Syntax

Some Bridges

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Canadian group of islands 1

It is with some trepidation that I approached the second issue of Some Islands, not least because it was described to me as a journal about linguistics, art, and architecture. My training in these fields causes me to tense up with a conscientious undergraduate’s panic about not having studied for the exam. My trepidation was amplified when I saw that Lingoblog’s review of the previous issue was also beautifully illustrated by Miša Hejná, also a contributor to the present issue — something I have not braved in the present review. 

The theme, representation, conjures half-remembered memories of lectures in semantics that I’m sure were also only half-understood. So, perhaps, as befits the issue’s theme of representation, it’s best to begin … ↪

Two linguists engage in a dialogue about Chomsky’s language theory. They are completely at odds, but will they grow closer?

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Unknown 7

Noam Chomsky’s influence on linguistics in the last half century is probably greater than that of any other linguist. At the age of 94, he is giving a lecture (online) at Aarhus University on February 10, 2023. On the occasion of the event, Peter Bakker and Ken Ramshøj Christensen, both from Aarhus University, sat down to discuss the significance of Chomsky’s generative theory. Both are educated within the theory, but where Peter Bakker abandoned his ‘faith’ in the model several decades ago, Ken Ramshøj Christensen still works within Generative Grammar (abbreviated below as GG). Many years ago, Peter Bakker was thesis supervisor for Ken Ramshøj Christensen’s MA thesis, which was about GG and aphasia. Ken Ramshøj Christensen (KRC) … ↪

Lang Belta: the Belter language from SYFY/Amazon’s The Expanse

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admin ajax 1
The Belter language, which in the TV show is referred to as Lang Belta, is a Creole language spoken by the Belter people in the The Expanse universe. A creole language can be characterized as a new language, based on the vocabulary of an existing language, but with an innovated grammatical system.

The Expanse takes place 200 years from now, in a future in which Earth has colonized the solar system. In this world, people emigrated to the Asteroid Belt from Earth looking for work, and now survive by scavenging materials in the Belt. In this contribution I will outline the construction and general characteristics of this very complex and interesting Creole and discuss some of its grammatical characteristics.

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Did Denmark get a new dialect?

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kristelig dagblad

When the Danish news agency Ritzau sent out the announcement: “Researcher: Denmark has a new dialect” on the morning of February 4th, my phone started ringing non-stop from 6:20 am. Several Danish news outlets, radio stations etc., including TV2 News, P1, P2, P3, P4, Radio Nova, Radio 4 and about 50 other media agencies, couldn’t find anything else to cover but the exact same story that everyone else wanted to cover. The news about this “new” dialect even reached Iceland.

The reason for all of this was a short interview in the Danish paper Kristeligt Dagblad where I explained that despite Danish dialects being used less and less, new dialects are simultaneously coming into existence. And that I … ↪

Aphasia in West Greenlandic affects syntax but leaves morphology intact

by
AL 3 scaled

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.

greenland

This … ↪