Second Language Acquisition (research)

[Der Helm]

This term I take a class on linguistic research methods, research on second language acquisition to be specific. During this class I am expected to conduct a small scale research project of my own. For that I need a whole bunch of people who speak English or German as a second/third etc... language and native speakers of English.

I have no idea about what kind of methods will be used or even what the methods are, but I need volunteers nonetheless.

Anyone  ?

At this moment I only want to know if you are interested at all. I'll start working on this after Pentecost/whitsun.


PS: I do not think this will take much of your time, it should be fun, you might even learn a bit about linguistics (I know I'll do)

PPS: To get you in the mood. I found those cartoons hilarious.

[Tebonas]

German native speaker with English as Second language.

If it helps you, I think I can spare the time.

[Zetor]

I'm a Hungarian native speaker with English as a second language, and German as a third.

I should probably have the time for it, will be a good distraction from my masters-thesis-project-of-doom at least.  :P


-- Z.

[schild]

Native english. I've dabbled in the linguistic studies and various languages.

[Raging Turtle]

ESL teacher, native English speaker with passable Spanish and a smattering of Czech and Korean, and I'll be starting Russian in the fall 

This sounds interesting... I'm thinking about getting a Masters in Linguistics down the road, but am not really sure what I'd do with it.

[schild]

Make a living of taking the opposing viewpoint of Chomsky. Just troll that arrogant fuck until you're famous.

[Merusk]

Jesus Christ, Schild.  Not having a job thrown off your sleep schedule this much, or are you up early for the new one?

[MrHat]

heh.

I'm native English w/ schooling in French and Arabic.  My wife has been slowly learning German over the past year.  Let me know.

[caladein]

Native English speaker and pseudo-native Spanish speaker.

I'd be up for some guinea pig action if I'm at all germane to your research.

[Hakeldaima]

Native Icelandic speaker - English a second language, Danish third.

[NowhereMan]

Native English speaker, trained ESL teacher and I've done some studying philosophy of language that our new professor basically made into the philosophical importance of Chomsky. I'd say build a career on trolling the fuck out of Chomsky but generally if you prove him wrong on something, he accepts it and takes up the new theory you've put forward into his own and continues being the big name in linguistics near as I can tell.

[NiX]

Native English speaker. I should know Canadian French, but I fucking hated it in high school.

[Bunk]

Native English and very limited Canadian French as well.

[Sky]

I have a smattering of deutsch from high school 

It used to be great for making german girls laugh.

[Signe]

Go to heavy metal music sites.  It brings English and German together.  I haven't decided what my native language is.  I speak everything equally bad.

[Samwise]

Native English and some very rusty high school Latin.

[Lantyssa]

Native English with German in high school and college.  I've forgotten most of it, but at the time was able to get by in Europe.

[Riggswolfe]

Native English. I also speak Java, Visual Basic and C++.

What? They're languages too!

[Tale]

Native English with German as a second language (high school, exchange student to Bavaria, then failed university). Prost!

[Der Helm]

Thanks a lot so far. I will have more information after the weekend. Maybe then I will know what I will be doing.

Oh, btw, if you come up with a sound theory to oppose Chomsky let me know. 

[sidereal]

Native English.  Terrible at Japanese, Welsh, French, and Russian.  Even worse at Arabic and Zulu.  Even worse at Mandarin.

Oh, btw, if you come up with a sound theory to oppose Chomsky let me know. 

The great thing about Chomsky is if it turns out a theory isn't that great, he changes his mind.  I'd agree that he's arrogant and kind of a dick (getting petty and sarcastic when contradicted), but unless you can read this and understand at least 3/4 of it, you're in no condition to troll him.

[Murgos]

My girlfriend studied linguistics for a while, as in a MS from Dartmouth and worked on a PhD in linguistics at Georgetown until she decided that linguistics research wasn't interesting to her.  She gave me this.  It's worth reading for pretty much anyone and does a good job of explaining that even though Chomsky may be a nut, he's a genius at linguistics.

[sidereal]

Pinker's great.  I'd recommend How the Mind Works and The Blank Slate highly.

[Murgos]

I'm actually very impressed by how rigorous Chomskian linguistics is compared to most of the 'soft' sciences.  It actually has a lot of applications in Computer Science.  It may not be as rigorous as say, physics, but it's theories are solid enough to do real work with which says a lot.

[NowhereMan]

Language Instinct is actually quite a readable book, that Professor of mine actually seems to keep a copy on him most of the time. In terms of how language works Chomsky's certainly the authority, what always impresses me is his level of scholarship on a huge variety of different fields. The only other person I can think of who's in the same area was Foucault simply for their ability to have an article flooded with references from about 20 different academic disciplines, that's the kind of shit that either involves months of research per article or a phenomenal memory combined with reading and understanding articles and books about pretty much anything that vaguely interests you.

[Der Helm]

Well, class was cancelled last week and will be this week, so there will be some delay while I wait for my book to be delivered and try to wrap my head around the concepts myself.

Till then a few semi-related questions.

Do you really use "United States of America" in the singular ? If yes, does it feel as strange for you as it does feel for me ?

What about Data ?

And "people" ? Is there a plural usage of "people" ?

[Samwise]

Do you really use "United States of America" in the singular ? If yes, does it feel as strange for you as it does feel for me ?

Yes, because it's the name of a (one) country.  Kind of silly to give a country a name that looks like a plural noun, but that's how it is.  If I'm actually referring to a collection of individual states then it's plural.

What about Data ?

Yes, if I'm speaking in American English, or referring to the Star Trek character by that name.  If I'm speaking in Latin, or feeling pretentious, or both, it's plural.

And "people" ? Is there a plural usage of "people" ?

Yes -- "those people" (plural) if talking about an arbitrary collection of persons, "a people" (singular) if talking about an entire culture or race, "peoples" (plural) if talking about multiple cultures.

[Engels]

Strictly speaking the singular of 'data' is 'datum', but I don't think its used outside of some pretty specific scientific circles. Data is used both as singular and plural.

[Raging Turtle]

Not exactly - English nouns can be countable, uncountable, or always plural (or some combination thereof, like the word chocolate).  In common usage data is an uncountable noun, meaning you can't have "a data", which would be the strict singular.  For uncountables we tend to use 'a piece of x', or 'a slice', or a few other phrases. 

Naturally there are exceptions to everything I just said. 

[Der Helm]

Do you really use "United States of America" in the singular ? If yes, does it feel as strange for you as it does feel for me ?

Yes, because it's the name of a (one) country.  Kind of silly to give a country a name that looks like a plural noun, but that's how it is.  If I'm actually referring to a collection of individual states then it's plural.

I asked this because I have to (almost physically) force myself to use "USA" with the first person singular. I believe he reason for this is some connection I draw between the plural markers "s" and the word formation process of the following verb.

Also I can't think of an example in German, but our morphology is different as well.

Do exceptions like this come naturally to you native speakers or do you have to think about it ?

Also, "a people" ? Really ? The people of China sounds OK to me, how would you use "a people" in a sentence ?

[Tale]

Do you really use "United States of America" in the singular ? If yes, does it feel as strange for you as it does feel for me ?

Yes, and I had a WTF moment with it about a fortnight ago when I was rewriting someone's headline (I'm a journalist). I have three people working for me and two of them are fresh out of university, following my lead, and I was rewriting a plural country name in the singular. It did make me stop and think. But I was the senior employee, so I was right.

What about Data ?

I almost never use the word. It's overused in the Internet age. If a researcher has revealed new data, I will call it new research, not new data. I am writing for a mass market audience and if I don't dumb it down enough, I lose their attention. But yes, while I'm aware it's originally plural I would write "the data suggests", not "the data suggest". I would never use datum. My readers wouldn't know what it means.

And "people" ? Is there a plural usage of "people" ?

People is the plural of person, in everyday English. Saying "persons" sounds too formal, like a police spokesman giving a media statement. Using "a people" also sounds very educated and formal, but the "a" makes it very clear that you are talking about persons of a particular culture/nationality. In journalism, I would write "two people have died", not two persons. But as soon as possible, I would change it to add specifics, e.g. "a man and a woman have died".

[Der Helm]

Fascinating.
(really)

[Samwise]

Do exceptions like this come naturally to you native speakers or do you have to think about it ?

When you've been doing it your whole life it comes naturally.  Like spelling "knife" with a "k" at the beginning.

Also, "a people" ? Really ? The people of China sounds OK to me, how would you use "a people" in a sentence ?

Google "a people" and you'll find a few... "a people at war", "a people without a land", et cetera.  It's something you don't see in normal conversation but it can make a nice rhetorical flourish if you want to convey the concept of a culture as a monolithic entity.

[Prospero]

"A people" makes me think of a Nation Geographic voiceover. "Here we see the Zimzambalese, a people at war with a changing society..." So yeah, definitely a rhetorical flourish.

[Samwise]

"A people without a land" is actually a really good example now that I think about it.  Compare "people without land" to "a people without a land".  The literal meanings are close but they have radically different connotations.