Illustrating the Production and Comprehension of Language

Two of my favorite language-related illustrations.

From the book Shapes for sounds by Timothy Donaldson, via brain pickings.

From an article in The Economist, illustration by W. Vasconcelos.

I think the illustrations complement each other quite nicely. My compliments to the artists.

complement

n.

1.

a. Something that completes, makes up a whole, or brings to perfection.
b. The quantity or number needed to make up a whole: shelves with a full complement of books.
c. Either of two parts that complete the whole or mutually complete each other.

compliment

n.

1. An expression of praise, admiration, or congratulation.

Trending with Snowclones - X is the New Y

According to my teenage sons and via a You Tube video with the same title -

"Cone-ing is the new planking."

cone-ing: v. Ordering a soft-serve ice cream from a drive-through and picking it up by the ice cream rather than the cone.

Adorable baby - image from CBS News: What's Trending

planking: v. Lying face down, with arms at one's side in a random place an taking a photograph to share on the internet.

Read more about cone-ing here and planking here.

An Excellent Introduction to Steven Pinker

For those who may not have heard of Steven Pinker, a cognitive scientist and linguist who currently teaches at Harvard, and for those who may not have seen this lecture based on his outstanding book The Stuff of Thought, here is the video from YouTube.

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It is well worth the watch.

Can Randomly Placed Letters Form an Intelligible Word?

According to an e-mail that has been around for several years (and is supposedly based on Cambridge University research), as long as the first and last letters of a word are positioned accurately, the order of the internal letters should not interfere with a reader's ability to interpret the word.

This past December, a new video debunking this claim made the rounds.

In case you missed it on The Spelling Blog, Language Hat, Mighty Red Pen or anywhere else it may have appeared, here it is:

Excellent analysis from What You Ought to Know.

Linguistics Cartoon Favorites - Alternate Number Idioms

The Link Between Speech and Writing - Deep Dyslexia

Dyslexia is the widely recognized optical and neurological condition that causes difficulty with reading, spelling, and writing. Letter and number reversals are common signs of dyslexia.

Deep dyslexia is a less common condition that provides evidence of the close relationship between speech and writing. With deep dyslexia, a person will see one word and verbalize a different, but closely related word.

In the book Word Weavers by Jean Aitchison the example is given of a person reading the word play instead of 'drama', ill instead of 'sick', football instead of 'soccer'.

This example illustrates that "at some deep level, the patient has understood the word he or she is reading, then been unable to retrieve the phonological shape needed to utter it."

I had never heard of deep dyslexia but I think it would be fascinating to study for anyone in the fields of cognitive linguistics and/or neurolinguistics.

Cognitive Linguistics Fun

Read the text inside the triangle out loud.

More than likely you said, 'A bird in the bush,'! and. ........
if this IS what YOU said, then you failed to see
that the word THE is repeated twice!
Sorry, look again.

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Count every ' F ' in the following text:

FINISHED FILES ARE THE RESULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIFIC STUDY
COMBINED WITH
THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS...

How many?
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*


Wrong, there are 6 -- no joke.
Read it again.
Really, go back and try to find the 6 F's before you scroll down.
The reasoning behind is further down.
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*

The brain cannot process 'OF'.

Incredible or what? Go back and look again!!
Anyone who counts all 6 'F's' on the first go is a genius.
Three is normal, four is quite rare.



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