Language research and the overcomplication of language learning.

This is, in part, in response to a request. A video where I talk about how all the language and linguistics research have not really had much impact on how we learn languages.

Comments

[Chris]

The main problem with the relationship between linguistics and language learning is that the former is entirely theoretical, while the latter is the opposite - it is a practical discipline. This is why the continually attempted marriage of the two in classrooms is an inevitable recipe for failure.

So to this extent, I agree with you entirely, though I still always seem to find myself split about 50/50 with regard to your views on this subject. I think the reason is that while the attempted practical application of linguistics just doesn't work - that is, so-called "applied linguistics" - the subject as an actual science is no less legitimate or worthy of study than philosophy, both of which are inherently theoretical and equally irrelevant to foreign language learning.

Steve, I think your main gripe here is with "applied linguistics", which is the branch that deals with solving practical issues such as learning a foreign language using a theoretical basis. As I've said, I share your skepticism entirely, but the rest of linguistics seems to be a perfectly worthy discipline, maybe not that interesting to many people, but it strikes me as being no different really to philosophy. Just like a philosopher might research and study the nature of the mind and publish what is to the average Joe "frivolous, impossible-to-understand gibberish", so a linguist might research how a child acquires language and the internal processes that take place and so on and so forth. So maybe you might make the distinction between linguistics as an wide-ranging discipline and applied linguistics as a specific sub-discipline thereof?

Also, as to the comment on dictionaries (I'll make this quick, I promise), have you heard of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant? The guy has his own, huge, dictionaries that refer specifically to the terminology he uses in his works, like the 'Critique of Pure Reason'. They're often even larger than a general, dictionary of philosophy. If you walk into a University library, you'll see several shelves stacked with books just on Kant's own thinking. It's pretty nuts!

[Igor]

You got problem with the "linguists", with certain "scientific methods" and especially their "funds" dud, not with linguistics and science.

[Oliver]

I fully agree with this video.

[Diogo]

Steve,
Certamente você não leu muito acerca da teoria de Noam Chomsky. Se leu, parece não ter entendido as bases fundamentais.
1 - Chomsky trata da aquisição da primeira língua. Ele não faz nenhum menção sobre L2's. Portanto seu comentário "Já que eu falo 11 línguas..." é desapropriado. Todas são suas primeiras línguas? Certamente, não!
2 - Chomsky, assim como Saussure, afirma que a língua é um produto social. Todos nós nascemos com uma faculdade da linguagem, que é um componente da mente/cérebro, seja qual for a língua, o meio nos dará a língua. Seu comentário de que certas línguas não têm tempos verbais, aceita dupla negação e etc. em nada tem haver com a teoria de Chomsky. A teoria Gerativista, diz que esse tipo de conhecimento linguistico é adquirido somente por meio da participação da criança nas interações verbais entre os membros de sua comunidade.
3 - Chomsky trata da competência linguistica. Quero dar um exemplo, na língua portuguesa, na relação entre o léxico e a sintaxe. Veja as seguintes frases:
Voz passiva
a:Meu irmão perdeu o amigo
b:O amigo foi perdido pelo irmão

Como uma criança, sem ter ido à escola, sem ter ouvido alguém usar, sem ninguém nunca corrigir, sabe que a frase b: não é possível no português??? Na teoria que você critica, isso se chama INTUIÇÃO LINGUISTICA. Poderia dar inúmeros exemplos, mas acho que você pegou a idéia.

Para finalizar, Chomsky diz que se aprender uma língua (L1) fosse memorizar listas de palavras e de comportamentos sintáticos peculiares associados a cada uma delas, a aquisição seria um processo mais longo do que o observado nos estudos de aquisição, talvez até intangível e fortemente dependete de estimulação adequada.

Um conselho, cuidado ao usar certas teorias linguísticas, as de Chomsky no caso, para argumentar a incoerência sobre a aquisição de uma segunda língua, repito, a gramática universal se aplica somente a aquisição da L1 e não L2.

Um bom livro é: Languade and Mind - Noam Chomsky. Ed. Cambridge.

Espero que você consiga entender meu Português.

Abraços

[Alexei Vinidiktov]

> Espero que você consiga entender meu Português.

It's funny. Even I have understood most of your Portuguese even though I don't speak it. I speak French, Spanish and some Italian, and that appears to be enough to understand so much of written Portuguese. Amazing!

[Igor]

Правда, я тогже понал!

[Diogo]

>Правда, я тогже понал!

That one I couldn't get!

[Diogo]

Alexei,
Yes, Spanish, French, Italian, Portugues... they all have what in linguistics we call "the same mother language", in this case LATIN.

And yes, you can get the gist concerning sister languages.

Cheers!

[Steve Kaufmann]

Diogo,

Tenho que admitir que não sou um estudante de lingüística. Tenho lido muito sobre o cérebro. O cérebro, e até mesmo o cérebro dos animais, foi concebido para identificar padrões. Eu, e muitos lingüistas sérios não estão de acordo com Chomsky.

Para entender Igor você vai precisar começar a aprender russo em LingQ.

Abraços

[Sven]

Hello Steve Kaufmann, I agree with your opinion.. Linguistic researches are very different .. It depends on the study group and other factors.. I think the most important thing is the right belief. If you believe in doing it it works. I find it so poring when some people think learning a language you have to be a good special ability for languages. I think its only an excuse for not learning it. What do you think about such stupid opinions ? You have learned 11 languages because you wanted to learn them. It depends on your attitude, on your psychology. I find the LINQ method very effective and we dont need any linguistic methods .. It doesnt work very well. We have internet, media -- we have so much stuff .. learning a language is today very easy. I hope hearing from you soon. Do you have skype connection ?

[Diogo]

Steve,
Não defendo a teoria de Chomsky, apenas esclareço para que não a usem de modo inadequado.

Abraço

[Diogo]

Sven,
Everybody has ability for language (L2 and L1). You certainly don't need linguistic THEORIES (not methods) to learn a language.
If you want to be a linguist (and not a neuroscientist) and uderstand how this process is done, then yes, all the theories are needed.

Linguistics Theories differs from Methodoloy:
What you actually wanted to say was "We don't need any APPLIED LINGUISTICS THEORY to learn language", but you do need a methodology (internet, tv, films, magazines books...) whichever works for you.

Hope to have helped!

[Steve Kaufmann]

I find the neuroscientists explanations more convincing than the linguistic theories with all of their artificial terms like interlanguage, register etc, that they use in order to talk to each other and think that they are contributing to a real understanding of the process of language learning, which in my mind they are not.

[Sandy]

Thanks Steve for another interesting talk. The relevance of linguistics to language learning can be summed up by Feynman's quote about the philosophy of science : "Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds."

[Melissa]

Steve-

It seems to me like you're getting the science slightly wrong with Chomsky again. I know you're generally skeptical of linguistics studies (and rightly so), but there was a recent one that showed the idea that there is an inherest grammar to be true beyond a reasonable doubt:

http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2008/06/gesture_reveal_universal_word_order_regardless_of_languagephp.php

It was clever, because there's basically no way they could have screwed it up. There's not even any annoying statistics, and if you have enough gullible friends you can test it out yourself. They created a situation where you had to express thought without using language. Chomsky's idea of a "universal grammar" is merely that when the brain thinks without using language, it thinks in SOV. This doesn't even necessarily mean SOV languages are easier to learn, just that our brains default to it.

It's a bit hard of a concept to grasp, but there is processing going on all the time subconsciously, and that's what Chomsky is talking about. When we think without using language, we think with a SOV grammar.

Now, admittedly minor science clarification said, spot-on. I don't think linguistics is a science, or, at least, not yet. It's a humanity that is trying to pretend really really hard that it is a science. When we know more about psychology of language learning, then we can really engineer a better way to learn languages. Notice I said can, not will. It's entirely possible that one of the current language paradigms is the best and doesn't need any alterations whatsoeever.

The studies I find useless because it's too political. If you have a physics equation, you can solve it as many times as you want, you will always get the same result. This is true in most sciences, except those with some sort of agenda, and that's basically all of linguistics.

In any case, that's my two cents.

[Kevin Geoghegan]

I'm not sure what is the point of attacking linguistics. Linguistics is all about studying language, not about language learning. Like you say, Steve, you can learn languages without knowing anything about linguistics. But studying linguistics, like any other topic, is surely a useful thing to do in itself even if it isn't relevant to language learning?

[Diogo]

Kevin said it all:

> Linguistics is all about studying language, not about language learning.

It's incredible how people tend to talk bad about things they don't understand or have barely read, that is, linguistics.

[Steve Kaufmann]

" Linguistics is all about studying language, not about language learning."

That is not true. People in linguistics want to apply their concepts to language learning and academics involved with language learning often refer to concepts from linguistics. It is not true that they are perceived as separate by either group.Rather linguistics is used to complicate and lend academic authority to something that is quite simple, namely language learning.

[Diogo]

Ok, it's like i've had enough! ahahaha
This is a good definition of linguistics from an excellent university.

University of Arizona - Linguistics Department.

What is Linguistics?
Have you ever wondered why we say "feet" rather than "foots"? Or how a child at the age of 3 has a vocabulary of 14,000 words but can't tie her own shoes? Or what we do with our mouthes to make a b sound different from a p? Or why we rarely say what we actually mean? It's questions like these that intrigue the linguist!
Many people think that a linguist is someone who speaks many languages and works as a language teacher or as an interpreter at the Uni ted Nations. In fact, these people are more accurately called "Polyglots". While many linguists are polyglots, the focus of linguistics is about the structure, use and psychology of language in general.
Linguistics is concerned with the nature of language and communication. It deals both with the study of particular languages, and the search for general properties common to all languages or large groups of languages. It includes the following subareas :
phonetics (the study of the production, acoustics and hearing of speech sounds)
phonology (the patterning of sounds)
morphology (the structure of words)
syntax (the structure of sentences)
semantics (meaning)
pragmatics (language in context)
It also includes explorations into the nature of language variation (i. e., dialects), language change over time, how language is processed and stored in the brain, and how it is acquired by young children. All of these topics are examined in the coursework offered by the University of Arizona's Department of Linguistics.

As you all can see, Linguistics it's not about learning languages. It mentions something very distinct, "acquiring language".

That' all.