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En el censo más reciente de los Estados Unidos, el término "hispano" se usa para describir a todos los residentes latinos e hispanos. La mayoría (51%) de los hispanohablantes prefieren el término "hispano" a "latino". Entonces, ¿cuál es exactamente la diferencia? Este video ayuda a explicar las diferencias continentales entre los dos términos. Latino simplemente describe a un hispanohablante con un origen étnico originario de América Latina, mientras que "hispano" se refiere al origen lingüístico compartido de todos los hispanohablantes.

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What's the Difference Between Latino and Hispanic?

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Este video, (publicado por el Huffington Post), describe la retórica antihispana dura y racista perpetuada por políticos como Donald Trump y fuentes de medios de derecha como Fox News. El video toma en cuenta cuán integrales son los hispanohablantes en el tejido cultural estadounidense, indicando cuántos trabajos han creado y funcionan los hispanohablantes, y analiza las contribuciones culturales hechas por los hispanohablantes.

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There's Nothing More American Than Speaking Spanish. Here's Why.

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Los estados mas populados con hispanoamericanos

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Los estados mas populados con hispanoamericanos

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Este video cubre los estados hispanos más densamente poblados de los Estados Unidos. Destaca la densidad de población y las diferencias alimentarias entre los estados. Es impactante pensar que los hispanos pronto superarán a la mayoría de las otras minorías en los Estados Unidos en crecimiento anual. La mayoría de las ciudades de Texas ya tienen una mayoría de hispanos viviendo en ellas. Muchas ciudades fronterizas tienen una población 100% hispana.

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Este video tiene una perspectiva interesante sobre la comunicación en comunidades que tienen grandes diferencias lingüísticas y culturales, como Miami. Con sus enormes poblaciones puertorriqueñas, cubanas y colombianas, partes de Miami están completamente dominadas por las vistas, los olores y los sonidos de América Latina. Aunque uno podría sobrevivir en Miami solo hablando inglés, la inmersión total en esta comunidad mixta se perdería sin ALGUNA habilidad en español.

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SPANISH IN MIAMI | DO YOU NEED TO SPEAK ENGLISH?

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De hecho, este video me pareció muy divertido y fascinante. No solo se destacan las diferencias lingüísticas y de pronunciación en este video, sino que los participantes también describen su percepción metafórica de cómo suenan ciertos acentos. Desde un punto de vista evolutivo y sociolingüístico, es una locura pensar en la inmensidad de la pronunciación y el potencial de cambiar esa pronunciación cuando se encuentra inmerso en diferentes entornos. He vivido en la República Dominicana y el problema que la mujer venezolana estaba teniendo con entender e imitar el acento era el mismo que yo tenía.

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Puerto Rican Funerals & Dominican Barbers

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Every country in Latin America has its own, very different, way of speaking Spanish. Watch as these Latinos to imitate each other's accents! Accent or no accent YOUR VOTE COUNTS, register to vote TODAY: http://www.YourAmerica.com #VoteForYourAmerica Accentuating @ TheFlama.com http://www.theflama.com Add us on Snapchat: http://bit.ly/FlamaSnaps https://facebook.com/TheFlama https://twitter.com/theflama https://instagram.com/theflama https://theflama.tumblr.com

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Esta es una pieza de investigación realizada sobre la evolución del español en las colonias debido a la difusión del contenido académico. El artículo compara Brasil con América Latina, afirmando que la evolución del español fue mucho más gradual debido a la difusión más lenta de las instituciones y materiales académicos, como el establecimiento de universidades españolas y la imprenta. Esto permitió que el español adquiriera un crédito característico más regional y local para su diferencia en todo el continente.

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November 14, 2016

Using digital tools and literature to explore the evolution of the Spanish language, Stanford researcher Cuauhtémoc García-García reveals a new historical perspective on linguistic changes in Latin America and Spain.

By Tom Winterbottom
The Humanities at Stanford

How has the Spanish language evolved in the hundreds of years it has been spoken on multiple continents?

Map shows the frequency of the use of the Spanish pronoun vos as opposed to tú in Latin America. (Image credit: Cuauhtémoc García-García)

To answer the question, Cuauhtémoc García-García, a graduate student in Iberian and Latin American cultures, analyzed 900 years' worth of texts in over a quarter of a million volumes.

"I wanted to study language evolution through data found in written work to add historical depth to how, where and when languages changed," he said. "My new data show that Spanish on the Iberian Peninsula was much more resistant to change over time when compared to Spanish in the Americas, where - since colonization - Spanish from Spain has come into contact with local, indigenous and hybrid influences."

That process, he noted, has led to a Spanish that has progressively changed ever since the language first arrived in the Americas. The changes, however, are not uniform across the Spanish-speaking Americas, and instead he found that the "hybridization" and evolution of language varied from place to place.

Drawing on his past work on changes in Brazilian Portuguese, García-García also noted intriguing differences between the two languages.

"In Brazil, there was a sudden shift in written language that coincided with the country gaining independence from Portugal in 1822 and correlating with increased local autonomy in printing and education," said García-García, who is a member of the Digital Humanities Focal Group.

In Spanish America, however, rapid transformation of this sort was less common, as the colonies typically had more liberties regarding printing presses and educational institutions. Unlike Portugal, Spain introduced the printing press and universities to its colonies in the Americas in the 16th century, meaning that Spanish was open to local influences and piecemeal evolution over a more gradual period.

Different places, different pronouns

In his study, García-García examined the changing use of pronouns in written works. One example aimed to quantify the frequency of the Spanish pronoun vos as compared with tú, both pronouns meaning "you."

Their usage varies across time and space. In Argentina, for example, vos is used almost exclusively as the second-person singular pronoun ("you"), as it is in Uruguay, Paraguay, Costa Rica and Nicaragua, and to a lesser extent in other Spanish-speaking countries.

García-García found a different story in Chile. Vos was common until the mid-19th century, when it ceded ground to tú after a campaign led by the Venezuelan intellectual and educator Andrés Bello, who sought to eradicate it from the educational system in his adopted home.

Bello published Castilian Grammar Intended for the Use by Americans in 1847, laying down the rules and institutions intended for Spanish-speaking countries in the Americas. These rules were strongly influenced by colonizers and advocated use of the language in accordance with the Madrid-based Spanish Royal Academy, of which Bello became a member in 1861.

Bello's norms for language and usage, however, were not embraced all over the Americas.

"In regions such as Mexico, Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia and the southwestern U.S., tú gained popularity and vos did not evolve as part of written language. In fact, it is very rarely used today," said García-García.

García-García found in the available corpus that the second-person plural pronoun - vosotros - regularly appears in texts written in Iberian Spanish. But this same pronoun has largely fallen into disuse in modern Latin America.

As an extension to his earlier study, García-García wanted to contrast how the evolution of language in Brazil and Portugal compares with that of Iberian and Latin American Spanish.

"The digital corpus in Spanish is currently about four times larger than in Portuguese, meaning there is a lot more data to work with," he said. While the large size of the Spanish corpus means there is a lot of "noise" in the data that needs to be cleaned and sorted, it yields a shaper picture of language evolution across distinct geographical areas.

Digital discoveries

García-García, working with Iberian and Latin American cultures Professor Joan Ramon Resina and biology Professor Marc Feldman, also collaborated with Green Library and Google to secure a Spanish language corpus that runs from the 13th century to 2014. Feldman, an expert in evolutionary biology, created statistical modeling technologies that García-García adapted. Rather than simulate biological evolution, he traced the development of language.

"I devised various computer programs and algorithms to analyze this large digital corpus of books to trace language evolution," García-García said. "After plotting hundreds of thousands of points on a series of graphs and analyzing the data that I mined, I decided that an accessible, interactive map would be the most efficient way to understand and communicate how this evolution took place."

Green Library, and curators Glen Worthey, Everardo Rodríguez and Adán Griego, agreed with him. The project website, slated to launch during the 2016-17 academic year, will bring the data to life and allow users to scroll though history on an interactive map to see when and how linguistic evolution took place.

Ultimately, García-García is fascinated by how language evolves and how it shapes and mirrors social and historical changes.

"Language is always in movement and development, and there is no fixed way that perseveres over longer historical timeframes. My research has started to open that up in the digital realm for Portuguese and now Spanish, and hopefully it is a model that can be employed in other languages."

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Stanford research explores novel perspectives on the evolution of Spanish

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November 14, 2016 Using digital tools and literature to explore the evolution of the Spanish language, Stanford researcher Cuauhtémoc García-García reveals a new historical perspective on linguistic changes in Latin America and Spain. By Tom Winterbottom The Humanities at Stanford How has the Spanish language evolved in the hundreds of years it has been spoken on multiple continents?

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Este sitio web analiza de manera más efectiva las diferencias lingüísticas entre "tú" (conocido como "tuteo") y "vos" (conocido como "voseo"). Se exagera aún más sobre el hecho de que estos son el mismo tiempo y "voseo" no debe considerarse como la misma conjugación que "vosotros", que es una forma plural en segunda persona utilizada en lugares como España.

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Spanish is spoken in more than 25 countries and by more than 450 million people. While speakers from all countries can understand each other, differences exist between the language.

Let's start with what is NOT. is NOT the same thing as vosotros. Vosotros is the commonly used pronoun in Spain referring to the familiar 2nd person plural (as in 'you all').

is a substitute for 2nd person singular pronoun, in place of the more commonly used . That's it. Instead of , use '.

PERSONAL PRONOUNS (I, you, he, she)

So far so good, right?

It gets even easier.

In most cases, changing for doesn't mean changing the conjugation of the verb. You simply replace the preceding pronoun with

EXAMPLES USING TUTEO and VOSEO PERSONAL PRONOUNS

And as you probably know, in Spanish it is not required to use the personal pronoun before the conjugated verb. So, in many cases tuteo and voseo appear exactly the same (i.e. to just say 'cenaste' works in both cases).

This is true with just two exceptions, which we will discuss in more detail later.

Where did come from?

has been said to date back to roman times, originally used as a formal way of addressing someone (very similar to the French ' vous', for any of you polyglot french speakers).

Over time, Usted became the formal means of communicating to someone, so in some regions was adopted as a replacement for the tú form.

Where is it used?

The map below gives you a better idea of where is predominantly used and to what extent.

Map adapted from wikipedia

Two Exceptions in Conjugation

Let's look at each of these in turn:

1. in Present Tense

Tuteo vs Voseo Present Tense

An accent is added to the final vowel of the verb

IR verbs are conjugated using an 'is' ending instead of an 'es' ending

There is no change in the stem for irregular verbs

Thus, to conjugate a verb in , simply remove the infinitive ending and add the following endings (without changing the stem):

For example:
PEDIR (): tú pides = irregular stem change e -> i
PEDIR (): vos pedís = no stem change, i instead of e in the ending

In present tense there are only three irregulars.

These verbs are also irregular in .

Tuteo vs Voseo Present Tense Irregular Verbs

Alternatively, we can derive the in present tense by looking at the conjugation of vosotros (2nd person familiar plural). To derive from the vosotros conjugation, simply delete the non accented 'i' in the vosotros ending. In the case of 'ir' verbs, the conjugation of vosotros and is the same.

Vosotros vs Voseo Present Tense

2. Voseo in the Imperative

What about the imperative?

Tuteo vs Voseo Imperative

Remember the imperative is derived from / equal to the 3rd person singular (¡tú habla!). To derive the from the we see the same changes we saw as in the present tense:

Add an accent to the final vowel of the verb

conjugate IR verbs using an I ending instead of E

Do not change in the stem for irregular verbs

Again there are fewer irregulars in imperative compared to . Common irregular verbs in tuteo like ser ( sé), salir ( sal), or poner ( pon), are not irregular in . There is only one irregular in , and that is the verb 'ir'. However, the imperative of ir is not typically used in . Instead they use the verb andar (andá):

Tuteo vs Voseo Imperative Irregular Verbs

As we saw with the present tense, the imperative can also be easily derived from vosotros imperative form. To form the imperative vosotros, we remove the infinitive 'r' and add 'd'. In , remove the 'd' and add an accent on the final vowel. There are no irregulars in the vosotros imperative, nor in , with the exception of the verb ir which we previously mentioned.

Vosotros vs Voseo Imperative

In summary, is very similar to and vosotros forms. In the table below you can see how the conjugation can be derived from either or vosotros forms in the present tense and the imperative:

Tuteo, Vosotros and Voseo Conjugation: Present Tense and Imperative

In , in addition to changing in personal pronoun from to , you must also change in the prepositional pronoun '' to '. See the table below:

Tuteo & Voseo Prepositional Pronouns (me / you)

For example:
El teléfono es para ti = El teléfono es para vos Quiero venir contigo = Quiero venir con vos
Note that while uses for the personal and prepositional pronouns, it does NOT do so for the object pronouns nor the possessive pronouns. These remain the same in and .

Tuteo & Voseo Pronouns Comparison

Do you have any experience using ? Share with us in the comments. If you found this article helpful or interesting, please consider sharing it 🙂

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Spanish from Argentina: That Voseo Thing

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Spanish is spoken in more than 25 countries and by more than 450 million people. While speakers from all countries can understand each other, differences exist between the language. Let's start with what is NOT. is NOT the same thing as vosotros.

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Esta página está dedicada al concepto "leísmo". Esta página incluye guías útiles y herramientas de pronunciación para mostrar a los estudiantes españoles el contexto dentro del cual se usan los pronombres de objeto directos e indirectos. Además, hay una sección dedicada a la interpretación de la regla por parte de RAE a nivel lingüístico. En general, esta página es muy útil para las personas que intentan comprender mejor qué es "leísmo".

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This post you will help you understand what a leismo is and recognize it.

In addition, there are plenty of examples with audios to help you better understand the concepts and to practice your listening skills.

Definition of Leismo

Leismo consists of replacing the direct object pronoun lo/la/los/las with the indirect object pronoun le/les to mention él/ella or ellos/ellas. That is, it is the use of le/les as a direct object.

Primarily, this occurs when the direct object refers to a male person ( le instead of lo).

Examples

Abreviation: Direct Object Pronouns (DOPS).

What Does Real Academia Española Say?

Even though leismo is not grammatically correct, Real Academia Española (RAE) accepts the use of le as direct object of person for singular masculine. This is due to its extended use among educated speakers. However, they don't accept the use the "plural leismo" or it refers to an object.

Examples

Abreviations: Approved by RAE (A) and rejected by RAE (R).

Where Does Leismo Occur?

Leismo occurs in the center-north-eastern zone of Spain and some parts of South America as it is mentioned at Un análisis microparamétrico by Jordina Nogués Graell.

Final Thoughts

Because this phenomenon is as common in Spain, most people do not have any problem with it. They use it in their everyday language.

Therefore, if you ever plan on traveling to Spain, be ready to recognize these pronouns. And not just that, after a while you will may end up using them.

Before you leave, are you interested in Spain and its language? Then, you may find our online Spanish classes helpful. With these classes, you will practice your speaking and listening skills with a native speaker from Spain.

Hola and hi, I am Inés and I am the author of all the posts in the ConvoSpanish blog. My goal is to offer free content for people to practice their Spanish. Creating and maintaining the blog takes a lot of my free time however, due to my love of sharing Spanish with you, I will keep adding and updating the content in the blog. If you like the content of this post and believe that it helps you, please consider donating. I need coffee to keep me going while creating the posts. Aren´t they worth at least a cup of coffee? 😛 Any amount is appreciated. Donations will be used to support the free blog.

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Leismo * Definition and Geographical Distribution * ConvoSpanish

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This post you will help you understand what a leismo is and recognize it. In addition, there are plenty of examples with audios to help you better understand the concepts and to practice your listening skills. Leismo consists of replacing the direct object pronoun lo/la/los/las with the indirect object pronoun le/les to mention él/ella or ellos/ellas.

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El estrechamiento lingüístico es un proceso por el cual un término crece para abarcar un conjunto de términos más amplio que el original.

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El estrechamiento lingüístico es un proceso por el cual un término crece para abarcar un conjunto de términos más amplio que el original.

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a) Cierto
b) Falso

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En este video, se discute el concepto semántico de "modalidad". La modalidad es el valor semántico de una declaración basada en su probabilidad de ocurrir. La idea de que una acción o evento "debe" suceder debe entenderse como una eventualidad, en lugar de una posibilidad, como ocurre con palabras como "puede". La idea detrás de la modalidad no es que algo sea verdadero o falso, sino más bien cuantificado en términos de que posiblemente sea verdadero o falso debido a su probabilidad de que ocurra.

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Can We Define "Must"? The Semantics of Modality

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En este video, Liberman discute la diferencia entre las palabras "saber" y "pensar" y su relevancia como presuposiciones. El valor semántico de ambas palabras es la comprensión fáctica de la ocurrencia de un evento versus la suposición de que ese evento ocurrió o está ocurriendo. Ambas palabras pueden significar cosas drásticamente diferentes en el contexto de oraciones diferentes, ESPECIALMENTE en contextos legales.

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Thinking vs. Knowing: The Semantics and Pragmatics of Presuppositions

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Este estudio intenta investigar la variación del conocimiento semántico en niños bilingües. El trabajo de investigación encontró que el cambio de código es más frecuente en niños mayores, lo que demuestra una comprensión más profunda de las raíces semánticas y morfológicas de la palabra pecado tanto en inglés como en español, mientras que los niños más pequeños no lo hicieron. Obviamente, los niños que eran más fuertes en un idioma demostrarían una mayor competencia y conocimiento semántico en ese idioma.

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The increasing representation of bilingual students in US schools ( McCardle & Leung, 2006) calls for more information on the normative course of bilingual language development. One domain of language that shows the greatest growth in school-age children is vocabulary. A rich vocabulary is essential for smooth and functional communication. During the school years, children are increasingly called upon to produce word definitions and to use words in various oral and written discourses. These academic tasks require deep knowledge of words such as categorical and functional information, grammatical class information, and knowledge of morphological variations of words and of the sociolinguistic contexts of word usage. Despite the importance of deep vocabulary knowledge, we know very little about its development among bilingual children. In this study, we aimed to remedy this gap in the literature.

In addition to their practical significance, studies of bilingual children can be used to test theoretical models of bilingual language production and lexical-semantic representation that are largely based on adult data. We conducted the present study using the framework of the Revised Hierarchical Model (Kroll, Michael, Tokowicz, & Dufour, 2002; Kroll & Stewart, 1994), a prominent model of bilingual word production and lexical organization. In the following section we provide a description of the model and a review of literature on bilingual lexical-semantic development and elaborate on our goals.

The Revised Hierarchical Model (RHM) and Its Application to Bilingual Children

The RHM (Kroll et al., 2002; Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Kroll, van Hell, Tokowicz, & Green, 2010) posits three important assumptions about the bilingual lexicon. First, bilinguals have a single, shared conceptual store and two separate word-form lexicons for their two languages (L1 and L2). Second, the location, number, and direction of links among the three storage systems vary depending on the individual's L1 and L2 experience. In the early stage of L2 learning, direct links between conceptual representation and the L2 lexicon are missing and speakers gain access to concepts through the mediation of the L1 lexicon. As learners achieve higher proficiency in the L2, they develop direct links between the L2 lexicon and concepts and eliminate the need to mediate through the L1. However, the link between L2 words and concepts is weaker than that between L1 words and concepts. Third, there are weighted bidirectional links between the L1 and L2 lexicon with stronger connections from L2 to L1 words than the reverse. Finally, although the RHM was originally proposed to depict lexical organization in sequential bilinguals (those who learn an L2 at a later age well after the L1 is acquired), it also takes into consideration the dynamic nature of bilingual proficiency and suggests that shifts in language dominance may result in asymmetric processing in favor of the L2 ( Kroll et al., 2010).

Since its inception, the RHM has been the focus of numerous studies examining various aspects of the model, such as the asymmetry between L1 and L2 processing, the consequence of language learning history for lexical processing (the developmental hypothesis), and the common conceptual system assumption. These studies have employed a number of experimental paradigms (e.g., translation, picture naming, list recall, brainstorming, lexical decision) and addressed various phenomena such as cross-language priming/interference, cognate advantage in early phases of L2 learning, and frequency and outcomes of code switching. Although the utility of this model has recently been under scrutiny, it remains one of the most influential and current models of bilingual memory ( Brysbaert & Duyck, 2010; Brysbaert, Verreyt, & Duyck, 2010; Kroll et al., 2010). Despite the impressive amount of research inspired by this model, to the best of our knowledge, no studies have tested this model using data from bilingual children. Unlike bilingual adults who have a firmly-established L1 system or sometimes two equally well-established language systems, young bilingual children, regardless of age of L2 onset, are still in the process of acquiring two languages. A valid model of bilingual memory must be applicable to a broad range of bilinguals including both adults and children. In the present study, we set out to test the model using data from a heterogeneous group of bilingual children. In particular, we focused on the developmental aspect and the asymmetric processing aspect of the model and examined the effects of age and language experience on bilingual children's semantic performance.

Lexical-Semantic Development in Spanish-English Bilingual Children

Extant research suggests that Spanish-English bilingual children raised in the United States show rapid gains in the number of entries in their English vocabulary (breadth of vocabulary) during preschool and school-age years such that the gap between the bilingual children's standardized vocabulary scores and monolingual English norms gradually closes ( Cobo-Lewis, Pearson, Eilers, & Umbel, 2002; Hammer, Lawrence, & Miccio, 2008; Rodríguez, Díaz, Duran, & Espinosa, 1995; Winsler, Díaz, Espinosa, & Rodríguez, 1999). At the same time, although there are no decrements in Spanish vocabulary, there is a deceleration in growth for the minority or less used language ( Kohnert & Bates, 2002; Kohnert, Bates, & Hernandez, 1999). Eventually it is this process that leads the second language to become the dominant language.

While these previous studies utilized measures of vocabulary breadth (e.g., the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test - III, Dunn & Dunn, 1997) ( Hammer et al., 2008; Rodríguez et al., 1995; Winsler et al., 1999) and lexical processing (speed and accuracy of picture naming and picture identification, Kohnert & Bates, 2002; Kohnert et al., 1999), information regarding vocabulary depth development in bilingual children is scarce. Research in monolingual children suggests that in contrast to vocabulary breadth, which expands quickly in preschool and school age years, the accumulation of deep vocabulary knowledge takes a prolonged period of time and repeated exposures to words in a language ( Bloom, 2000; Carey & Bartlett, 1978). For example, Johnson and Anglin (1995) estimated that between 1 st and 5 th grades, vocabulary size of a monolingual child increased by 30,000 words if measured on the basis of receptive vocabulary. In contrast, the increase was only about 5,000 words when a stringent criterion of high-quality definitions was used. For a bilingual child, gaining vocabulary depth involves learning two sets of words and the semantic and collocational features that characterize and bond each set. Because input is distributed across two languages, bilingual children have less input in each of their two languages which makes this task even more challenging ( Gollan, Montoya, Cera, & Sandoval, 2008; Vermeer, 2001).

A vocabulary depth measure that has been used with both monolingual and bilingual children is the word association task. In this task, the participant responds with the first word that comes to mind upon hearing a stimulus. Previous studies that utilized this task suggested a shift in word association responses from idiosyncratic or sound-based (rhyming) in the preschool years, to primarily syntagmatic (e.g., functional, descriptive, syntactic) in kindergarteners and first-graders, to increasingly paradigmatic (categorical, synonymous, antonymous) by the time children are about 9 years of age ( Entwisle, 1966; Nelson, 1977; Sheng & McGregor, 2010; Sheng, McGregor, & Marian, 2006; Sheng, Peña, Bedore, & Fiestas, in press). This change in semantic organization principles may be associated with changes in children's conceptual organization, changes in children's interpretation of the task as a result of schooling, the expansion of vocabulary, and the development of reading ( Cronin, 2002; Hashimoto, McGregor, & Graham, 2007; Nelson, 1977). In the current study, we used a variant of the word association task with school-aged bilingual children to gain insights into the types of changes in semantic structures as well as the factors that drive these changes.

The Current Study

Guided by the RHM of bilingual word production, we examined the development of semantic depth in Spanish-English bilingual students. Children participated in a repeated word association task and generated three responses to Spanish and English translation equivalents. There were three objectives. First, we aimed to examine age-related changes in the depth of word knowledge between the early to middle elementary school years. This age period was interesting because children are faced with rapidly increasing demands of both listening and reading comprehension, which makes the enrichment of semantic networks a pressing task ( Nippold, 2007). Second, we aimed to investigate the effect of language learning experience on the development of semantic depth. Third, because there are developmental changes in specific kinds of semantic relations (i.e., the syntagmatic-paradigmatic shift; Nelson, 1977), we explored the effect of age and language experience on the use of paradigmatic and syntagmatic semantic relations.

With regard to age, we hypothesized that older children would have greater semantic depth than younger children. This age advantage would be manifested as larger numbers of semantic responses and fewer errors. We were also interested in the degree of age-related difference across the bilinguals' two languages. On the one hand, because previous studies with Spanish-English bilinguals suggested more rapid vocabulary learning in English, we may expect a larger age-related difference in English semantic responses than in Spanish. On the other hand, because vocabulary depth develops slowly, the difference between age groups may be modest and comparable in English and Spanish. Similarly, if the shift toward paradigmatic semantic organization represents a more conceptual than strictly linguistic development, there may be little difference across languages.

With regard to experience, we hypothesized that in keeping with the RHM, the amount of language experience would affect the depth of semantic knowledge, resulting in an asymmetry in semantic depth between a bilingual's more and less frequently used languages. In other words, we anticipated an interaction between test language and experience group such that the bilingual children who had more experience using Spanish would generate more semantic responses in Spanish than in English whereas the children who had more experience using English would generate more semantic responses in English than Spanish. By the same token, we predicted that unbalanced bilingual language experience may result in asymmetry in the direction, frequency, and success rate of code switches. Specifically, children would be more likely to switch from their less used language to their more frequently used language. We also predicted that code-switched responses would be mostly successful such that they would be related in meaning to the cross-language targets.

With regard to the use of specific kinds of semantic relations, because syntagmatic relations are earlier emerging and well-established by first grade (Entwisle, 1977; Sheng et al., 2006), we anticipated greater age-related increase in paradigmatic semantic knowledge in the current pool of participants. Also, we expected paradigmatic semantic knowledge to be shallow such that responses of this type would diminish across repeated elicitation.

Method

Participants

Participants were selected from a pool of 280 participants in a large on-going study of semantic and syntactic development in children acquiring Spanish and English in bilingual environments. Participants were recruited from school districts in central Texas and Colorado, which enroll large numbers of Spanish English bilingual students. To confirm that the children had typically developing language skills children's caregivers rated their child's language performance across domains (e.g., vocabulary, grammar, comprehension) on a five-point scale (1 = low proficiency; 5 = high proficiency) in each language. Because bilingual children often exhibit unbalanced proficiency in their two languages, we used caregiver ratings of children's stronger language to determine eligibility. To qualify for this study, children had to have received average ratings (across domains) above the cut points of 4.5 for Spanish or 3.9 for English in their stronger language. Cut scores were derived empirically using a discriminant function analysis comparing children with and without language impairment (Peña, Gutiérrez-Clellen, Iglesias, Goldstein, & Bedore, in development). Narrative language samples in both languages were used to confirm typical language ability. Grammaticality in story production was 80% or above in children's stronger language (based on Gutiérrez-Clellen & Kreiter, 2003; Restrepo, 1998).

Sixty children were selected to form four equal-sized groups varying orthogonally in age and language experience. There were two groups of younger children, ages 7 years 3 months to 8 years 4 months, and two groups of older children, aged 8 years 7 months to 9 years 11 months. We used current language use to index language experience. Each child's primary caregiver was interviewed to obtain an hour-by-hour account of the child's language use, detailing the conversational partner(s) and language of use in both input and output modalities during each waking hour of a typical weekday and a typical weekend day ( Gutiérrez-Clellen & Kreiter, 2003; Peña, et al., in development). Based on caregiver reports, an average language use value was derived which represented the percent of time a child used (averaged across input and output) English and Spanish. Because our focus was on children who had different amount of experience in L1 and L2, those who had relatively balanced use of the two languages (45% - 55%) were excluded. Among the four groups of participants, two groups (one younger, one older) were categorized as having higher English experience (HEE) (range of English use = 56% -86%) and the other two higher Spanish experience (HSE) (range of English use = 8% -44%). Only one child had a low English use of 8%; all other children used English at least 13% of the time. To recap, each child had an age match (within 5 months) who had the inverse amount of language use. For example, a child who used English 65% of the time and Spanish 35% of the time was matched to a child of comparable age who used Spanish 65% of the time and English 35% of the time. Each child also had a language use match from the other age group (i.e., younger HEE with older HEE). Language use was matched within 12%.

provides a summary of the characteristics and language history of the 4 groups: younger children with higher English experience (Y-HEE), younger children with higher Spanish experience (Y-HSE), older children with higher English experience (O-HEE), and older children with higher Spanish experience (O-HSE). Chronological age differed significantly between the two HEE groups, t (28) = 11.11, p < .001, d = 4.06; and between the two HSE groups, t (28) = 11.97, p < .001, d = 4.37. English (and Spanish) language use differed significantly between the two younger groups, t (28) = 11.81, p < .001, d = 4.31, and between the two older groups, t (28) = 11.97, p < .001, d = 3.86. Moreover, chronological age was matched within the two younger groups, t (28) = .85, p = .41; and the two older groups, t (28) = .35, p = .73. Likewise, language use was matched within the two HEE groups, t (28) = .35, p = .73, and the two HSE groups, t (28) = .36, p = .72.

Table 1

Group

Age in months

Sex

Bilingual type

Current English use

Age of English onset (in years)

Number of years learning English

While all the children began to acquire Spanish from birth, they differed in the age of onset of English acquisition. Among the 60 children, 21 were simultaneous bilinguals (age of English onset between birth and 3), the remaining 39 were sequential bilinguals (age of English onset at 4 or after) ( Patterson & Pearson, 2004). As seen in , the Y-HEE group included a larger number of simultaneous bilinguals than all other groups. The Y-HEE group had a younger mean age of English onset than the Y-HSE, t (28) = 2.41, p = .02, d = .88, the O-HEE, t (28) = 2.16, p = .04, d = .79, and the O-HSE groups, t (28) = 3.00, p = .006, d = 1.09; the latter three groups did not differ from each other, ts < 1, ps > .5. Conversely, the Y-HSE group had shorter experience learning English than the Y-HEE, t (28) = 2.39, p = .02, d = .87, the O-HEE, t (28) = 1.97, p = .06, d = .72, and the O-HSE groups, t (28) = 2.17, p = .04, d = .79; the latter three groups did not differ from each other, ts < 1, p s > .47.

Of the 60 participants, 53 received free or reduced lunch through the free lunch program, 7 did not receive a free or reduced lunch. Fifty-five of the children were Hispanic as indicated by the parents. The remaining parents did not indicate their child's race or ethnicity.

Stimuli

As shown in , the stimuli included 12 pairs of English and Spanish translation equivalents, distributed evenly across the adjective, noun, and verb classes. Words were selected after examining concepts for the target grades (grades 1 to 3) in the Texas Department of Education curriculum guidelines. All the words were curriculum targets. The words were of comparable frequency of occurrence in English and Spanish, based on the Corpus of Contemporary American English ( Davies, 2008) and Corpus Del Español ( Davies, 2002). The stimuli belonged to the themes of animal, food, weather, and exercising, all of which were likely to be familiar to school-age bilingual children.

Table 2

Procedures

The repeated word association task was administered to children in Spanish and in English on two separate days, with order of test language counterbalanced. The English verbs were presented in the present progressive form (- ing), the Spanish verbs were presented in the infinitive form. The task begins with a short practice with the words car [ carro] and run [ correr]. The children were instructed to respond with a word that goes with the target word. The target word was presented three times consecutively to elicit three different responses. The examiner provided a visual cue to the child by keeping track of each response with fingers. To encourage children to produce various kinds of semantic responses, the examiner reinforced any semantic responses produced by the child (e.g., car-drive [ carro-manejar]) and offered a model of paradigmatic response (a response that belongs to the same semantic category and grammatical class) by saying " Yes, drive goes with car, and another word is truck [ camioneta]" if the child did not produce this type of responses spontaneously during practice. In the second elicitation, an additional paradigmatic response model ( transportation [ transportación]) was offered if necessary. For the target run, the words jump [ brincar] and exercise [ ejercicio] were offered as alternate examples when necessary. The decision to integrate paradigmatic response models during practice was motivated by developmental data indicating the late emergence of this response type ( Nelson, 1977). The stimulus words were randomized with the stipulation that words belonging to the same theme (e.g., eat and dinner) did not occur next to each other. Words were randomized respectively in English and in Spanish and presented in the same order across participants. The examiner wrote down the child's responses verbatim on a scoring form. All sessions were audio-recorded.

Coding

Word association responses were coded into two main categories: semantic or erroneous. Semantic responses were further categorized as paradigmatic and syntagmatic. Paradigmatic responses encompass synonyms (e.g., delicious-scrumptious; delicioso-rico [ delicious-tasty]; growling-screaming; gruñir-ladrar [ to growl-to bark]), antonyms (e.g., nutritious-poisonous, peludo-pelón [ furry-bald]), and words that share categorical (e.g., dinner-meal; sopa-comida [ soup-food]; forest-jungle; bosque-playa [ forest-beach]) relations with the stimuli. Syntagmatic responses include words that bear non-categorical semantic relations such as functional (e.g., dinner-eat; vestirse-ropa [ get dressed-clothing]), attributive (e.g., furry-lion; peludo-perro [ furry-dog]), locative (e.g., dinner-restaurant), or thematic (e.g., summer-vacation; cena-familia [ dinner-family]) relations with the stimulus. Errors include no responses, repetitions of the stimuli or of earlier responses, responses that share sound similarities with the stimuli (e.g., growling-drowling; estirar-estresando [ stretching-stressing]), translations (e.g., dinner-cena), words that were unrelated (e.g., frozen-bus), repetitions, or non-words (e.g., cena-detruir [ dinner-non word]). Code switched responses received a primary error code. Because we were interested in the potential benefits of code switching, a secondary code was attached to indicate whether the code switched response led to a semantic response.

Reliability

A fluent bilingual research assistant coded all data. A second bilingual research assistant randomly selected 14 samples in English and 15 samples in Spanish and coded them independently. Point-to-point agreement in English averaged at 90% and ranged from 80% to 96%. Point-to-point agreement in Spanish averaged at 92% and ranged from 85% to 100%.

Results

Semantic Responses

Proportions of semantic responses (paradigmatic and syntagmatic combined) for different groups, languages, and trials are presented in . A mixed-model ANOVA was conducted in which age group (younger, older) and experience group (HEE, HSE) were the between-participant factors, test language (English, Spanish) and elicitation trial (trials 1, 2, 3) were within-participant factors, and the proportion of semantic responses (excluding code switches) was the dependent measure. All significant main effects and interaction were followed with post-hoc tests with Bonferroni corrections. All significance tests were two-tailed.

Table 3

There was a main effect of age, F (1, 56) = 6.90, p = .01, = .11. The older children ( M = .65, SE = .032) generated more semantic responses than the younger children ( M = .53, SE = .032). There was a main effect of trial, F (2, 112) = 57.71, p < .001, = .51. The proportion of semantic responses decreased from trial 1 ( M = .67, SE = .023) to trial 2 ( M = .60, SE = .025) and from trial 2 to trial 3 ( M = .50, SE = .026), ps < .001. There was an interaction between test language and experience group, F (1, 56) = 27.04, p < .001, =.33. As illustrated in , the HSE groups produced more semantic responses in Spanish ( M = .69, SE = .041) than English ( M = .51, SE = .039) tasks, p = .003; whereas the HEE groups produced more semantic responses in English ( M = .67, SE = .039) than Spanish ( M = .49, SE = .041), p = .004. Further, when tested in Spanish, the HSE groups produced more semantic responses than the HEE groups, p = .005; when tested in English, the HEE groups produced more semantic responses than the HSE groups, p = .04. The three way interaction among age, test language, and experience group was not significant, F (1, 56) = 1.23, p = .27.

Subtypes of Semantic Responses

To examine the specific kinds of semantic relations that make up children's vocabulary, we ran two additional ANOVAs with age, experience, language, and trial as independent variables and proportion of paradigmatic and syntagmatic responses as the respective dependent measure (see for means).

Four significant effects surfaced when comparing paradigmatic responses. First, the age effect was significant, F (1, 56) = 5.34, p = .02, =.09, with older children ( M = .26, SE = .022) producing more paradigmatic responses than younger children ( M = .19, SE = .022). Second, the effect of trial was significant, F (2, 112) = 82.60, p < .001, =.60, as paradigmatic responses decreased from trial 1 ( M = .32, SE = .020) to trial 2 ( M =.22, SE =.018), and from trial 2 to trial 3 ( M =.15, SE =. 013), ps < .001. Third, there was an interaction between test language and experience group, F (1, 56) = 20.62, p < .001, =.27. This interaction was modified by a fourth three-way interaction among test language, experience group, and trial, F (1, 112) = 3.69, p = .03, =.06. Planned t-tests showed that for the HSE groups, Spanish words elicited more paradigmatic responses than English words at trial 1 ( p = .004), but not trials 2 and 3; for the HEE groups, English words elicited more paradigmatic responses than Spanish words in all three trials, ps < .02. When tested in Spanish, the HSE groups produced more paradigmatic responses than the HEE groups in all three trials, ps ≤ .03; when tested in English; the HEE groups produced more paradigmatic responses than the HSE groups only at trial 1, p = .03. These patterns are presented in .

Comparisons of syntagmatic responses revealed a significant interaction between test language and experience group, F (1, 56) = 10.11, p = .002, =.15. Post-hoc tests indicated a significant difference in the HSE children's Spanish ( M = .42, SE = .038) and English ( M = .32, SE = .037) performance, p = .03; no other pair-wise comparisons were significant (see ). There was also a marginally significant interaction between trial and experience group, F (2, 112) = 3.13, p = .048, =.05. There was a trend for the HEE children to produce more syntagmatic responses in trial 2 ( M = .38, SE = .042) than trial 3 ( M = .33, SE = .040), however, post-hoc comparisons indicated that this difference did not reach statistical significance, p =.08.

Code Switches

shows the occurrence of code switches in children's responses. There was a significant relationship between test language and group, χ ²(3) = 59.78, p < .001. A follow-up test within each language was conducted. Fishers exact test demonstrated no difference across the four groups when code switching from English to Spanish. Comparisons of groups by age and language experience using a Pearson chi-square indicated that HEE children and older children were more likely to code switch from Spanish to English, χ ² (1) = 6.82, p = .009. The effect size (Cramer's V) was .170.

Table 4

There was a significant relationship between test language and group, χ ² (9) = 72.14, p < .001, for successful and unsuccessful code switching. A follow-up test within each language was conducted. Fishers exact test demonstrated no difference across groups in distribution of successful and unsuccessful code switches from English to Spanish. For Spanish to English code switches comparisons by age and language experience using a Pearson chi-square indicated that children were generally more successful than unsuccessful when code-switching. Further, the Y-HEE group tended to be less successful than expected while the O-HEE group demonstrated more success than expected, χ ² (3) = 10.49, p = .015. The effect size (Cramer's V) was .213.

Predictors of Semantic Performance

Two forward stepwise regressions were performed to investigate the factors that predicted performance in the two languages. In the first regression, age, percent English use, number of years learning English, and proportion of semantic responses in the Spanish task (with the three trials combined) were entered as predictors and proportion of semantic responses in the English task (three trials combined) was the outcome variable. Age, percent English use, and number of years learning English were selected as predictors because these variables respectively represented general developmental level, current frequency of English use, and cumulative experience with the English language. Proportion of Spanish semantic responses was selected because this would allow us to examine if semantic skills was interdependent across languages. The model was significant, F (3, 56) = 8.86, = 32.2%, p < .001. Percent English use was entered in the first step, accounting for 14.4% of the variance; Spanish semantic performance was entered in the second step, accounting for an additional 8.4% of the variance; and number of years learning English was entered in the third step, accounting for another 9.4% of the variance. Chronological age was not a significant predictor. Higher English use, longer years learning English, and higher Spanish performance contributed to higher English semantic performance.

In the second regression, age, percent Spanish use, number of years learning English, and proportion of semantic responses in the English task were entered as predictors and proportion of semantic responses in the Spanish task was the outcome variable. The model was significant, F (4, 55) = 8.20, = 37.3%, p < .001. Percent Spanish use was entered in the first step, accounting for 11.6% of the variance; chronological age was entered in the second step, accounting for an additional 12.1% of the variance; number of years learning English was entered in the third step, accounting for another 5.9% of the variance; and English semantic performance was entered in the last step, accounting for 7.8% of the variance. Higher Spanish use, older chronological age, shorter years learning English, and higher English performance contributed to higher Spanish semantic performance.

Discussion

Spanish-English bilingual children between 7;3 and 9;11 participated in a repeated association task that tapped depth of semantic knowledge in their two languages. Consistent with the Revised Hierarchical Model ( Kroll & Stewart, 1994; Kroll et al., 2002, 2010), depth of semantic knowledge was dependent on developmental level (as indexed by chronological age) and amount of language experience. Unbalanced language experience led to an asymmetry in Spanish and English semantic performance. Subtypes of semantic responses, paradigmatic and syntagmatic, were differentially affected by age and repeated elicitation. We discuss each of these points below.

Developmental Level

Middle childhood is an important period for semantic enrichment as children begin schooling and learn to read ( Nelson, 1977; Nippold, 2007). Although the younger and older children were only 18 months apart, two age related differences were observed. First, the older children gave 12% more semantic responses than the younger children. Although significant, the effect size was modest in size (= .11). This result was consistent with previous studies which indicated moderate gains in semantic elaboration between English-speaking first and fifth graders ( Johnson & Anglin, 1995). Carey (1978) found that preschoolers were able to establish a link between a novel word and a referent after hearing the word in an utterance only once. However, after several months of occasional exposures to the novel word, half of the children were still unable to provide an adequate definition to allow for correct identification of the referent. Semantic elaboration is a gradual process and requires many encounters with the target word and can be more prolonged for bilingual children who have reduced exposure to words in each language.

We were also interested in comparing the size of age-related difference between English and Spanish given previous reports of accelerated growth in English vocabulary and lexical processing skills ( Cobo-Lewis et al., 2002; Kohnert & Bates, 2002; Kohnert et al., 1999). Contrary to previous results, we did not find an interaction between age and test language. This discrepancy between our study and previous reports may also be attributed to the slow nature of semantic elaboration. Although bilingual children can establish many novel word representations and expand the breadth of their English vocabulary rather quickly, refining and integrating these representations to existing semantic networks is a laborious process for both languages.

The second age-related difference pertains to code switching. While all four groups rarely switched from English to Spanish, the older children were more likely to switch from Spanish to English than the younger children. On average, the older groups switched 14% of the time and the younger groups switched 6% of the time. This increased rate of Spanish to English code switching in the older children may be a precursor of the eventual dominance shift observed in previous studies of Spanish-English bilingual children and adolescents ( Kohnert & Bates, 2002; Kohnert et al., 1999). It is also important to note that the older children were highly successful with their code-switching attempts. On average, 75% of their attempts resulted in semantically related responses. In keeping with current views of code switching ( Heredia & Altarriba, 2001), our result suggests that the older children were able to deploy their linguistic resources to complete the task when a particular lexical item was unavailable in the target language. The longer-term exposure to both languages in the older children may have afforded them numerous cross-language semantic connections and enabled them to use their knowledge across the two languages.

Language Experience

Our prediction regarding the effect of language experience on semantic depth was supported by the results. In line with the RHM, we found patterns of asymmetry in children's semantic performance across the two languages. As illustrated in , these unbalanced bilinguals produced 18% more semantic responses in their more frequently used than less used language. This effect ( =.33) was larger than the effect of age, suggesting that experience using a specific language may be a more important determinant in forming semantic connections than general linguistic experience.

Our prediction regarding code switching was partially borne out in the data. Although the two HSE groups switched more often from English to Spanish (a total of 29 attempts) than the two HEE groups (2 attempts), the difference was not statistically significant. By contrast, code switches from Spanish to English were significantly more frequent in the HEE (176 attempts) than the HSE groups (59 attempts). While all the children tended to switch more often from Spanish to English than vice versa, the ones with more experience using English switched to a greater extent. These patterns illustrate the dual influence of social context and language experience on code switching among bilingual children. Furthermore, we found that the O-HEE group had the greatest success with their Spanish to English code-switches, providing semantically relevant information with 84% of these responses. The experience these children had with both languages, a result of their older age and their longer-term exposure to English, may be particularly beneficial to building cross-language semantic connections.

Regression analyses yielded further information regarding the role of language experience on semantic learning. Percent language use and number of years learning English were significant predictors for task performance in both languages. These findings corroborated the important role of language exposure and use in vocabulary acquisition ( Bohman, Bedore, Peña, Méndez-Pérez, & Gillam, 2010; Pearson, Fernández, Lewedeg, & Oller, 1997; Sheng, Lu, & Kan, in press).

Chronological age was also a predictor of semantic performance, but only in Spanish. Although age corresponded with cumulative experience learning Spanish, it did not neatly match up with the amount of experience in English for these bilingual children. This finding suggests that when age and language experience conflate, age emerges as a significant contributor to semantic development; but when by itself (or when age and language experience diverge), it is no longer a factor. This finding corroborates our earlier argument that experience using a particular language may be a stronger determinant of semantic development than age, at least for the short age gap sampled in the current study.

The mutually predictive relationship between Spanish and English semantic performance also deserves our attention. This finding is consistent with the linguistic interdependence hypothesis ( Cummins, 1979) and substantiates the view that bilingual children are able to use their semantic skills in one language to leverage learning in the other language ( Ordóñez, Carlo, Snow, & McLaughlin, 2002).

Paradigmatic and Syntagmatic Relations

Analyses on subtypes of semantic responses offered us insights into the kinds of semantic relations that undergo changes during middle childhood. Regardless of their age, children were equally adept at producing syntagmatic responses; age-related differences were only manifested in paradigmatic responses. These patterns were in alignment with our predictions and suggest that school-age children gain semantic depth by acquiring semantic connections that are categorical, synonymous, or antonymous in nature. In a similar vein, there was a sharp decrement in paradigmatic responses across elicitations; at the same time syntagmatic responses remained constant. The decrease in paradigmatic responses may be a result of shallow vocabulary because children may not have stored many words that belong to the same category or words that are similar in meaning to the targets. Alternatively, this pattern may reflect difficulties in retrieving paradigmatically related words, which is aptly accounted for by the spreading activation model of semantic networks (for more details, see Collins & Loftus, 1975; and Sheng & McGregor, 2010). Without a measure of vocabulary breadth, we are unable to tease apart these two competing explanations. Nevertheless, both semantic storage and semantic retrieval are dimensions of semantic depth. Finally, the effect of language experience was observed in both paradigmatic and syntagmatic responses, suggesting that language experience contributes to the formation and solidification of both kinds semantic relations.

Limitations

The current study is not without limitations. We grouped our participants by age and language experience but the groups differed on age of English onset and by extension, years learning English, and bilingual type. These latter factors are integral to a bilingual's language experience and should be controlled or experimentally manipulated in future studies. Also, regression analyses indicated that age and the language experience factors accounted for between a quarter to a third of the variance in semantic performance. Clearly there were other factors that were not considered in our study. In particular, vocabulary size (or lexical breadth) is a strong predictor of children's semantic depth ( Vermeer, 2001). Future studies of semantic depth should strive to include a measure of lexical breadth to allow for a more complete examination of semantic development.

Conclusion

Semantic development in bilingual children is a dynamic process. This study was able to reveal the intricate relationships among general development, amount of experience using particular languages, and the development of deep semantic knowledge. With maturity and longer-term use of two languages come denser semantic connections both within each language and across the two languages. With increased experience using a specific language comes deeper semantic knowledge in that language. Both factors were important but the present results suggested that experience using a specific language was a stronger determinant of semantic development than age for bilingual children during middle childhood.

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Semantic Development in Spanish-English Bilingual Children: Effects of Age and Language Experience

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The increasing representation of bilingual students in US schools ( McCardle & Leung, 2006) calls for more information on the normative course of bilingual language development. One domain of language that shows the greatest growth in school-age children is vocabulary. A rich vocabulary is essential for smooth and functional communication.

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How do the meanings of words change over time? This week, we look at semantic shift: how the senses of words drift over time, and how we can describe the different patterns we find across languages. This is Topic #26! This week's tag language: Swahili!

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What Latin Sounded Like - and how we know

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Este video analiza la influencia de diferentes culturas europeas en el desarrollo del inglés moderno como idioma. La influencia romana fue fuerte en las tribus celtas en las islas inglesas, pero sirvió como protección contra las tribus invasoras sajonas. Una vez que el Imperio Romano se derrumbó, los sajones invadieron y difundieron su mezcla única de términos nórdicos con la de los normandos de habla francesa. Con la aristocracia francesa llegó el clero católico. Muchas palabras de "clase alta" en inglés hoy se basan en latín y francés.

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Este video discute las diferencias y similitudes entre los idiomas y sus evoluciones. Reconocer una similitud entre ciertas palabras en dos idiomas diferentes puede ser un término afín o prestado. Una mejor manera de determinar si un idioma y su lengua relacionada son o no de la misma familia lingüística es mejor analizar las similitudes entre los pronombres de ese idioma y los términos familiares.

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La sintaxis no siempre garantiza un significado claro. El lingüista Noam Chomsky creó históricamente la frase "las ideas verdes incoloras duermen furiosamente", que es gramaticalmente correcta, pero sin sentido. Esto demuestra que incluso cuando se siguen de cerca las reglas de sintaxis, el producto no siempre está lleno de significado.

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In linguistics, "syntax" refers to the rules that govern the ways in which words combine to form phrases, clauses, and sentences. The term "syntax" comes from the Greek, meaning "arrange together." The term is also used to mean the study of the syntactic properties of a language. In computer contexts, the term refers to the proper ordering of symbols and codes so that the computer can understand what instructions are telling it to do.

Syntax

Syntax is the proper order of words in a phrase or sentence.

Syntax is a tool used in writing proper grammatical sentences.

Native speakers of a language learn correct syntax without realizing it.

The complexity of a writer's or speaker's sentences creates a formal or informal level of diction that is presented to its audience.

Hearing and Speaking Syntax

Syntax is one of the major components of grammar. It's the concept that enables people to know how to start a question with a question word ("What is that?"), or that adjectives generally come before the nouns they describe ("green chair"), subjects often come before verbs in non-question sentences ("She jogged"), prepositional phrases start with prepositions ("to the store"), helping verbs come before main verbs ("can go" or "will do"), and so on.

For native speakers, using correct syntax is something that comes naturally, as word order is learned as soon as an infant starts absorbing the language. Native speakers can tell something isn't said quite right because it "sounds weird," even if they can't detail the exact grammar rule that makes something sound "off" to the ear.

"It is syntax that gives the words the power to relate to each other in a sequence...to carry meaning-of whatever kind-as well as glow individually in just the right place"
(Burgess 1968)

Syntactic Rules

English parts of speech often follow ordering patterns in sentences and clauses, such as compound sentences are joined by conjunctions (and, but, or) or that multiple adjectives modifying the same noun follow a particular order according to their class (such as number-size-color, as in "six small green chairs"). The rules of how to order words help the language parts make sense.

Sentences often start with a subject, followed by a predicate (or just a verb in the simplest sentences) and contain an object or a complement (or both), which shows, for example, what's being acted upon. Take the sentence "Beth slowly ran the race in wild, multicolored flip-flops." The sentence follows a subject-verb-object pattern ("Beth ran the race"). Adverbs and adjectives take their places in front of what they're modifying ("slowly ran"; "wild, multicolored flip-flops"). The object ("the race") follows the verb "ran", and the prepositional phrase ("in wild, multicolored flip-flops") starts with the preposition "in".

Syntax vs. Diction and Formal vs. Informal

Diction refers to the style of writing or speaking that someone uses, brought about by their choice of words, whereas syntax is the order in which they're arranged in the spoken or written sentence. Something written using a very high level of diction, like a paper published in an academic journal or a lecture given in a college classroom, is written very formally. Speaking to friends or texting are informal, meaning they have a low level of diction.

"It is essential to understand that the differences exist not because spoken language is a degradation of written language but because any written language, whether English or Chinese, results from centuries of development and elaboration by a small number of users."Jim Miller
(Miller, 2008)

Formal written works or presentations would likely also have more complex sentences or industry-specific jargon. They are directed to a more narrow audience than something meant to be read or heard by the general public, where the audience members' backgrounds will be more diverse.

Precision in word choice is less exacting in informal contexts than formal ones, and grammar rules are more flexible in spoken language than in formal written language. Understandable English syntax is more flexible than most.

"...the odd thing about English is that no matter how much you screw sequences word up, you understood, still, like Yoda, will be. Other languages don't work that way. French? Dieu! Misplace a single le or la and an idea vaporizes into a sonic puff. English is flexible: you can jam it into a Cuisinart for an hour, remove it, and meaning will still emerge."
(Copeland, 2009)

Types of Sentence Structures

Types of sentences and their syntax modes include simple sentences, compound sentences, complex sentences, and compound-complex sentences. Compound sentences are two simple sentences joined by a conjunction. Complex sentences have dependent clauses, and compound-complex sentences have both types included.

Simple sentence: Subject-verb structure ("The girl ran.")

Compound sentence: Subject-verb-object-conjunction-subject-verb structure ("The girl ran the marathon, and her cousin did, too.")

Complex sentence: Dependent clause-subject-verb-object structure ("Although they were tired after the marathon, the cousins decided to go to a celebration at the park.")

Compound-complex sentence: Four clauses, dependent and independent structures ("Although they weren't fond of crowds, this was different, they decided, because of the common goal that had brought everyone together.")

Syntax Variations and Distinctions

Syntax has changed some over the development of English through the centuries. "The proverb Whoever loved that loved not at first sight? indicates that English negatives could once be placed after main verbs" (Aitchison, 2001). And not all people speak English in exactly the same way. Social dialects learned by people with common backgrounds-such as a social class, profession, age group, or ethnic group-also may influence the speakers' syntax. Think of the differences between teenagers' slang and more fluid word order and grammar vs. research scientists' technical vocabulary and manner of speaking to each other. Social dialects are also called "social varieties."

Beyond Syntax

Following proper syntax doesn't guarantee that a sentence will have meaning, though. Linguist Noam Chomsky created the sentence "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously," which is syntactically and grammatically correct because it has the words in the correct order and verbs that agree with subjects, but it's still nonsense. With it, Chomsky showed that rules governing syntax are distinct from meanings that words convey.

The distinction between grammar and syntax has been somewhat disrupted by recent research in lexicogrammar, which takes the words into account in grammar rules: For example, some verbs (transitive ones, that perform an action on something) always take direct objects.﻿﻿ A transitive (action) verb example:

"She removed the index card from the old recipe box."

The verb is "removed" and the object is "index card." Another example includes a transitive phrasal verb:

"Please look over my report before I turn it in."

"Look over" is the phrasal verb and "report" is the direct object. To be a complete thought, you need to include what's being looked over. Thus, it has to have a direct object.

Additional References

Aitchison, Jean. Language Change: Progress or Decay? Cambridge University, 2001.

Burgess, Alan. Enderby Outside. Heinemann, 1968.

Chomsky, Noam. The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory. University of Chicago, 1985.

Copeland, Douglas. Generation A: A Novel. Scribner, 2009.

Miller, Jim. An Introduction to English Syntax. Edinburgh University, 2008.

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In linguistics, "syntax" refers to the rules that govern the ways in which words combine to form phrases, clauses, and sentences. The term "syntax" comes from the Greek, meaning "arrange together." The term is also used to mean the study of the syntactic properties of a language.

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¡Increíble! El mito de que los pronombres de doble objeto (como "la lo") se cambian a "se lo" está tan ampliamente disperso que incluso los Youtubers profesionales continúan difundiendo la historia falsa. Me parece interesante que, aunque el producto final sea correcto, el método por el cual se logra es completamente incorrecto. Te hace preguntarte qué otros mitos existen que son tan ampliamente aceptados y creídos como la falsedad "la la".

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Double Object Pronouns in Spanish - Reflexive, Indirect, Direct (RID)

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La sintaxis se entiende mejor cuando se pone en el contexto de la poesía. Aunque el inglés y el español siguen estructuras básicas de estilo SVO y SOV, cualquiera puede ser obstruido y modificado a través del proceso conocido como perifrasis. Al manipular el flujo estándar de sintaxis, los autores pueden poner énfasis natural en palabras que de otro modo no se considerarían tan pesadas. Este elegante uso de la sintaxis forma la base del ritmo que se encuentra en la mayoría de la poesía.

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Syntax Definition

Syntax is a set of rules in a language. It dictates how words from different parts of speech are put together in order to convey a complete thought.

Syntax and Diction

Syntax and diction are closely related. Diction refers to the choice of words in a particular situation, while syntax determines how the chosen words are used to form a sentence. More often than not, adopting a complex diction means a complex syntactic structure of sentences, and vice versa. In combination, syntax and diction help writers develop tone, mood, and atmosphere in a text, along with evoking readers' interest.

Examples of Syntax in Literature

Syntax in Poetry

The general word order of an English sentence is Subject+ Verb+ Object. In poetry, however, the word order may be shifted to achieve certain artistic effects, such as producing rhythm or melody in the lines, achieving emphasis, and heightening connection between two words. The unique syntax used in poetry makes it different from prose. Let us consider the following examples of syntax:

Example #1: Beyond Decoration (By P. J. Kavanagh)

In casual conversations, we can simply say, "I cannot go out" to convey our inability to go out. P. J. Kavanagh's poem Beyond Decoration does not rely on merely stating a prosaic "I cannot go out." Rather, he shifts the syntax and says "Go out I cannot," which lays a much stronger emphasis on the inability to go out conveyed by the word "cannot."

Example #2: Lycidas (By John Milton)

Similarly, John Milton shifts words in his poems frequently. Let us analyze lines from his poem Lycidas:

"Thee, Shepherd, thee the woods and desert caves,
With wild thyme and the gadding vine o'ergrown,
And all their echoes mourn"

The modified word order in the above lines is Object+Subject+Subject Complement+Verb.

Syntax in Prose

Syntax affects the nature of a prose text as well. It enhances its meanings, and contributes toward its tone. Quickness, decisiveness, and speed are added to a text by using short phrases, clauses, and sentences. Whereas, in a text where the subject matter is serious, requiring contemplation, long, convoluted sentences are used to slow down the pace of a prose text. The two syntax examples below show a distinct use of syntax:

Example #3: The Joy Luck Club (By Amy Tan)

"That night I sat on Tyan-yu's bed and waited for him to touch me. But he didn't. I was relieved."

Here, Amy Tan uses short sentences to communicate in a powerful and concise manner.

Example #4: A Farewell to Arms (By Ernest Hemingway)

"They left me alone and I lay in bed and read the papers awhile, the news from the front, and the list of dead officers with their decorations and then reached down and brought up the bottle of Cinzano and held it straight up on my stomach, the cool glass against my stomach, and took little drinks making rings on my stomach from holding the bottle there between drinks, and watched it get dark outside over the roofs of the town."

Ernest Hemingway uses long and complex structures to emphasize the laziness of his character.

Syntax in Shakespeare

Writing all of his plays and sonnets in iambic pentameter, Shakespeare habitually reversed the general order of English sentences by placing verbs at the ends of the sentences.

Example #5: Romeo and Juliet (By William Shakespeare)

"What light from yonder window breaks?"

Instead of using the common expression, "What light breaks from yonder window," Shakespeare emphasized his meaning by using different syntax.

Example #6: Richard III (By William Shakespeare)

In Richard III, Shakespeare deliberately reverses the word order of a sentence, turning a common description: "And all the clouds that lowered upon our house buried in the deep bosom of the ocean," into:

"And all the clouds that lower'd upon our house in the deep bosom of the ocean buried."

Function of Syntax

To convey meaning is one of the main functions of syntax. In literature, writers utilize syntax and diction to achieve certain artistic effects, like mood, and tone. Like diction, syntax aims to affect the readers as well as express the writer's attitude.

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Syntax - Examples and Definition of Syntax

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Definition, Usage and a list of Syntax Examples in common speech and literature. Syntax is a set of rules in a language.

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Este video destaca las diferencias interesantes entre los significados de diferentes oraciones debido al orden de las palabras en la frase. La estructura SVO versus SOV que utiliza el español se resalta y traduce en tiempo real para comprender mejor las diferencias matizadas entre los dos idiomas.

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Language and Linguistic Science, University of York

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Hidden meanings in language learning: word order in Spanish

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This short video sheds light on a potentially puzzling aspect of Spanish word order. It was created by the Meaning in Language Learning Network (http://millnetwork.org/) and launched at the Hidden Meanings in Language Learning event in the York Festival of Ideas, 10 June 2015.

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En las lenguas semíticas, las raíces son agraciadas solo por consonantes. Por ejemplo, en hebreo, la cadena de tres consonantes "gdl" representa la amplitud de algo en tamaño físico. Muchas palabras como "gadol", "gadal" o "higdil" respectivamente significan "grande", "creció" y "magnifica".

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This practical introduction to word history investigates every aspect of where words come from and how they change. Philip Durkin, chief etymologist of the Oxford English Dictionary, shows how different types of evidence can shed light on the myriad ways in which words change in form and meaning. He considers how such changes can be part of wider linguistic processes, or be influenced by a complex mixture of social and cultural factors. He illustrates every point with a wide range of fascinating examples. Dr Durkin investigates folk etymology and other changes which words undergo in everyday use. He shows how language families are established, how words in different languages can have a common ancester, and the ways in which the latter can be distinguished from words introduced through language contact. He examines the etymologies of the names of people and places. His focus is on English but he draws many examples from languages such as French, German, and Latin which cast light on the pre-histories of English words. The Oxford Guide to Etymology is reliable, readable, instructive, and enjoyable. Everyone interested in the history of words will value this account of an endlessly fascinating subject.

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This practical introduction to word history investigates every aspect of where words come from and how they change. Philip Durkin, chief etymologist of the Oxford English Dictionary, shows how different types of evidence can shed light on the myriad ways in which words change in form and meaning.

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Un hecho interesante sobre las jerigonzas es que muchos niños que las aprenden lo hacen antes de que puedan leer o escribir en español. Esto produce un tipo diferente de categorización fonológica. Estos niños piensan en términos de pronunciación fonética en lugar de cómo se deletrea la jerigonza.

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Language games
In the chapter on the phonology of the Mawu language, we talked about the Ngoboobo children's game. This is a language game used by children, based on a systematic phonological distortion of ordinary speech. Specifically, every vowel V is replaced by the sequence VbV (where /b/ is the implosive version of the labial stop), or by VmV if the vowel is nasalized. ThusNgoo "I say" becomes Ngoboobo, the name of the game.
Such language games are very common, perhaps ubiquitous, in the cultures of the world. They function partly as "secret languages" -- because without knowledge and practice it can be hard to understand what is being said -- and partly just as games.

Some of the language games are almost exactly the same, in detail, as Ngoboobo. For instance, there is a Spanish game called "Jerigonza" or "Jeringonza," which involves replacing every vowel V with the sequence VpV. Searching the web for "Jerigonza" turns up a C program for turning Spanish text into Jerigonza, written by someone at the Universidad Católica de Chile.

However, this program applies the Jerigonza rule literally to spelling, and so does not act the way that most Spanish-speaking children would. Becasue the program applies the V-to-VpV change to every orthographic vowel, it turns the (three-syllable) Spanish word escuela "school" into the (eight-syllable) Jerigonza word epescupuepelapa. Spanish-speaking children -- who often learn the jerigonza game before they learn to read -- would think in terms of the categories of their natural and internal phonology, rather than in terms of letters of the alphabet. In the letter sequence "ue" in Spanish spelling, the "u" letter is actually pronounced as a glide /w/, which in phonological terms is a consonant rather than a vowel. Thus we might write the pronunciation of escuela as /eskwela/, with three syllables, not four, even though there are four vowel letters in the word. In the same form of quasi-phonetic writing, the jerigonza version would be /epe skwepe lapa/, with six syllables, not /epe skupu epe lapa/, with eight. Most Spanish-speaking children would produce the six-syllable form -- though there are a few who have learned to apply the jerigonza rules to spelling instead of to sound.

In parts of Brazil, the same language game applied to Portuguese is called "lingua do Pe", or "P language."

There is a very similar American English language game called " Ubbi Dubbi", or sometimes "Double Dutch", popularized on the children's television program Zoom some years ago. In Ubbi Dubbi (rhymes with "hubby"), you insert the VC sequence "ub" (pronounced to rhyme with "hub") in front of every vowel. Usually the "ub" syllable is stressed more than the vowel that it precedes, which makes Ubbi Dubbi very hard to understand.

The writing system of English is (especially on a letter-by-letter basis) much futher from English phonology than Spanish writing is from Spanish phonology. So no American child would every apply ubbi dubbi to spelling -- it is always the phonological vowels that get "ub" inserted in front of them, not the vowel letters a e i o u in the written form of English.

For example, the two-syllable word "speaking" in Ubbi Dubbi will have four syllables, which the official Zoom ubbi dubbi page would write as sp-ub-eak-ub-ing, and which we might write in IPA as [ ]. In an imitation of the conventions of English orthography, the Ubbi Dubbi rendition of "speaking" might be given as "spubby cubbing". This treatment is the natural interpretation of of the Ubbi Dubbi rule ("put ub in front of every vowel") because the digraph (two-letter combination) "ea" in the spelling of the word "speaking" actually represents only one vowel. A child speaking (or understanding) Ubbi Dubbi knows this.

Some other examples from Ubbi Dubbi:

"good" become g-ub-ood (IPA [ ]), with the digraph "oo" treated as the single vowel that it represents.

"sunny" becomes s-ubunn-ub-y (IPA [ ]), with the "y" letter properly treated as a vowel

"nineties" becomes n-ub-inet-ub-ies (IPA [ ] ), with the silent "e" left out, and the digraph "ie" treated as a single vowel

Uniformly, around the world, children's secret languages (and other language games) are defined in terms of the phonological categories of their languages. There are sometimes influences from spelling, but more often the vagaries of spelling are ignored. In fact, children commonly learn these secret languages before they learn to read, and such games also exist for languages that have no written form at all.

Tune-text alignment in English
Consider the first verse of the simple song Skip to my Lou, as presented in Ruth Crawford Seeger'sAmerican Folk Songs for Children (Doubleday, 1948).

In this verse, as throughout the song, a single line is repeated three times, against a simple melody that sketches a major triad in the tonic, the dominant, and then again the tonic.The verse ends with the invariant line "skip-a to my lou, my darling."

The songbook gives a couple of dozen other verses. Each has the same structure -- a single line repeated three times, and the invariant ending "skip-a to my lou, my darling." Thus the problem of fitting words to music can be reduced for each verse to the problem of
fitting a single line to the first two bars of the melody -- everything else is just repetition.

This is about as simple as songs get. Nevertheless, a four- or five-year-old learning new verses has to solve a non-trivial problem.

One way to look at the problem is to line a few verses up against a depiction of the metrical structure of the first two bars of the song. These two bars contain four "quarter notes". The metronome marking at the top of the music says that the quarter note equals 132, i.e. 132 quarter notes per minute, or a little more than two quarter notes per second.

Standard western musical structure assumes a regular hierarchical subdivision of time. In this case, each quarter note can be divided into two eighth notes, each eighth note into two sixteenth notes, etc. At each level, the first of the subdividing notes is "stronger" than the other -- it is the "downbeat."

Three levels are enough for this musical example. As for the alignment with the melody, the song provides a separate pitch for each quarter note. If that note is subdivided by the syllables of the verse, then the subdividing syllables just repeat the same note.

Here is the first verse -- this is just a schematic presentation of exactly the information provided by the musical notation above:

E C E G (pitches of the tune)
X X X X (quarter notes)
X X X X X X X X (eighth notes)
X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X (sixteenth notes)
little red wa- gon pain- ted blue

Here are some other verses, aligned under another copy of the same melodic and metrical schema:

E C E G (pitches of the tune)
X X X X (quarter notes)
X X X X X X X X (eighth notes)
X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X (sixteenth notes)
pig in the par- lour what'll I do
cat in the but-ter milk lapping up cream
rab-bit in the corn field big as a mule
hogs in the po-ta- to patch rooting up corn
dad's old hat and ma- ma's old shoe

There are many other verses -- Seeger provides a couple of dozen in the publication cited, and says "this song has hundreds of stanzas and is always picking up new ones. One collector alone gives 150, from which the above 22 were selected as encrouagement to further improvisation."

The samples given above are enough to give us a guess about the principles involved. For a start, we can say something about what the principles are NOT:

There is not a fixed number of syllables in a line -- the samples have been 8 and 11 syllables.

Even for a given number of syllables, the alignment with the melody and rhythm of the song is not fixed by syllable order, but depends on the stress and structure of the words.

For instance, both "little red wagon painted blue" and "dad's old hat and mama's old shoe" have eight syllables, but if we used the syllable-by-syllable alignment of the first line for the second line, we'd get:
E C E G (pitches of the tune)
X X X X (quarter notes)
X X X X X X X X (eighth notes)
X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X (sixteenth notes)
dad's old hat and ma- ma's old shoe

which gives the impression of stressing the line as " DAD's-old-hat AND maMA's old SHOE" (where the capitalized syllables correspond to the quarter-note beat of the song, and also to the points of pitch change).

No self-respecting American nursery school graduate would ever think to sing the line that way -- except perhaps as a joke.

The principles of tune-text alignment for this song seem to be:

Each of the four quarter notes is always aligned with a stressed syllable

There is always at least one syllable in between each pair of quarter notes, so that the intervening eighth-note positions are always filled, but these interveningt syllables are not always stressed

Syllables aligned with sixteenth notes may be added to taste.

This implies that the minimum plausible line of "skip to my lou" might be seven rather than eight syllables. For instance, "Jane's old hat and Jim's old shoe" might be OK.
We can make some other observations, such as this one:

The sixth sixteenth-note position seems to be avoided (the "upbeat" to the second measure); this corresponds to a tendency to break the line into two parts at this point

The eighth sixteenth-note position is usually filled, as with the meaningless -a syllable in the refrain skip-a to my lou.

You can verify for yourself that the rest of Ruth Crawford Seeger's cited lines follow the same pattern:
Pull her up and down in the little red wagon
Rats in the bread tray, how they chew
Chickens in the garden, shoo shoo shoo
Cow in the kitchen, moo cow moo
Going to market two by two
Back from market, what did you do?
Had a glass of buttermilk, one and two
Skip skip skip-a to my lou
Skip a little faster, that won't do
Going to Texas, come along too
Lost my partner, what'll I do
I'll get another one prettier than you
Catch that red bird, skip to my lou
If you can't get a red bird, take a blue
If you can't get a blue bird, black bird'll do
The only real novelty in these additional examples is in the line ending with wagon, where there is an extra syllable aligned after the fourth quarter-note.
We can rephrase our observations by saying that Skip to my lou has a four-beat line, where the beats correspond to the quarter notes of the first two bars of the song, and where one to four additional syllables occur between each adjacent pair of beats.

I have seen four- and five-year-old children making up new verses to this song. No one has to teach them the rules -- they figure them out easily enough by themselves.

Most songs are more complicated than this one, but the basic principles of tune-text alignment in English remain the same: syllables are aligned with notes so that the stress pattern of the text and the rhythmic structure of the tune are congruent. If you have some familarity with designing computer algorithms, you might see if you can design one that will correctly specify the tune-text alignment for a simple song like this one.

To make up new verses -- or to sing old ones correctly -- you have to understand, implicitly, the metrical hierarchy of the music, the stress pattern of the text, and the way that they can be aligned. This understanding comes effortlessly to young children, providing more evidence of the psychological reality (and naturalness) of the linguistic (and musical) concepts involved.

Why should there be something natural about the process of aligning two structures so as to make them rhythmically congruent? One plausible hypothesis is that this is the basis of coordination among speech articulators in ordinary talking. On this view, singing is just a kind of regularized and stylized form of speaking. In both cases, rhythmic structures are serving a coordinative function.

Accentual/syllabic verse in English
The principles of tune-text association for Skip to my Lou are basically the same as the principles that underlie most metered verse in English.
This is especially clear if we look at verse with a very clear rhythmic pattern, like Mother Goose rhymes, or Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark, or Robert W. Service's ballad The shooting of Dan McGrew, or Aerosmith's Walk this way.

Let's take a look at how McGrew works. The poem has 58 lines, of which the first six are given below.

A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon;
The kid that handles the music-box was hitting a rag-time tune;
Back of the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew,
And watching his luck was his light-o'-love, the lady that's known as Lou.
When out of the night, which was fifty below, and into the din and the glare,
There stumbled a miner fresh from the creeks, dog-dirty, and loaded for bear.
If you read these lines out loud, you can hardly avoid getting an impression of the intended rhythm. It's a seven-beat line, with either one or two additional syllables between each pair of adjacent beats. The beginning of the line can start with zero, one or two "upbeat" syllables. There is always a phrasal break between the fourth and fifth beats of each line, and occasionally there is no intervening syllable at this point (as if it were a line break).
We can annotate the rhythmic structure of the next six lines of the poem by using a sharp sign (#) for each "beat", a period for additional syllables, and a slash (/) for the phrase break:

. # . . # . . # . . # /. # . . # . . #
He looked like a man with a foot in the grave and scarcely the strength of a louse,
. . # . . # . # . . # / . . # . # . . #
Yet he tilted a poke of dust on the bar, and he called for drinks for the house.
. . # . # . # . # / . . # . # . . #
There was none could place the stranger's face, though we searched ourselves for a clue;
. . # . # . . # . # / . # . . # . #
But we drank his health, and the last to drink was Dangerous Dan McGrew.
. # . # . . # . # / . # . # . . #
There's men that somehow just grip your eyes, and hold them hard like a spell;
. # . # . . # . # / . . # . . # . #
And such was he, and he looked to me like a man who had lived in hell;
. . # . # . . # . # / . . # . # . #
With a face most hair, and the dreary stare of a dog whose day is done,
. . # . . # . # . # / . . # . # . #
As he watered the green stuff in his glass, and the drops fell one by one.
This kind of annotation of the rhythmic structure of a verse is called scansion, and the basic rhythmic pattern of a poem (if it has one) is called itsmeter. The scansion shows us how the underlying pattern (here a seven-beat line with one or two intervening syllables) is realized in each line of the poem.
There is quite a bit to say about meter and scansion, even of metrically simple poems (some might even say doggerel) like McGrew. The point that we want to draw out here is that the basic principles are the same as those that applied in the case of Skip to my lou-- a certain number of beats per line, with variable (but constrained) numbers of syllables between the beats, and a regular break in a certain position.

Theorists distinguish among various kinds of poetic meter. The word meter means measure, and in each case, something is being measured or counted. In syllabic meters (as in French poetry), the only thing that matters is the number of syllables per line. In accentual meters, what is counted is accents -- or more properly beat-aligned accents. Most English metered verse is accentual-syllabic -- each line has a given number of "beats", but there are also more or less strong restrictions of the number of intervening syllables.

It is important to remember that poetic meter is an abtract pattern, a kind of grid against which the poet arranges his or her lines according to some geenral principles of congruence. How the congruence is defined depends on the poetic style, but also very much on the sound structure of the language that the poetry is written in. For metered verse to be a living form -- as it has been in many cultures around the world, both ancient and modern -- its patterns have to be defined in terms of phonological categories whose patterns poets and their audience can hear and feel.

Metrical feet

In the notation we've been using, The shooting of Dan McGrew is written in a fairly even mixture of. # and . . # rhythmic elements
(225. # and 198 . . # to be precise). The distinction doesn't really seem to matter to its form, which we described simply as seven beats with one or two intervening syllables, divided into two half-lines of four beats and three beats. The lyrics to Aerosmith's song Walk this way have the same basic pattern: seven beats, divided as four plus three. However, now there can be as many as three weak syllables between each pair of strong syllables (where "strong" means "aligned with the beat"):

 . . # . . # . . # . # / . . # . . . # . . # So I took a big chance at the high school dance, With a missy who was ready to play. . . # . . # . . . # . . . # . / . . # . . . # . # Wasn't me she was foolin' 'cause she knew what she was doin', when she told me how to walk this way.

Thus Walk this way has exactly the same meter and rhyme scheme as The shooting of Dan McGrew, except for a slight relaxation of the meter: instead of one or two weak syllables between beats, Aerosmith's song has one, two or three.

Lewis Carroll's mock epic The Hunting of the Snark also has the same basic meter as The shooting of Dan McGrew: Here are the first two stanzas:

. . # . . # . # . #
"Just the place for a Snark!" the Bellman cried,
. . # . . # . #
As he landed his crew with care;
. # . . # . . # . . #
Supporting each man on the top of the tide
. . # . . # . . #
By a finger entwined in his hair.

. . # . . # . . # . #
"Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:
. . # . . # . . #
That alone should encourage the crew.
. . # . . # . . # . #
Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:
. . # . . # . #
What I tell you three times is true."

Snark has alternate lines of four and three beats -- corresponding to the four/three division of the seven-beat line inMcGrew. With the promotion of the half lines to full lines, additional rhymes are added (herecried/tide and twice/thrice) to reinforce the stanzaic form, but the meter is basically identical.

In Snark, however, the balance between . # and . . # shifts dramatically towards . . #

There are 1754 . . # sequences, to only 251 . # sequences, for a ratio of about seven to one, while the. # sequences that do occur are essentially all at the beginning or the end of a line. Thus Snark is moving in the direction of fixing not only the number of "beats" -- of strong syllables in the line -- but also the number and placement of weak syllables.

In order to characterize poetic forms in which the arrangement of strong and weak positions is regulated in this way, poets and critics have borrowed the terminology of Greek (and Latin) metrics. The Greek metrical system was based on patterns of totally different units -- their meters did not care about the location of accented syllables, but rather regulated the pattern of long and short syllables. They then established a congruence between long and short syllables and patterns of long and short time-units in the musical meters of the period. Metrical systems that depend on syllable-length in this way are called quantitative. By contrast, English lyric poets rely on a congruence between stress patterns and the beat structure of our music, resulting in a metrical system that is called accentual or accentual-syllabic.

These different choices of basic poetic stuff are not arbitrary. The (classical) Greek language made a systematic distinction between long and short vowels, whereas English does not; English word-stress organizes the rhythm of English speech in a way that Greek accent did not.

Nevertheless, all poetic forms are based on analogies among different sorts of patterns, and it is easy enough to make an analogy between the Greeks' patterns of long and short syllables, and our patterns of strong and weak syllables. Thus we can borrow the Greek term iamb -- applied to the Greek pattern "short long" -- and apply it to the English pattern "weak strong." The Greeks called these basic patterns "feet" (actually of course they called them the equivalent in Greek). Here are some of the commoner foot names:

iamb
. #

anapest
. . #

trochee
# .

dactyl
# . .

spondee
# #

Thus Snark is basically an anapestic meter, with alternating lines of four and three feet.

The Greeks (and their Roman students) identified types of poetic lines in terms of the type of rhythmic pattern (foot) used, and the number of repetitions of the pattern. Thus a pattern consisting of five iambs would be an iambic pentameter; a pattern consisting of six dactyls would be a dactylic hexameter; and so on.

For instance, a limerick is typically two lines of anapestic trimeter, followed by two lines of anapestic dimeter, followed by a final anapestic trimeter:

. # . . # . . #
I used to think math was no fun
. . # . . # . . #
'Cause I couldn't see how it was done
. # . . #
Now Euler's my hero
. . # . . #
For I now see why zero
. # . . # . . #
Is e to the pi i plus 1.

Iambic pentameter
When we look at the scansion of Skip to my lou or The shooting of Dan McGrew, we see that there is a very good correlation between strong positions in the meter ("beats") and main-stressed syllables of content words.
This correlation is not perfect. There are a few cases where stressed syllables of content words are in weak positions. Here is a line with four examples (in bold face):

. # . # . . # . # / . # . . # . #
A half-dead thing in a stark, dead world,clean mad for the muck called gold

The rhythm of this line remains clear, however, since in each case there are adjacent stressed words that are naturally more prominent, and so a completely ordinary reading of the line still gives a direct expression of the "swing" of the meter.
What never happens -- in such verse -- is for the main-stressed syllable of a polysyllabic word to be scanned in a weak position.

There are also examples of a "beat" position occupied by a word -- such as a function word -- whose natural degree of prominence is weak. However, in nearly all of these cases, there are even weaker words adjacent, so that the natural rhythm of the phrase still expresses the meter clearly:

. # . # . . # . #
That one of you is a hound of hell . . .
As a result, it is impossible to read the poem without intuitively grasping its meter -- whether you want to or not!
In most metered verse in English, the meter is not as obvious. Nevertheless, the basic rules of meter and scansion remain the same: there are a certain number of strong ("beat") syllables per line, with a specified number of intervening syllables permitted between the beats. The main-stressed syllable of a polysyllabic word is never allowed to occur in one of the intervening weak (non-beat) positions in the meter. Naturally strong monosyllables may occur in metrically weak positions.

Perhaps the biggest difference between Service's handling of meter and that of subtler English poets is the treatment of metrically strong positions. In poems where the meter is obvious or even insistent, like limericks or The shooting of Dan McGrew or The hunting of the Snark, metrically strong positions are usually occupied by strongly stressed syllables, with weaker syllables around them. In subtler metrical styles, this correlation is relaxed, so that weak monosyllables often appear in strong positions in the meter.

The result is a flexible sort of meter, able to vary between clear and obvious rhythmicity and more prose-like patterns.

Like much English-language art poetry from Shakespeare to Auden, Alexander Pope'sAn Essay on Criticism is written in iambic pentameter, that is, in lines of five repetitions of the iambic rhythm/. #/

Sometimes his lines express the meter as directly as any limerick:

. # . # . # . # . #
In search of wit these lose their common sense
Each strong position in the previous line is occupied by the stressed syllable of a content word; each weak position is occupied by a prosodically-weak function word, or by the unstressed syllable of a polysyllabic word. In the line given below, both stressed syllables of imagination are used in metrically strong positions, but otherwise the situation is the same:
. # . # . # . # . #
Where beams of warm imagination play
However, it is easy to find lines in the same poem where unstressed and prosodically weak syllables are put in metrically strong positions, like is and the in the couplet below:
. # . # . # . # . #
A little learning is a dang'rous thing;
. # . # . # .# . #
Drink deep, or taste not the Piërian spring:

As a result of this (and other aspects of poetic practice, such as frequent inversion of the first foot of a line), there may be a complex relationship between the abstract metrical pattern of iambic pentameter and its linguistic rhythms. Different poetic styles may constrain the relationship in quite different ways. However, the relationship is not dependent on arbitrary conventions -- say, "you can add extra syllables if they contain the letter 'x'". Rather, like children's language games and the relation of lyrics to music in songs, it is rooted in the sound structure of the language. Metrics is applied phonology.

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In the chapter on the phonology of the Mawu language, we talked about the Ngoboobo children's game. This is a language game used by children, based on a systematic phonological distortion of ordinary speech. Specifically, every vowel V is replaced by the sequence VbV (where /b/ is the implosive version of the labial stop), or by VmV if the vowel is nasalized.

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Otto Jespersen, con quien estamos familiarizados a través de su teoría de la conjunción del lenguaje, apoyó y creó su propio idioma llamado "Novial", un intento lingüístico de crear una "lengua universal".

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Words without grammar: Linguists and the international auxiliary language movement in the United States

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Las "palabras nominales" o las palabras que existen porque comparten propiedades similares tienen cuatro terminaciones distintas: "o", "a", "e" y una categoría llamada "tallos atemáticos". Estas últimas palabras no caen en un patrón particular debido a sus orígenes lingüísticos. Palabras como "virus", "jersey" y "snob" encajan en esta categoría.

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Qué es la diferencia entre "acumulativo" y "correlativos" con adjetivos?

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Qué es la diferencia entre "acumulativo" y "correlativos" con adjetivos?

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Este artículo trata sobre adjetivos correlativos versus adjetivos acumulativos. Los adjetivos correlativos están separados por comas, lo que implica una sucesiva cantidad de una descripción, mientras que la otra forma, acumulativa, se acumula. La diferencia entre "the loose red top" y "the red loose top" es sutil, pero los hablantes nativos de inglés lo notan.

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Este artículo trata sobre adjetivos correlativos versus adjetivos acumulativos. Los adjetivos correlativos están separados por comas, lo que implica una sucesiva cantidad de una descripción, mientras que la otra forma, acumulativa, se acumula. La diferencia entre "the loose red top" y "the red loose top" es sutil, pero los hablantes nativos de inglés lo notan.

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It is a lovely warm August day outside, and I am wearing a green loose top. Does the second part of that sentence sound strange to you? Perhaps you think I should have written "loose green top." You're not wrong (though not entirely right, because descriptivist linguistics): An intuitive code governs the way English speakers order adjectives. The rules come so naturally to us that we rarely learn about them in school, but over the past few decades language nerds have been monitoring modifiers, grouping them into categories, and straining to find logic in how people instinctively rank those categories.

If you're someone whose reflexes scatter the moment you try to lift the veil on your unconscious, this fascinating little-known field (little-known fascinating field?) will drive you nuts. On the other hand, thinking about how adjectives work may bounce you to an epistemological Zen state, wherein you can contemplate amid flutes what it means to partake of Redness and whether former child actress means something different from child former actress. Adjectives are where the elves of language both cheat and illumine reality.

Maybe I am overqualifying this article about qualifiers (or is that the point?).

Linguists have broken the adjectival landmass into several regions. They are: general opinion or quality ("exquisite," "terrible"), specific opinion or quality ("friendly," "dusty"), size, shape, age, color, origin, and material. Generally, modifiers from the same region can be strung together in any order. Thomas Wolfe, writing in Look Homeward, Angelof " blistered varnished wood" and "fat limp underdone bacon," could also have said "varnished blistered wood" or "limp fat underdone bacon." (All five examples count as "specific opinion" words.) Likewise, if the woman in " The Idea of Order at Key West " had walked along the "tragic-gestured, ever-hooded sea," instead of the "ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea," probably no one would have sent the grammar cops after Wallace Stevens.

On his blog, the linguist Neal Whitman calls adjectives from the same semantic region-the ones where swapping their placement in a sentence neither sounds strange nor scrambles the meaning- correlative. Correlative adjectives often, though not always, announce themselves through commas, and they are good at modifying nouns without talking much to each other, like exes at a mutual friend's wedding. (Commas themselves are a more complicated matter, says John T. Beavers, a professor of linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin. Because they often function as pauses, they can isolate an adjective from whatever flow might otherwise sweep it under, abetting Adjective Order Crimes.)

Whitman distinguishes between correlative pairs of modifiers and the fussier cumulative ones. These, read in succession in a sentence, accrete sense in a specific way. For example, consider the subset of adjectives called operators, whichoften take part in cumulative constructions. Such terms-"former," "alleged," "fake"-fundamentally change the meaning of whatever follows. (An "alleged" thief may not be a thief at all.) Therefore, when dealing with operators, the precise idea you want to express determines the order of adjectives, and a furniture dealer is not at liberty to oscillate between "fake Malaysian ivory"-a material masquerading as Malaysian ivory-and "Malaysian fake ivory"-a not-ivory material from Malaysia. (For more on operator adjectives, also known as non-intersective adjectives, and their role in possible adjective ordering, I mean possible role in adjective ordering, check out Alexandra Teodorescu's 2006 paper for the 25 th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics.)

But what about modifiers that sound good in one order and bad in another, even if they convey the same meaning both ways? Though red big barns and big red barns are semantically identical, the second kind pleases our ears more. These tricky situations-neither pure correlation nor accumulation-generally occur when you cross the border between adjectival regions, such as size and color. When that happens, an invisible code snaps into place, and the eight categories shimmy into one magistral conga line: general opinion then specific opinion then size then shape then age then color then provenance then material.

All of which can get really confusing. For one thing, it's hard to remember. (GSSSACPM isn't that sticky of an acronym.) Plus, the boundary between a "general" and a "specific" opinion seems thin, with words like beautiful or sweet evoking both discrete, somewhat measurable qualities and nebulous curtains of approval. A few linguists also contest the placing of shape before age, or size after opinion. (Sure, "mean little terrier" works better than "little mean terrier," but doesn't a large comfortable armchair sound nicer than its inverse? And what about the trump card suggested to me by the son of one colleague: "BIG STINKY FART"?)

Still, corpora studies confirm that GSSSACPM prevails in most instances of written English. In 2003, Stephanie Wulff used a computer program to comb through thousands of texts-she found that 78 percent of adjective strings followed the rule. More minutely, when Carnegie Mellon's Enrica Rosato searched the Corpus of Contemporary American English for occurrences of "big red [noun]" versus "red big [noun]," she turned up 382 instances of "big red" to zero of "red big"

Is there some hidden logic underpinning this arrangement, or is it arbitrary? Since GSSSACPM more or less applies to languages around the world, many linguists think we want ripe to precede yellow for a reason. "It's possible that these elements of universal grammar clarify our thought in some way," says Barbara Partee, a professor emeritus of linguistics and philosophy at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Yet when the human race tacitly decided that shape words go before color words go before origin words, it left no record of its rationale.

The Danish grammarian Otto Jespersen was first to speculate on why our adjective conventions shook out the way they did. In his seminal 1922 volume Language: Its Nature, Development and Origin, he proposed, simply, that the more specific term always falls closer to the noun. It is a seductive hypothesis, especially when you consider phrases like "nice clean metal fork" or, from Wolfe again, "cool clarion earth." Henry James, describing Nathaniel Hawthorne's stories as " small cold apologues, frosty and exquisite," cradles his noun apologues between finely tuned sense words ("cold" and "frosty"), themselves hemmed in by broader judgments ("small" and "exquisite"). It is an intuitive way to hone in on the precise object of discussion, a linguistic mirroring of the mind as it focuses and then begins to pull back. "The use of multiple adjectives ... is equivalent to a sequential series of restrictions placed on the set of properties for a given noun," Rosato wrote in her 2013 paper. If so, progressing from general adjectives to precise ones makes sense.

But Jespersen's theory only half fits with what we know about GSSSACPM. After all, the category "specific quality" comes second in the chain, ahead of more catholic groups like color and size. In 1971, psycholinguists Sam Glucksberg and Joseph H. Danks advanced a new thesis: As you get closer to the noun, you encounter adjectives that denote more innate properties. Glucksberg and Danks gave volunteers a test in which each question was a set of six sentences. The sentences had three modifiers and one noun, and only the order of the modifiers varied. Asked to rank the statements by their acceptability, the volunteers consistently rated highest the one in which the adjectives grew more "intrinsic" as they approached the noun. For example, "My sister bought a wondrous blue-green Hawaiian gecko" would earn higher marks than "My sister bought a Hawaiian blue-green wondrous gecko." By 1985, when linguist M.A.K. Halliday published his first edition of An Introduction to Fundamental Grammar, the notion that adjectives grow "increasingly permanent as attributes" as they tend noun-ward was itself solidifying into canon.

To contemporary language scholars, this rule also seems logical. "In general, nouns pick out the type of thing we're talking about, and adjectives describe it," Partee told me. She observes that the modifiers most likely to sit right next to nouns are the ones most inclined to serve as nouns in different contexts: Rubber duck. Stone wall. Even in more abstract constructions-that Henry James essay on Nathaniel Hawthorne also contained the phrases "pressing moral anxiety" and "restless individual conscience"-we often see indisputable adjectives followed by nouns-roped-into-being-adjectives followed by nouns-as-nouns. And maybe that's how it should be: The slanting afternoon light might not always slant, but it must shine in the afternoon. In physics, things have a gravitational pull, attracting other things-why not in language too?

But try to sell the intrinsicness hypothesis to those pop groups warbling about a " long cold lonely winter." ("Long" seems like a more stable quality than "lonely," which reflects the speaker's value judgment. And "cold" seems more intrinsic to winter than either of them.) Or tell it to the big bad wolf, bristling at the implication that your opinion of his character is more inherent to him than his impressive dimensions. "The exceptions are so many that it is really hard to arrive at a universal law," Beavers admits. While "these generalizations capture something important about language, some motivation for organizing it that way," he continues, "the rules are begging to be broken."

When that happens, it can serve a practical purpose: As Partee points out, switching up the order of adjectives allows you to redistribute emphasis. (If you wish to buy the black small purse, not the gray one, for instance, you can communicate your priorities by placing color before size). But word crimes also produce literary effects, as in a fission lab where the splitting of bonds releases bursts of energy and irradiation. Scrambling GSSSACPM helps authors achieve a sense of spontaneity, of improvising as they go. Wolfe discovers such a rhythm, a feeling-his-way quality, when he discusses his childhood recollection of " brown tired autumn earth" and a " flat moist plug of apple tobacco." The words appear as if out of memory's hallucinatory fog, in the haphazard order in which they occur to the speaker. They imply an authentic and unmediated relationship between the developing thought and its verbal transcription. Or consider when Yeats tells Maud Gonne, in the poem " Adam's Curse," that "I strove/ to love you in the old high way of love." There's something archaic and untenable in the reversal of "high" (specific opinion) and "old" (age), a difficulty that foreshadows the next lines' sad capitulation: "and yet we'd grown/ as weary-hearted as that hollow moon."

In 2007, the psychologist David Kemmerer scanned the brains of volunteers as they read aloud sentences that either followed or upended the order of adjectives. Not surprisingly, he found that reciting strings of modifiers required more cognitive effort when the strings were beaded "wrong." That ability to make a reader pause and concentrate can be useful to writers. After all, some might view a sentence requiring greater thought to decipher as flawed, but inspiring an incremental increase in focus is, for many writers, the point of writing. On the other hand, phrases that cleave to GSSSACPM can have a lovely fluidity-in her poem " Question," May Swenson asks: "How will I know/ in thicket ahead/ is danger or treasure/ when Body my good/ bright dog is dead?" The way Swenson's "good bright dog" (general opinion, specific opinion, noun) trots across the stanza just as we expect him to says something about his obedience, his reliability, and how lost we'll be when he's gone.

While Body our good bright dog still lives, though, what does the order of adjectives mean for us? It means that we will likely ask for a nice hot cup of tea, not a hot nice cup of tea, unless perhaps a cold nice cup of tea is also available. It means that our angry red sunburn will be forever angry before it is red, our huge fuzzy blanket huge before it is fuzzy. Mostly, it is just a reminder that the invisible rules of language assert themselves everywhere, even when we break them, even when we don't think about them, even when they don't strike us as a great important big old deal.

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Why Do We Say "Big Red Barn," but "Red Big Barn" Sounds Wrong?

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It is a lovely warm August day outside, and I am wearing a green loose top. Does the second part of that sentence sound strange to you? Perhaps you think I should have written "loose green top." You're not wrong (though not entirely right, because descriptivist linguistics): An intuitive code governs the way English speakers order adjectives.

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El idioma Mbabaram, endémico de Australia y ahora extinto, tiene exactamente la misma palabra y pronunciación para "perro" que en inglés. No existe una razón lingüística detrás de la coincidencia y es notable en el hecho de que los humanos pueden describir las cosas de la misma manera, completamente independientes de otras influencias culturales.

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El idioma Mbabaram, endémico de Australia y ahora extinto, tiene exactamente la misma palabra y pronunciación para "perro" que en inglés. No existe una razón lingüística detrás de la coincidencia y es notable en el hecho de que los humanos pueden describir las cosas de la misma manera, completamente independientes de otras influencias culturales.

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Mbabaram (Barbaram) is an extinct Australian Aboriginal language of north Queensland. It was the traditional language of the Mbabaram people. Known speakers were Albert Bennett, Alick Chalk, Jimmy Taylor and Mick Burns. Recordings of Bennett and Chalk are held in the Audiovisual Archive of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. R. M. W. Dixon described his hunt for a native speaker of Mbabaram in his book Searching for Aboriginal Languages: Memoirs of a Field Worker. Most of what is known of the language is from Dixon's field research with Bennett.

Until R. M. W. Dixon's work on the language, "Barbaram" (as it was then known) was thought to be too different from other languages to be part of the Pama-Nyungan language family. Dixon revealed it to have descended from a more typical form, that was obscured by subsequent changes. Dixon (2002) himself, however, still regards genetic relationships between Mbabaram and other languages as unproven.

Albert Bennett identified Agwamin as the language most subjectively[clarification needed ] similar to Mbabaram.

Nearby tribal dialects were Agwamin, Djangun ( Kuku-Yalanji), Muluridji ( Kuku-Yalanji), Djabugay, Yidiny, Ngadjan ( Dyirbal), Mamu ( Dyirbal), Jirrbal ( Dyirbal), Girramay ( Dyirbal), and Warungu. While these were often mutually intelligible, to varying degrees, with the speech of the adjacent tribes, none were even partially intelligible with Mbabaram. The Mbabaram would often learn the languages of other tribes rather than vice versa, because Mbabaram was found difficult.

Consonants

Phonological history

Mbabaram would have originally had simply three vowels, /i a u/, like most Australian languages, but several changes occurred to add /ɛ ɨ ɔ/ to the system:

The first consonant of each word was then dropped, leaving the distribution of /ɔ ɛ ɨ/ unpredictable.

Word for "dog"

Mbabaram is famous in linguistic circles for a striking coincidence in its vocabulary. When Dixon finally managed to meet Bennett, he began his study of the language by eliciting a few basic nouns; among the first of these was the word for "dog". Bennett supplied the Mbabaram translation, dog. Dixon suspected that Bennett hadn't understood the question, or that Bennett's knowledge of Mbabaram had been tainted by decades of using English. But it turned out that the Mbabaram word for "dog" was in fact dog, pronounced almost identically to the English word[citation needed ] (compare true cognates such as Yidiny gudaga, Dyirbal guda, Djabugay gurraa and Guugu Yimidhirr gudaa, for example). The similarity is a complete coincidence: there is no discernible relationship between English and Mbabaram. This and other false cognates are often cited as a caution against deciding that languages are related based on a small number of lexical comparisons.

1. ^ Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2017). "Mbabaram". Glottolog 3.0. Jena, Germany: Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History.

2. ^ Y115 Mbabaram at the Australian Indigenous Languages Database, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies

3. ^ Black, Paul (2004). "The Failure of the Evidence of Shared Innovations in Cape York peninsula". In Bowern, Claire; Koch, Harold James (eds.). Australian languages: classification and the comparative method. Amsterdam Studies in the Theory and History of Linguistic Science. Series 4, Current Issues in Linguistic Theory. 249. John Benjamins. p. 264. ISBN 978-1-58811-512-6.

Dixon, R. M. W. (1966). "Mbabaram: A Dying Australian Language". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. 29 (1): 97-121. doi:10.1017/S0041977X00060833.

Dixon, R. M. W. (1991). "Mbabaram". In Dixon, R. M. W.; Blake, B. J. (eds.). Handbook of Australian Languages. Vol. 4. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.

Dixon, R. M. W. (2002). Australian Languages: Their Nature and Development. Cambridge University Press.

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Mbabaram (Barbaram) is an extinct Australian Aboriginal language of north Queensland. It was the traditional language of the Mbabaram people. Known speakers were Albert Bennett, Alick Chalk, Jimmy Taylor and Mick Burns. Recordings of Bennett and Chalk are held in the Audiovisual Archive of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.

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El idioma inglés tiene palabras conocidas como contrónimos. Estas palabras tienen múltiples significados y estos significados son opuestos entre sí. Un ejemplo de esto es la palabra "escindir", que puede significar separarse, pero también juntar algo.

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The English language includes an interesting category of words and phrases called contronyms (also spelled contranyms, or referred to as autoantonyms) - terms that, depending on context, can have opposite or contradictory meanings. When you use these words, be sure the context clearly identifies which meaning is intended:

1. Apology: A statement of contrition for an action, or a defense of one
2. Aught: All, or nothing
3. Bill: A payment, or an invoice for payment
4. Bolt: To secure, or to flee
5. Bound: Heading to a destination, or restrained from movement
6. Buckle: To connect, or to break or collapse
7. Cleave: To adhere, or to separate
8. Clip: To fasten, or detach
9. Consult: To offer advice, or to obtain it
10. Continue: To keep doing an action, or to suspend an action
11. Custom: A common practice, or a special treatment
12. Dike: A wall to prevent flooding, or a ditch
13. Discursive: Moving in an orderly fashion among topics, or proceeding aimlessly in a discussion
14. Dollop: A large amount (British English), or a small amount
15. Dust: To add fine particles, or to remove them
16. Enjoin: To impose, or to prohibit
17. Fast: Quick, or stuck or made stable
18. Fine: Excellent, or acceptable or good enough
19. Finished: Completed, or ended or destroyed
20. First degree: Most severe in the case of a murder charge, or least severe in reference to a burn
21. Fix: To repair, or to castrate
22. Flog: To promote persistently, or to criticize or beat
23. Garnish: To furnish, as with food preparation, or to take away, as with wages
24. Give out: To provide, or to stop because of a lack of supply
25. Go: To proceed or succeed, or to weaken or fail
26. Grade: A degree of slope, or a horizontal line or position
27. Handicap: An advantage provided to ensure equality, or a disadvantage that prevents equal achievement
28. Help: To assist, or to prevent or (in negative constructions) restrain
29. Hold up: To support, or to impede
30. Lease: To offer property for rent, or to hold such property
31. Left: Remained, or departed
32. Let: Allowed, or hindered
33. Liege: A feudal lord, or a vassal
34. Literally: Actually, or virtually
35. Mean: Average or stingy, or excellent
36. Model: An exemplar, or a copy
37. Off: Deactivated, or activated, as an alarm
38. Out: Visible, as with stars showing in the sky, or invisible, in reference to lights
39. Out of: Outside, or inside, as in working out of a specific office
40. Overlook: To supervise, or to neglect
41. Oversight: Monitoring, or failing to oversee
42. Peer: A person of the nobility, or an equal
43. Presently: Now, or soon
44. Put out: Extinguish, or generate
45. Puzzle: A problem, or to solve one
46. Quantum: Significantly large, or a minuscule part
47. Quiddity: Essence, or a trifling point of contention
48. Quite: Rather (as a qualifying modifier), or completely
49. Ravel: To entangle, or to disentangle
50. Refrain: To desist from doing something, or to repeat
51. Rent: To purchase use of something, or to sell use
52. Rock: An immobile mass of stone or figuratively similar phenomenon, or a shaking or unsettling movement or action
53. Sanction: To approve, or to boycott
54. Sanguine: Confidently cheerful, or bloodthirsty
55. Scan: To peruse, or to glance
56. Screen: To present, or to conceal
57. Seed: To sow seeds, or to shed or remove them
58. Shop: To patronize a business in order to purchase something, or to sell something
59. Skin: To cover, or to remove
60. Skinned: Covered with skin, or with the skin removed
61. Splice: To join, or to separate
62. Stakeholder: One who has a stake in an enterprise, or a bystander who holds the stake for those placing a bet
63. Strike: To hit, or to miss in an attempt to hit
64. Table: To propose (in British English), or to set aside
65. Temper: To soften, or to strengthen
66. Throw out: To dispose of, or to present for consideration
67. Transparent: Invisible, or obvious
68. Trim: To decorate, or to remove excess from
69. Trip: A journey, or a stumble
70. Unbending: Rigid, or relaxing
71. Variety: A particular type, or many types
72. Wear: To endure, or to deteriorate
73. Weather: To withstand, or to wear away
74. Wind up: To end, or to start up
75. With: Alongside, or against

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75 Contronyms (Words with Contradictory Meanings) - DAILY WRITING TIPS

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The English language includes an interesting category of words and phrases called contronyms (also spelled contranyms, or referred to as autoantonyms) --

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Hay un tribu indigena en la selva amazonia que puede comunicar el significado de una idea a través de una canción. Foneticamente, la lengua es simple, con pocas palabras descriptivas como sustantivos y adjetivos. Los pronombres son limitados a "Uds" y "ellos" y la descripción de muchas cosas para con los extentos de estas palabras.

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Brazil’s Pirahã Tribe: Living without Numbers or Time

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The Pirahã people have no history, no descriptive words and no subordinate clauses. That makes their language one of the strangest in the world -- and also one of the most hotly debated by linguists.

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Después de un accidente cerebrovascular, mucha gente no tiene la habilidad para comunicar a través de habla. Sin embargo, recientemente, patólogos de habla han descubrido que de cantar, víctimas de accidentes de cerebrovascular pueden comunicar perfectamente. A través de más investigación del cerebro, científicas descubren lo que nadie no creen posible.

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Debra Meyerson was hiking near Lake Tahoe 15 months ago when a stroke destroyed part of the left side of her brain, leaving her literally speechless. It happens to more than 150,000 Americans a year.

But now Meyerson is learning to talk again through an approach that trains the undamaged right side of her brain to "speak." Specifically, it's a region that controls singing.

For more than 100 years, it's been known that people who can't speak after injury to the speech centers on the left side of the brain can sing.

In the 1970s, Boston researchers started to use a sort of "singing therapy" to help stroke survivors speak again.

However, it never caught on much - perhaps because a lot of therapists, not to mention patients, weren't comfortable singing what they wanted to say. And back then, the science wasn't advanced enough to show the actual changes in the brain that result from the therapy.

That's changing fast.

Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who has had a version of "singing therapy," astounded everyone by her ability to speak again - albeit so far in single words and short phrases. Nearly a year ago, a would-be assassin's bullet tore through the speech center in Giffords' left brain.
Singing Sessions
Less visibly, an NIH-funded study at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston may be the first rigorous trial of singing therapy. They call it melodic intonation therapy. Post-stroke patients are assigned to a form of conventional speech therapy or to singing therapy. They undergo 90 minutes of treatment a day for 15 weeks.

Debra Meyerson, 54, is a volunteer in that study. Her aphasia is a cruel twist of fate. Meyerson is an expert in gender and race relations who was a dynamic and popular speaker before her stroke. After a year of conventional speech therapy, she couldn't speak more than a word or two.

When NPR sat in on one of her therapy sessions recently, Meyerson still struggled to speak even the simplest phrases. But she's beginning to talk again.

"If you go to a restaurant and the server asks if you'd like something before your main dish, you might choose something like this," therapist Andrea Norton says, showing Meyerson a picture of a salad. Then Norton sings the word "salad," intoning the syllables on a minor third - the tune every child knows from the taunt "nyah-nyah! nyah-nyah!"

I'm singing in my head and talking out loud without singing.

Norton slows everything down. That's critical because the right side of Meyerson's brain - the singing part that's being retrained to "speak" - is good at melody and pitch, but it's not as fast as the left-sided language center, called Broca's area.

It's also not as good at the rhythmic components of speech. That's why Norton taps Meyerson's left hand (controlled by the right brain). The tapping entrains the rhythms of speech and engages the motor nerves needed to produce speech in Meyerson's mouth and throat.

Then she shifts to a different phase - bridging the gap between singing and speaking. First Norton has Meyerson sing the phrase "Would you pour me a glass, please?" Next the therapist says it with exaggerated diction that's in between singing and normal speech.

Then, gratifyingly, Norton speaks the sentence. "Would you pour me a glass, please?" she says. "Nice!" Norton says.

Watching this laborious process, you might not appreciate the remarkable thing that's going on inside the brains of patients like Meyerson. The Harvard team has evidence that melodic intonation therapy actually remolds the brain.
Growing Nerves
One of the clearest examples is Laurel Fontaine, a 16-year-old sophomore at North Attleborough High School in southeastern Massachusetts. A little more than four years ago, when Laurel was 11, she suffered a devastating stroke - unusual in a child, but not as rare as you might think.

Laurel's stroke destroyed 80 percent of the left side of her brain. One of her doctors says it's the biggest stroke he's ever seen.

"My doctor told me I'm not going to talk, I'm not going to walk, I'm not going to, like, do anything...press buttons...ever," she says.

After a year of conventional speech therapy, Laurel could speak only a word or two at a time. Then her mother persuaded the Beth Israel Deaconess researchers to let Laurel enroll in their research project.

The singing therapy lasted only about four months, but it's had permanent effects. Though Laurel still struggles sometimes to find the words she wants, she doesn't have to sing them out loud.

"I'm singing in my head and talking out loud without singing," she says between classes. "I do it, like, really quick."

Laurel offered the researchers a big bonus - an identical twin sister named Heather. So the researchers could use MRI scans to compare the girls' brains. They focused on a structure on the right side that's important for singing.

Before Laurel began melodic intonation therapy, that structure was smaller in her brain compared to Heather's. That's probably because she hadn't been doing anything with her voice for a whole year.

But during therapy, scans showed that nerve fibers in Laurel's right-sided singing center actually grew - they clearly multiplied and thickened. With therapy, those nerve bundled got bigger than the corresponding region in Heather's brain.

Dr. Gottfried Schlaug, who heads the study, says that's exactly what he was looking for.

"It is the perfect confirmation," he says. "Basically, the hardware of the system really changed to support this increased vocal output."

And Laurel continues to improve. It's possible, Schlaug says, that when Laurel is in her 20s, someone who didn't know any better would never suspect she ever had a massive stroke that left her unable to speak.
The Age Factor
But how much of her remarkable recovery is because Laurel was so young when her brain was injured? Schlaug says her youth was definitely a factor.

"However, we know that patients even in their 80s can show plastic changes to their brain, can show adaptations," he says. It just may take longer. And, as with learning a foreign language at a later age, an older brain may never get to the same level.

From his work with older patients Schlaug says a surprising amount of recovery is possible. He also reports good results working with autistic children and people with Parkinson's disease who have trouble speaking.

Schlaug thinks singing therapy can be enhanced by simultaneously stimulating the brain with painless, low-voltage electricity - and one day, possibly, by drugs.

For now, it takes an incredible amount of willpower. Meyerson can testify to that.

"Recovery is long and hard," Meyerson told Laurel Fontaine recently when therapist Andrea Norton brought them together.

"Well, it's hard at first," Laurel told the older woman. "But you can get used to it. I'm getting better all the time. Don't get frustrated."

"Yes...yes...thank you!" Meyerson replied, clearly moved by Laurel's example.

Clearly Laurel's a star and Deb Meyerson has a long way to go. But she's determined to get there. By next Labor Day - the second anniversary of her stroke - Meyerson wants to start public speaking again, this time as an advocate for better stroke care.

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Singing Therapy Helps Stroke Patients Speak Again

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Debra Meyerson was hiking near Lake Tahoe 15 months ago when a stroke destroyed part of the left side of her brain, leaving her literally speechless. It happens to more than 150,000 Americans a year. But now Meyerson is learning to talk again through an approach that trains the undamaged right side of her brain to "speak."

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El articulo es una observación de las estudias de un instituto de preservación en Crimea donde especialistas están trabajando en un traducción de la lengua de delfín. Con mucha evidencia que los delfines pueden pensar en un nivel de cognición como humanos, es evidente que su forma de lengua es intrincada, pero misteriosa. Ademas, los parámetros físicos de la lengua de delfín exceden la habilidades naturales de la interpretación de ellas por humanos

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Dolphins are capable of "highly developed spoken language" which closely resembles human communication, scientists have suggested.

While it has long been acknowledged dolphins are of high intelligence and can communicate within a larger pack, their ability to converse with each other individually has been less understood.

But researchers at the Karadag Nature Reserve, Feodosia, Crimea, believe the pulses, clicks and whistles - of up to five "words" - made by dolphins are listened to fully by another before a response is made.

Authorities want to ban swimming with dolphins in Hawaii

"Essentially, this exchange resembles a conversation between two people," wrote lead researcher Dr Vyacheslav Ryabov in the study, published in the journal Mathematics and Physics.

Dr Ryabov said each pulse produced by a dolphin "is different from another" in its time span and the frequencies it emits.

"In this regard, we can assume that each pulse represents a phoneme or a word of the dolphin's spoken language," Dr Ryabov wrote.

However: "The dolphin's speech unfortunately lies beyond the time and frequency characteristics of the human hearing, and is thus unavailable to humans."

Annual dolphin hunt in Taiji, Japan

The study was conducted on two adult Black Sea bottlenose captive dolphins, a male named Yasha and a female called Yana.

The pair have lived for 20 years in a swimming pool, which measure just 27 metres by 9.5 metres and is four metres in depth. Without food rewards, a special audio system recorded the exchanges between the dolphins.

The noises emitted were of a different pattern to those produced in a pod.

Dr Ryabov continued: "The analysis of numerous pulses registered in our experiments showed that the dolphins took turns in producing pulse packs and did not interrupt each other, which gives reason to believe that each of the dolphins listened to the other's pulses before producing its own.

"This language exhibits all the design features present in the human spoken language, this indicates a high level of intelligence and consciousness in dolphins, and their language can be ostensibly considered a highly developed spoken language, akin to the human language."

It has long been accepted that dolphins exhibit behaviours not found in other animals. For instance, they are known to have a self-identifying whistle and to communicate phrases to other dolphins in a pod.

The findings should provide incentive for humans to further develop relationships and improve communication with the creatures, Dr Ryabov said.

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Scientists discover dolphins 'can speak almost like humans'

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Dolphins are capable of "highly developed spoken language" which closely resembles human communication, scientists have suggested. While it has long been acknowledged dolphins are of high intelligence and can communicate within a larger pack, their ability to converse with each other individually has been less understood.

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Como un ingeniero de audio, los facultades auditivos humanos me fascinan. La resumen de este articulo académico  es que los bebés no adquiren la habilidad para oír la frecuencia fundamental de nuestras voces hasta dos o tres meses en sus desarrollos. La frequencía resonante que los bebés pueden oír está entre 250 Hz - 350 Hz, y la frequencía fundemental de habla humano sienta en el rango de 1,000 Hz - 3,000 Hz.

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Summary

Introduction:  The resonant frequency is the probe frequency in which susceptance is 0 due to the neutralization of the forces of mass and stiffness components that control the middle ear. This frequency can be evaluated by multifrequency tympanometry, and the normality value for adults ranges 800-1,200 Hz. Studies about resonant frequency in children are scarce.

Aim:  Identify the variation of the resonant frequency in infants between the first days after birth and the third month of life.

Method:  Prospective study. Thirty newborns were evaluated at 2 different times: at the neonatal phase up to 12 days of life, and between 72 and 84 days of life. In the first evaluation, we carried out otoacoustic emissions and identified the resonant frequency, and identified the resonant frequency again in the second evaluation.

Results:  In the first evaluation, we determined a mean resonance value of 250 Hz for both ears, while that in the second evaluation was 385 Hz. In both assessments, we found no significant differences between the ears. There was a significant difference between the first and second evaluation.

Conclusion:  The middle ear resonant frequency in infants is lower in the first days of life due to the influence of the mass component. The present study demonstrated that the resonance frequency increased in the first months of life.

Keywords: acoustic impedance tests, hearing tests, infant

Introduction

The transmission of sound from the ear canal to the cochlea is mediated by the ossicular mass, stiffness of the tympanic membrane, the ligaments and tendons that support the middle ear, air, and by friction, all of which generate a rate of impedance to the sound that reaches the cochlea. Although friction acts uniformly on that energy transfer, the influence exerted by the ossicular mass and tympanic membrane stiffness can increase or decrease in function of the frequency transmitted. However, the effects of mass and stiffness are mutually canceling at a particular middle ear resonant frequency. That frequency can be determined by means of multifrequency tympanometry, a test that can be performed with a middle ear analyzer. The tympanogram obtained with the resonant frequency of the middle ear is generally a double-peaked tympanogram .

Experimental data have shown that changes in the middle ear alter the tympanograms obtained with higher probe frequencies, shifting the resonant frequency of the middle ear transmission system. Increased stiffness (due to otosclerosis, for instance) can increase the resonant frequency of the middle ear up to nearly 1,400 Hz, higher than that expected for the normal population . In contrast, an increase in the mass effect due to ossicular discontinuity or otitis media with effusion can shift the resonant frequency of the middle ear to lower frequencies . Kontrogianni et al. found a mean resonant frequency of 499 Hz in children suffering from otitis media with effusion.

Multifrequency tympanometry is more appropriate than traditional single-frequency tympanometry to detect small changes in the transmission characteristics of the tympano-ossicular system.

The resonant frequency is the probe frequency at which susceptance becomes 0 because of the counteractive forces of its mass and stiffness components. The normal resonant frequency has been reported to range 600-1,340 Hz , with a mean resonant frequency of approximately 1,000 Hz having been reported in normal adults . Most studies investigating the resonant frequency of the middle ear have involved adults. Colleti showed that the resonant frequency ranges 600-1,340 Hz. Shanks reported that the values range 800-1,200 Hz. Funasaka et al. established normative data for the resonant frequency (720-1,880 Hz). Valvik found a mean resonant frequency of 1,049 ± 261 Hz, whereas Carvallo found values ranging 600-1,350 Hz (mean, 959.57 Hz).

Studies involving children are scarce. A study investigating children in the 6-15 year age bracket found that the resonant frequency ranged 650-1,400 Hz-the mean frequency being approximately 1,000 Hz-and that there was no relationship between the resonant frequency and sensorineural hearing loss.

The external and middle ear systems vary significantly in their acoustic response properties over the first 2 years after birth. In that period, the external auditory meatus increases in size, the orientation of the tympanic membrane changes, and the middle ear mass decreases, among other changes. Holte et al. reported that the external auditory meatus wall and middle ear mobility change in the first 4 months of life, as do the tympanometric characteristics. Those authors also reported that, because the middle ear of children is a mass-dominated system, the resonant frequency in children tends to be lower than in normal adults, in whom the middle ear system is stiffness-dominated.

The resonant frequency is a measurement that has largely been related to otoacoustic emissions (OAEs). Any change in the transmission efficiency of the middle ear may hinder the achievement of cochlear responses, especially for low-frequency sounds. It is believed that evoked OAEs are best detected at the middle ear resonant frequency (0.8-1.5 kHz, at which there is a greater response amplitude), given that the tympanic membrane vibrates with the greatest displacement amplitude when transmitting sound energy from the external auditory meatus to the cochlea .

The infant middle ear is known to be a mass-dominated system, and known factors can alter test results. However, few studies have been conducted to determine the resonant frequency in infants. In addition, the study of middle ear resonant frequency in infants could further understanding of the double-peaked tympanograms that are often seen in infants submitted to tympanometry with a probe tone frequency of 226 Hz. Studies have shown that double-peaked tympanograms are seen in approximately 60% of neonates . The objective of the present study was to determine the variation in infant middle ear resonant frequency between the first days of life and the third month of life.

Method

This was a prospective study involving data collected for individual ears (i.e., 2 datasets per subject). We evaluated 28 neonates (16 girls and 12 boys). The infants were evaluated at 0-2 weeks of age (first evaluation) and at 2-3 months of age (second evaluation). All 28 neonates underwent the first evaluation. However, only 21 infants (12 girls and 9 boys) underwent the second evaluation (at 72-84 days of age). Written informed consent was obtained from all mothers whose infants were evaluated at least once. The local research ethics committee approved the study (Protocol No. 174/01).

The inclusion criterion was the presence of transient evoked OAEs (TEOAEs). The exclusion criterion was presenting with risk factors for hearing loss in accordance with the 2007 Joint Committee on Infant Hearing guidelines. We identified the risk factors for hearing loss by analyzing the medical records of the infants and asking their parents about consanguinity and a family history of hearing loss. The infants who met the inclusion criteria underwent middle ear resonant frequency evaluation.

Equipment

For TEOAE testing, we used an Echoport Plus ILO292 otoacoustic emission analyzer (Otodynamics Ltd., Hatfield, UK) in the QuickScreen mode, which is the mode recommended for newborn hearing screening. The QuickScreen mode features standard nonlinear click stimuli, each consisting of 4 pulses: 3 pulses of equal amplitude and polarity; and one inverted polarity pulse, the amplitude of which is 3 times greater than that of the first 3. The tests were performed with a response time window of 12 ms. The transient stimuli consisted of 80-µs clicks delivered at a peak equivalent sound pressure level of 78-83 dB. For tympanometry, we used a middle ear analyzer (GSI TympStar, version 2; Grason-Stadler, Eden Prairie, MN, USA) and the method described by Funasaka and Kumakawa .

Procedure

The neonates were tested in their cradles in a quiet room next to the nursery, preferably while sleeping. Newborn hearing screening (TEOAE testing) was performed in the QuickScreen mode. A probe with a soft rubber tip was inserted into the external auditory meatus in order to record TEOAEs. We considered TEOAEs to be present when the overall reproducibility was e"50%, reproducibility by frequency was e"70%, and the amplitude by frequency (2, 3, and 4 kHz) was e"6 dB.

After confirming the presence of TEOAEs, we performed middle ear resonant frequency testing in accordance with the method described by Funasaka and Kumakawa . Each ear underwent to a sequence of tests. For the first test, the probe tone was swept through a series of frequencies that automatically ranged 250-2,000 Hz at 50-Hz intervals, and a pressure of +200 daPa was simultaneously introduced into the external auditory meatus. Immittance and phase measurements were stored in the memory of the middle ear analyzer. The first tympanogram was recorded in the acoustic admittance mode at a frequency of 226 Hz. Equivalent ear canal volume, peak admittance, and tympanometric width (or equivalent middle ear volume) values were then registered. The probe tone was again swept through the abovementioned series of frequencies (250-2,000 Hz) at the 226-Hz tympanometric peak pressure. Immittance and phase measurements were again stored in the memory of the middle ear analyzer. The differences between the first and second frequency sweeps in terms of the immittance and phase values were calculated and registered on the screen in function of the frequency range (250-2,000 Hz). This constituted the second test. The resonant frequency of the ear tested was automatically identified by the screen cursor. For the third test, the resonant frequency was used as the probe tone frequency for a new tympanogram. A double-peaked tympanogram is expected when the probe tone frequency coincides with the resonant frequency of the ear tested .

In the second evaluation, which was performed at age 2-3 months, the infants were again submitted to the battery of middle ear resonant frequency tests in order to determine the variation in resonant frequency in function of age.

The data were analyzed by analysis of variance for the statistical analysis. The level of significance was set at p < 0.05 (5%).

Results

depicts the comparison between the right and left ears in terms of their resonant frequency (in Hz) in each evaluation. We found no statistically significant differences between the right and left ears in either of the evaluations; however, we did find significant differences when we compared the resonant frequency of an ear at age 0-2 weeks with that of the same ear at age 2-3 months (). Comparative analysis of the 2 evaluations revealed highly significant differences between the right ear at age 0-2 weeks (first evaluation) and the same ear at age 2-3 months (second evaluation), as well as between the left ear at age 0-2 weeks and the same ear at age 2-3 months, in terms of the resonant frequency of the middle ear, with the mean resonant frequencies of the second evaluation being consistently higher than those in the first ().

Tabela 1.

Discussion

Similar to other tympanometric measurements, determination of the middle ear resonant frequency proved to be an objective, rapid, user-friendly, noninvasive method for determining the state of the middle ear, aiding in the diagnosis of hearing impairment. The resonant frequency aids in establishing a more accurate diagnosis of middle ear changes, revealing the cause of such changes (i.e., decreased or increased mass or stiffness).

Although the parents were informed that the test was rapid and important, some did not consent to the inclusion of their children in the present study or to newborn hearing screening, whereas others did not bring their children for the second evaluation. The dropouts were unrelated to difficulties in returning for the second evaluation, given that all of the babies born in the hospital where the tests were performed were residents of nearby regions.

The resonant frequency for the right and left ears was found to be approximately 250 Hz in the first evaluation. The tympanograms obtained with the resonant frequency of the middle ear were double-peaked tympanograms, as has been described in the literature .

As the resonant frequency and double-peaked tympanogram were observed at approximately 250 Hz in the neonates, it is important to correlate this finding with data in the literature demonstrating that a probe frequency of 226 Hz results in double-peaked tympanograms in neonates . Therefore, when tympanometry is performed with a probe frequency of 226 Hz in clinical practice, the resulting double-peaked tympanogram might be due the fact that that the probe frequency is extremely close to the middle ear resonant frequency of the infant.

The standard deviation for the right and left ears in the first evaluation () was not significant, given that the variation in frequency during the sweeps occurred at 50-Hz intervals. The comparison between the right and left ears in the first evaluation revealed a trend toward significance.

We found that the middle ear resonant frequencies in the infants who returned for the second evaluation were higher, similar to those reported in the literature. In those infants, the middle ear resonant frequencies remained highly variable, with a high standard deviation, demonstrating that the resonant frequency is still in transition at approximately 3 months of age; however, the mean middle ear resonant frequency was still lower than that reported for adults .

The comparison of the resonant frequencies found in the first evaluation with that in the second revealed a highly significant difference. This demonstrates maturation of the middle ear in relation to the neonatal period, with the resonant frequency of the middle ear increasing in function of a decrease in mass and ear canal size. The difference between neonates and 3-month-old infants in terms of middle ear resonant frequency underscores the importance of using a higher probe tone frequency when performing tympanometry in the neonatal population, as has been previously suggested . Studies conducted by Calandruccio et al. and Silva et al. showed that tympanometry with a probe tone frequency of 1,000 Hz is the most sensitive method for detecting middle ear changes in neonates. The results of the present study show that the middle ear function in infants at approximately 3 months of age is still different from that in adults. This suggests that 1,000 Hz is the frequency of choice for tympanometry in infants in that age bracket. The results of the present study also corroborate recommendations for the use of tympanometry with a probe tone frequency of 226 Hz in infants ≥6 months of age.

A study investigating acoustic reflectance in neonates showed that reflectance was higher for sounds at frequencies below 2,000 Hz. Structural differences in the external auditory meatus, including size and the presence of vernix caseosa, can partially explain the differences in reflectance and middle ear resonant frequency found in that population.

Further studies are needed in this area, principally in neonates, in order to standardize the value of the middle ear resonant frequency, given that the resonant frequency can facilitate the diagnosis of hearing impairment and aid in hearing screening, with researchers having linked the resonant frequency in adults to OAEs.

Conclusions

The resonant frequency of the middle ear in neonates is lower than in adults, which is possibly due to a greater influence of mass. The determination of middle ear resonant frequency is a rapid, user-friendly test, the results of which can be of clinical value for the diagnosis of hearing impairment, assisting in the identification of changes in the middle ear.

References

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Middle ear resonance in infants: Age effects

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Introduction:  The resonant frequency is the probe frequency in which susceptance is 0 due to the neutralization of the forces of mass and stiffness components that control the middle ear. This frequency can be evaluated by multifrequency tympanometry, and the normality value for adults ranges 800-1,200 Hz.

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El tono de la empieza de una pieza por Bach estuvo investigado para adivinar que si oyentes podrían "entender" la diferencia lingual entre una versión normal de la canción y una con las primeras y la ultimas notas cambiados en tono.

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For most of us, on those rare occasions when we listen to classical music, we prefer composers who wrote before the 20th century. At the symphony we find the music of Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert much more pleasing and comprehensible than the jarring dissonances of Luciano Berio and Arnold Schönberg. The New Yorker music critic Alex Ross, in his history of modern classical music, wrote that this music "sounds like noise to many." Although a century has passed since the composition of many pioneering works of 20th century music, it "still sends ripples of unease through concert audiences."

The composers of this modern music often believed that, compared to the consonant harmonies of Mozart and Bach, their works were a more convincing representation our inner psychological states. But the results of a recent study indicate that traditional harmonies are more naturally perceived by our brains. A team of researchers at the Free University of Berlin found that we perceive music in much the same way that we perceive language-and that traditional musical harmonies usually sound better to us because they play to our brain's innate ability to perceive patterns in music.

Perhaps humans find music so universally compelling because it speaks to our natural cognitive strengths.

A key feature of how we process language is our ability to capture "non-local dependencies," which is a technical way of saying that we naturally assemble larger units of meaning by composing phrases and sentences from smaller building blocks. We effortlessly parse the meaning of the sentence: "Stealing the eggs from an enraged, 10-foot crocodile is a delicate operation." We grasp the main point that "stealing the eggs ... is a delicate operation," even though nested within that main point is a phrase elaborating that the eggs are taken from a large, angry reptile.

These kinds of hierarchical grammatical structures come naturally to us when we speak. Do our brains work the same way when we listen to music?

STEFAN KOELSCH AND HIS colleagues in Berlin set out to test the idea that we naturally perceive complex structures in music, much like we perceive the same kinds of structure in language. The researchers began with the observation that composers deliberately put meaningful, large-scale patterns into their music. As in language, larger meaning in music is made up of small units. A piece is written in a particular key, and the moment-by-moment harmonies of the piece reinforce that key. Composers of almost any kind of music invest substantial effort into creating larger patterns from small units of harmony. But do our brains perceive those larger patterns as we listen, without doing a conscious, in-depth analysis?

To test this idea, the scientists had volunteers listen to excerpts from classical choral music by Johann Sebastian Bach. The volunteers listened to both the original version and a subtly modified version. In the original version, the music began and ended on the same chord; what happened in between was Bach's elaboration of a coherent musical idea. But in the modified version, the researchers shifted the opening harmony slightly, while leaving the ending unchanged. The result was a piece that, superficially, sounded the same as the original, but it had lost its larger-scale musical coherence.

The volunteers (which included musicians and non-musicians) listened to these musical excerpts in random order, and the researchers recorded their response to the music in two ways: by measuring the electrical activity of the volunteers' brains and by having the volunteers complete a questionnaire. Remarkably, the electrical measurements showed that the brains of both the musicians and non-musicians reliably perceived the differences between the two musical samples. In the questionnaires, some of the musicians were able to pinpoint exactly what had been changed, while most of the other volunteers noted that the modified excerpt felt less conclusive.

The scientists argued that their results show that "both music and language make use of more general resources for the processing of hierarchically organized information than previously believed." Perhaps humans find music so universally compelling because it speaks to our natural cognitive strengths. And perhaps because the works of many 20th century classical composers violate our intuitive expectations, we have a difficult time drawing emotional meaning from this music without being steeped in the theory behind it. These composers believed that traditional Western harmonies were as much an arbitrary cultural construct as the alternative harmonic systems they were developing. But it's likely that J.S. Bach, and millennia of musicians around the world before him, were tuned in to the core ability of our minds to perceive larger harmonic patterns-and without those patterns, we're likely to just hear noise.

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How Language Helps Us Understand Music Without Words

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For most of us, on those rare occasions when we listen to classical music, we prefer composers who wrote before the 20th century. At the symphony we find the music of Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert much more pleasing and comprehensible than the jarring dissonances of Luciano Berio and Arnold Schönberg.