Psycholinguistics | Lingoblog

Your brain can learn languages your whole life…

20/06/202321/07/2020 by Anders Højen

– but it cannot learn languages attending language classes once a week

Back when I was a cheeky 14-or-so-year-old, I taught my mom how to say this English sentence: I am an old and ugly witch! She didn’t have a higher education, but at the age of almost 50, when most of the childbearing and caregiving was over and done with, she had decided that she wanted to learn English at a Danish evening school. Apparently, I wanted to help her out a little, and so I taught her the abovementioned phrase. Of course, I told her that it meant something completely different than what it actually does, and I succeeded in my deception, despite the fact that she had … ↪

Translation of the week: Aphasia in West Greenlandic

26/06/202307/07/2020 by Red.

This week we’re bringing you the English translation of Johanne Nedergård’s Lingoblog post on aphasia in West Greenlandic! The original Danish version can be found here.

Aphasia in West Greenlandic affects syntax but leaves morphology intact

26/06/202307/07/2020 by Johanne Nedergård

Many linguists are interested in linguistic deficits (i.e. aphasia) that arise after brain injury. By investigating them, we can potentially infer something about how language is organised in people without brain damage – both which components comprise language and where the different components are located in the brain. We hope to answer questions like: Is there a difference between grammar and lexicon? Are language comprehension and language production located in different brain areas? How do we access the meanings of words, and are words with similar meanings also close to each other in the brain? The problem with a lot of research on aphasia, however, is that it has primarily focused on European languages that are structurally very similar.

This … ↪

Researchers hiding in fear of GDPR

15/06/202329/10/2019 by Anon.

GDPR – business or pleasure?
Do you remember GDPR (or, for mnemonic assistance, Gitte and Per)? This is one of three posts on the EU law that everybody feared last year: What did we think it was, what is it, and what effects has it had?

In the weeks before 25 May 2018, I received up to thirty e-mails a day (yes, I have too many accounts at webshops and social media) with similar text: “We are updating our Privacy Policy”.

… all on occasion of GDPR, EU’s new data law, which Lingoblog has written about here and here.

The many e-mails made me think if I ought to send a similar one out to all of my … ↪