kuchibiru: In Japanese, you cannot say "hair grew on her lip" because kuchibiru does not encompass the skin above the lip. Lip does not equal kuchibiru.

He discusses covert and overt culture: rice is eaten in both Japan and Italy, but it holds a different place in both places. Its cultural role differs, though the substance is almost the same.

Suzuki discusses how unwanted dogs are killed by their English masters, but the Japanese usually abandon them. He attributes this to differing ideas of man's control over nature. He says the English control their dogs utterly, up to and including their lives. He says the Japanese do not think they control dogs at all.

Kinship terms and self- and other- referents in Japanese are also discussed. He says that Indo-European languages are self-oriented: I am me no matter the circumstance. Japanese (and, I think, other honorific languages) is other-oriented: the speaker cannot express his views unless he can locate the other in a social hierarchy. He says that the Japanese are not accomplished lanaguge-learners because of this other-orientation. It makes them loathe to express their opinions without knowing the addressee's opinion.

He builds up to this argument using the facts that kinship terms are used fictively (calling a stranger "Uncle" or "Big Brother" AND a wife calling her husband "Father") in ways not possible in English. Personal pronouns are generally avoided.

"man does not use words to describe things which exist in the objective world; rather words, which reflect a particular view of the world or a specific way of dissecting, make us feel as though objects with such characteristics and properties actually exist." 54

Beyond Multiculturalism: A Two-Way Transformation

bharati mukherjee

She was raised a Bengali Brahmin. Sent to the US to study writing, she impulsively married a Canadian. 14 years later, she chose to become an American because she was disgusted by the hypocrisy of the Canadian "mosaic" idea of multiculturalism.

She chooses not to hyphenate herself because, it seems, she feels anger towards Indo-Americans who do so and seem to care more about their previous homelands than about America. She despises those who live here yet denounce America's ideology. She believes forgetting the past is a natural growing process.

Yet, she still denounces "otherization" and violence towards the Other.

Reinventing "America": Call for a New National Identity

Elizabeth Martinez

She argues that white America has an origin myth that Whites settled America for the good of all conquered peoples, glossing flippantly over the genocide of the Native Americans and the antagonism of Mexico for territorial gains. She hopes America can rewrite its national identity, recognizing the many contributions of non-White peoples.

Institutionalizing Our Demise: America vs. Multiculturalism

Roger Kimball

Immediately after September 11, the country became very patriotic, but it soon faded.

Kimball argues that multiculturalism will be the demise of America. He believes the WASP ideology is fundamentally American and immigrant culture is not. He applauds immigrants who "melt" and forget their countries of origin.

"Every time you call directory assistance or some large corporation and are told, "Press One for English" and "Para espanol oprime el numero dos" it is another small setback for American identity."

He hates bilingual education, saying that it sets students up to be second-class citizens.

Kimball says America is essentially religious and Western Europe is "godless."

America was "founded on four things: ethnicity, race, ideology, and culture."

He equates multiculturalism with terrorism.

The Culture of Empowerment: Driving and Sustaining Change

Mary Theresa Seig

Conner Prairie wanted to enhance their visitors' experience so they worked on empowering their "front line staff workers." Staff workers collaboratively created solutions that were their own.

Seig used the "Fly on the Wall" method to collect data and used discourse analysis to show that the "monologue culture" at Conner Prairie was not meeting the visitors' needs. Management worked on changing the culture of Conner Prairie from the top-down and creating solutions from the bottom-up.

Ways with words: language, life, and work in communities and classrooms

shirley brice heath

A smallish town in the Piedmont area has 3 populations Heath studies: the townspeople, Tracton, and Roadville. The townspeople are administrators of the schools. Their home culture recognizes how reading and writing are integral to success. They write to remember things and read for pleasure. Their children are surrounded by literacy and literate adults who use literacy in their daily lives.

Roadville is a poor white area. Most of the adults work at the mill. They read to their children before school begins, but show little interest in their children's schoolwork once they reach second grade. At that point, school and home life diverge. Adults read sometimes, but base most of their important decisions on word-of-mouth.

Tracton is a poor black neighborhood. Babies are held continuously. Their 1st words are not an occasion for celebration. They are not asked questions where the addressers already know the answer. People do not read for pleasure.

Once in school, the townspeople's children excel. Tracton children rarely succeed. Roadville children do well until about middle school, when they turn their attention to starting their own families.

Decoding Antiquity: Eight scripts that still can't be read

in New Scientist

Andrew Robinson

There are approximately 8 lost langauges that scientists are trying to decipher. One of them is rongo-rongo, a written langauge on Easter Island. In order to read rongo-rongo, you begin at the lower left corner, read a line, then rotate the stone 90 degrees.

The article also discussed Etruscan, which is written right to left and based on the Greek alphabet.

The language of the Indus Civilization usually only includes about 5 characters. The longest inscription is 20 characters.

The New World has at least 3 fascinating languages that have not yet been deciphered.

The Black Pharoahs of Egypt had their own as-yet undeciphered script.