Mango Languages

Thematic Roles of Predicates. Yay Grammar!

Hello again! My last blog left off with a brief introduction to different phrase types, e.g., determiner phase (DP), verb phrase (VP), etc.  So let’s take a closer look at these phrases.  For example, the phrase, “ate the apple.” This phrase is made of three components; ate (verb), the (article/determiner) and apple (noun).  We have already determined that I can’t simply string these words together in any order I wish and convey the same meaning, if any. These lexical items (words) alone do not consist of a complete proposition. Recall from my previous blog entry that a proposition is a complete thought, e.g., Jane ate the apple. In other words, each of these items needs to merge with another entity or entities in order to be well formed or have meaning in a sentence or phrase.  Now we are getting to the good stuff. Let’s start with the verb: ate. Ate alone doesn’t convey a complete thought or proposition. Rather we know that ate expresses a relationship between two other elements. That is, someone ate something.  So we can say that the verb ate needs to combine/merge with at least two other elements in order to form a complete proposition or thought. In linguistics we say that the predicate (e.g., ate, in this case) needs to combine with a theme.  The theme is merged with, or physically moved, to combine with the predicate.  That is, this predicate, ate, is in need of two themes (the some-one and the something) and therefore draws these other elements to it.  In linguistics we say that the predicate has thematic roles it must assign. The some-one of ate is given the thematic role of the agent because this is an active role.  The something of the predicate ate is referred to as, or given the thematic role of, Theme. However, the names or titles of these themes is not the most important part to remember here.  Rather, that different predicates select for, or require, different types and number of themes.  To contrast the predicate ate, there are other predicates such as, appeared, fell, etc., which only require one theme, or thematic role, that must be assigned in order to be a complete proposition, i.e., Jane appeared, Jane fell.  So we have determined that certain lexical items (words) have thematic roles that they must assign. The items and or constituents that are assigned to the predicate are referred to as its arguments.  The type and number of roles/arguments will differ depending on the predicate (lexical item/word assigning thematic roles).

The above paragraph refers mostly to verbs. However, other words require additional elements.  For example, the definite article the.   One cannot simply utter the and convey a complete thought.  The what? ‘The’ therefore requires the addition of a noun.  We can say it selects , or requires that a noun merge with it.  So, similar to how a verb/predicate selects certain thematic roles to merge with it, other elements, as we can see with ‘the’, do the same.

So in this blog we have embarked on the concept of thematic roles of predicates. We saw that different predicates select for different number and types of arguments, specifically, ate assigns (at least) two thematic roles; the eater (the Agent) and, the eaten (the Theme).  But, fell must assign (at least) one thematic role; the one who undergoes the fall (the Experiencer).

Can you think of predicates which assign more than two roles? That is, verbs that have more than two arguments?  Or, can you assign additional arguments to these predicates: ate and fell?

7 New Languages are Ripe for the Picking!

We’ve just launched an additional 7 language courses in our library market, helping library patrons increase their practical conversation skills for even more amazing travel destinations.

Visit the language selection screen to check them out!

Noam Chomsky- His Contribution to Linguistics

“Syntax – It’s not another tax on beer?” Continued…

In my last blog I began to delve in to the wonderful world of Syntax. I looked at the linguist definition of a sentence and more importantly the abstract idea of the proposition. I also briefly touched on word order as it is involved in sentence grammaticality. So from my previous blog we can now make two statements: 1) Sentences are abstract mental objects and, 2) word order is somehow involved in the “grammaticality” of sentences. However, we have not yet determined what role word-order plays in grammar. We will begin to look at that in this blog entry.

In her entry, Did you know languages have constituents?, my colleague briefly touched on an important component of Syntax: constituents. Constituents are a group of words which have an internal coherence. That is, they belong together. For example, the words in the phrase ‘that glass of milk‘ seem to belong to each other, as do, ‘the black wooden chair‘, ‘the big red odd shaped container’, etc. We know this because in a complete sentence all of these phrases can be replaced with one little word: it. However, compare those “constituents” to these segments: ‘the table over’, ‘wooden chair by’, and ‘big red odd‘. In contrast these segments don’t seem to belong together. They most certainly cannot be replaced in the sentences with any one word.

So now we have determined that some groups of words belong together and we call these groups constituents. Within constituents there are even smaller groups. These groups are given different titles depending on the “head” of the group. (I will explain headedness in a later blog). Some of these are: determiner phrases (DP) (sometimes referred to as noun phrases, NP), prepositional phrases (PP), adjective phrases (AdjP), adverb phrases (AP) and, verb phrases (VP). An example of a determiner phrase (DP) is ‘the container’. However, ‘the big red oddly shaped container‘ is also a DP, only a larger one also containing an adjective phrases (AdjP): big red oddly shaped container. Additionally, ‘the apple‘ is also a determiner phrase. However, ‘ate the apple‘, is a verb phrase (VP) that also contains a determiner phrase, ‘the apple‘.

Can you get creative and come up with a large phrase that contains more than one other additional phrase? What are the constituents in the phrase?

Mango Languages for K-12 Students

Mango has been hard at work putting the finishing touches on our Educator Edition that is currently being made available to our K-12 customers and higher educational facilities.  This new edition has some very exciting functionality designed specifically with students and teachers in mind.  One cool feature is the ability to track students’ usage as they progress through the Mango lessons.

Teachers can segment their student population into virtual classrooms, making it extremely easy to track different groups of students. They can name their virtual classrooms any name they wish and view small portions of students with whom they are actively involved.  Once inside the virtual classroom, each student has their own set of statistics to view including which language they are using, which lessons they have attempted, and how long they have spent on each lesson.  Teachers now have the ability to assign Mango as homework with our unlimited remote access feature, and they can actually see which students are completing the selected lessons!

This is just one of the features that makes our Educator Edition such an effective tool to help teachers share their love of language learning with their students.  Teacher feedback was critical to the design of this unique interface, and it their suggestions have also put Mango to work on our assessment feature and custom lessons.  Think of all the tools you have available in your school for language learning:  can you think of other features that we could include to make it even better? What kinds of features do you wish you had had as a student when you were learning a foreign language in your school?

What Do You Mean?

In this post I would like to explore two subcategories of Linguistics: Semantics and Pragmatics. Semantics studies the meaning of words and sentences. The notion of meaning, however, has many facets. For example,  the words “unmarried man” and “bachelor” have the same meaning; the sentence, “The toothbrush has five legs” is meaningful only in a Lewis Carroll-like story; the sentence, “I saw her work” is ambiguous (“I saw her while she was working” or “I saw something she made”). The meaning of the two phrases in the sentence, “John killed Mary and Mary didn’t die” contradict each other.

A sentence can be well-structured but nevertheless meaningless. Let’s illustrate with the last example: “John killed Mary” is a well-structured sentence with a verb (killed), the subject  (John), and an object, the receiver of John’s action (Mary).  This is  meaningful: a male named John took the life of a female named Mary.  The same goes for the sentence, “Mary didn’t die.”  Their combination is a well-structured sentence with verbs, subjects, and objects in the correct order, but it is meaningless; this is due to the inherent meaning of the verb “kill,” which entails that the killed person has died for good and is 100% dead.  Semantics then is about the conditions a sentence has to meet in order to be meaningful.

Pragmatics on the other hand has to do with how we use meaningful, or sometimes even meaningless, sentences in order to communicate. And to communicate successfully, to understand and be understood, another factor plays the most important role: context, or everything that has to do with the circumstances in which a sentence is uttered.  For example, the sentence, “Can you open the window?”, a well-structured and meaningful sentence, can be interpreted as a question in which we ask the listener if he has the ability to open the window, or as a request for the listener to open the window.  How does the listener reach the correct interpretation? In our example, how does he understand if it is meant to be a question or a request?

According to Pragmatic theories which are based on Paul Grice (e.g. Relevance), we need to guess the speaker’s intentions, i.e., the reason why he is saying something. We put the speaker’s intentions in the right context, and we interpret the utterance. Let’s imagine we are in a stuffy room.  The listener interprets the sentence as a request, given the stuffiness of the air and guessing that the intention of the speaker is to ask him to do something.  Now imagine two burglars outside the house they want to break into. The listener interprets it as an ability question given the fact that they are outside and want to get into the house one way or another. Many times we do not make the right guess and we misinterpret the speaker’s intention, which leads to lack of communication.

We say one thing, but is that what we REALLY mean?

TBLL–No, It's Not a Medical Condition

The task based language learning (TBLL) approach is derived from cognitive and interactionist theories and research findings.  TBLL attempts to avoid fitting language learners into a box of stereotypical language use, i.e., where the student is only familiar with a sentences in specific forms or specific context, by rather using the language to carry out meaningful tasks, such as visiting a doctor, conducting an interview, or even asking someone out on a date.   Doughty and Long (2003) describe 10 methodological principles (MPs) of TBLL.  This post will present the first and second principles of task based language learning (TBLL) and discuss how Mango incorporates these in our system.

Principle number one of task based language learning is to use tasks, not texts, as the unit of analysis.  We use language to do things, to communicate.  Therefore, why would we study linguistic structures removed from the context in which they are used, (i.e., random vocabulary lists), to learn a language?  With Mango Languages every chapter starts with specific conversational goals, or conversational tasks that the student will be able to do effectively after successfully completing the chapter.  Additionally, the target language, or language being learned, is always given in context.  But, the learning doesn’t stop there.  The Mango system then expands on and exploits the grammar and vocabulary that was learned in the initial context in order for the student to apply what they have learned to other contexts as well.

The second principle of task based language learning is to promote learning by doing. Connecting the material to be learned to real-world events and activities serves for better incorporation into and retrieval from long-term memory. According to Doughty and Long (2003), “Computer simulations of target environments and tasks constitute a good example of learning by doing. The basic idea is that a learner on his or her own can gain experience in a simulated environment under conditions of reduced stress and without real consequences to their actions” (p 58).

Well…learning by doing is what Mango is all about!  If you follow the Mango blogs you already know that Mango uses Critical Thinking slides to get language learners actively involved in their learning experience.  This is done by requesting that the student not simply regurgitate what was already given to them, but rather produce new phrases from what they already learned, and/or to apply previously learned grammar concepts to new words and/or phrases.

So, what do you think?  Do you learn better when given a task to accomplish?  Do you learn better and retain more when you are passively receiving material or when you are actively engaged?

Intuitive Language Construction – Part I Vocabulary

When learning a foreign language it is important to understand the Linguistic Science behind the book, tapes, or in our case, the online language learning software. Mango Languages is very excited to share our foreign language learning methodology.

Intuitive Language Construction was developed after looking at current products on the market and listening to users and what they wanted.  The one thing we heard over and over is they wanted a program that was fun, easy, and completely integrated.

We listened.

Mango Languages includes the following components:

1. Vocabulary
2. Pronunciation
3. Grammar
4. Culture
5. Comprehension
6. Retention

In this post, lets first look at vocabulary.  These are the words themselves that make up the language.

Most language learning systems focus a lot, if not solely on vocabulary…and there’s no doubt that it’s important. However, Mango focuses on the words and phrases that will be usable in common, real life situations for the language and culture you’re studying.

Mango helps you understand context and makes the most of your valuable time. Vocabulary words are given to you in the form a conversation, rather than just a list.   Some systems provide long lists of terms all at once, making it difficult to follow and learn how all the components work together. Others provide individual “flashcards,” but not a complete conversation, making the vocabulary much less useful since there is no context for the words.  Ultimately, spending hours going through stacks of cards just isn’t fun, but after using Mango you can actually hold a conversation and communicate, which really is the point of learning a foreign language, right?

What do you think is the most important part of a language learning product?

Why We Study Language

Recently, I had the chance to revisit a class where I was a former City Year Detroit tutor. I tutored third graders once a week from November to March, before leaving become a Project Linguist at Mango Languages.  The kids asked about working at Mango, and in honor of my visit, they did a writing prompt: “If you could study any language, what would it be and why?” The kids’ answers are terrific.  (I hope we get permission to post them, so you can enjoy them.)

Languages they want to study include: German, Hausa, American Sign Language, Greek, Chinese, French, Japanese, Latin, and Pig Latin.  A lot of the children are already bilingual in Spanish and English.  Most of their reasons for learning a new language are about being able to talk to the people who speak that language.   They want to impress their friends and family.  Besides, it is cool and sounds fancy.

If, when I was in high school, I was asked why I chose to learn Spanish, these would have been my reasons, too.  My school only offered three foreign language options–Spanish, French, and German–so how great is it now that I get to work with speakers from languages as diverse as Malay, Dutch, and Swahili!?  Mango Languages gets me excited because we offer many language options for increasing cross-cultural communication.

So the question is: “If you could study any language, what would it be and why?”  Who do you want to be able to talk to?  Do you want to increase cross-cultural communication, or do you just want to sound “cool and fancy”?

Language or Dialect: The War of Similarities

According to ethnologue.org, there are 6,909 languages in the world, from Mandarin Chinese, with 870 million speakers, to moribund languages with one or two aged speakers.  What counts as a language though?  Let’s see some examples:

Let’s say that “language” is the standard language of a country.  This would mean that Romani, the language of the gypsies, that has more or less 1.5 million speakers, is not a language.  Neither is Kurdish, with 16 to 35 million speakers.  Let’s also take a look at the Balkan languages: in the former Yugoslavia, Serbo-Croatian was one of the standard languages, as Serbian and Croatian differ from each other as much as American English differs from British English.  In the same area today we find Serbian and Croatian–two languages.  What happened?  We realize that once new countries were established, former dialects became standard languages.  Hence, “language” cannot mean “standard language,” since what qualifies as a dialect or as standard language depends on geographical and political changes and factors, and not just on the grammar or the vocabulary of the dialect.

Another example like the one of Yugoslavia is Danish and Norwegian.  Both languages are standard languages but they are almost identical regarding grammar and vocabulary.  And so a Dane and a Norwegian can talk to each other, each speaking their own language, and be mutually understood.  The reason is that Norway was under Danish occupation for centuries and at that time Norwegian was just a dialect of Danish.

The opposite situation is happening in China: there are many dialects in China and those with the most speakers are Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese.  However, these two dialects have deep differences in grammar and in vocabulary.  The differences are like those we have between Romance languages, like Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, etc., which are called “languages.”  So again, grammatical and lexical differences do not constitute the characteristics that would differentiate a dialect from a language.  Talking about the Romance languages, it is obvious that there are many common elements in grammar and vocabulary, but based on these attributes, couldn’t one say that they are dialects of Latin?

There are many, many examples like these: think about the Arabic dialects, some of which are mutually unintelligible, or Venetian, spoken in Venice, which is cognate with Italian but quite distinct from the standard language.  Or Sicilian…

We see then that there are languages that could be dialects of other languages and dialects that could be languages.  So, what is the difference between a dialect and a language after all?

The answer can be what the Yiddish linguist Max Weireich said, “Language is a dialect with an army and navy” or simply “… a dialect supported by influential people.”  When a community wants to become independent from another community, as it happened in Denmark and Norway, they make their dialect a language.  When they do not want to become independent and their dialect has some sort of similarity with the standard language, then they say that they speak a dialect of the standard.

Can you think of a good example of what is a language or dialect?  Please share by writing a comment.