Können Kinder nur eine Sprache gleichzeitig lernen?
Artikel über mehrsprachigen Spracherwerb, Website der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft
About linguistics
for people interested in linguistics
Automatic translation is not yet perfect but very nicely illustrates the power of applications based on current linguistic knowledge.
Everything starts with observing that the world around us varies: people use different words to convey different meanings, expressions with the same content have different form in different languages, use of language varies in different conversations. This is not yet linguistics, but enough reason for linguistics, that is the science of language.
Goals
Linguistics is the science of language: the ultimate target is to develop a theory about the nature of language, starting with the foundational cognitive mechanisms that explain how human languages work. Based on linguistic theory, linguists try to assess:
- the way children or adult learners acquire languages;
- the universals and the differences between the languages of the world;
- the way languages change over time;
- the way language is used in real communication, including written text and conversation;
- the psychological reality of language, including the cognitive processes of speech production and comprehension.
Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft: Info für Studieninteressierte
von Georg Höhn
Sprache und Sprachen; Zur Sprachwissenschaft; Studium der Sprachwissenschaft.
Working methods
For this purpose, linguists employ a variety of methods:
- they use analytical methods to develop theories about the nature of language;
- they analyse texts with hermeneutical procedures;
- they conduct experiments to test hypotheses about grammar and cognitive processes;
- they work in communities of indigenous languages of the Americas or the Caucasus - discovering unexplored phenomena;
- they employ computational methods to archive and analyze their data.
Skills of a linguist
A linguist acquires a manifold qualification combining
- core qualification in the philologies and humanities, knowledge of the languages and cultures of the world and methods to analyze linguistic facts, understanding the structure of different languages, analyzing texts;
- key skills in analytical methods, experimental work, data management and computation
which can be employed in a large array of professional fields beyond the core applications of linguistics...
World's languages
languages of the world
language families
linguistic universals
Ancient Indo-European languages
languages of the Americas, Caucasian languages, African languages
endangered languages of Europe
Glottothèque
Grammars of Ancient Indo-European explained for students of linguistics. Project of the Institute for Linguistics in Göttingen.
Glottothèque
Course offered by a network of experts at the Universities of Bamberg, Cambridge, Göttingen, Moscow, Nicosia, Paris.
Sprachverwandtschaften im Germanischen, von Paulien Veenstra
Indogermanisch, Lautverschiebung, Norwegisch, Schwedisch, Dänisch.
slidesLinguistic phenomena
See also
Lingthusiasm,
a podcast on languages and linguistic research.
3-konsonantische Wurzeln, von Anna Pessarrodona Marfà
dreikonsonantische Wurzeln, nicht-konkatenative Morphologie, Arabisch, salam - islam - muslim
slides
Possession, von Florian Fischer
Eigentum, Teil-Ganzes, alienabel, inalienabel, Verwandtschaft, Nominalisierung, Prädikative und Attributive Possession.
slides
Alignment, von Fernando García Mendívil
Ergativ, Split-S, Fluid-S, Baskisch, Tongaisch, Georgisch... Dyirbal, Universalien, Typologie und Arealverbreitung.
slidesTemplatic morphology:
expressing meaning with consonant templates
Noun classes:
expressing complex ontologies with gender
Possession:
whom belongs what?
Polysynthesis:
telling a clause with one word
Lexical tones:
expressing meaning with melody
Analytical methods
explanations
linguistic structures
nature of language
universal properties of human languages
cognitive foundations of linguistic competence
predictive models of language change
Noam Chomsky
Opening Lecture about Minimalism: Where are we now, and where can we hope to go? Graduate School "Form-Meaning Mismatches" in Göttingen. (YouTube video)
Syntaktische Bewegung
von Fernando García Mendívil
Phrasale Bewegung, A-Bewegung, A-bar-Bewegung, Kopf-Bewegung
Linguistic fieldwork
Gesellschaft für bedrohte Sprachen
The society for endangered languages organizes events and funds projects on the documentation of endangered languages
Language documentation in Ambrym
Kilu von Prince (University of Düsseldorf), Manfred Krifka (ZAS & HU, Berlin) documenting languages in Vanuatu (YouTube video)
discovering languages
language endangerement
language documentation
how to learn an undescribed language?
discovering the limits of language variation in the world's languages
language, culture, and thought
working in a remote speech community
Language and Cognition
human cognition and language universals
how do children acquire language?
bilingual mind
how are sentences processed in real time?
which processes are involved in speech production?
Steven Pinker
In this lecture, Steven Pinker, discusses linguistics as a window to understanding the human brain. (YouTube video)
Language and Society
COVID-19: Language matters!
UN-website: language, information, disinformation, indigenous people and COVID-19