Words and Rules: The Ingredients of Language with Dr. Steven Pinker (1999)

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0:05to the 92nd Street y Humanities audio

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0:10National Endowment for the Humanities

0:12good evening I'm Jennifer Juna howler

0:15from the Charles Simon Center for adult

0:17life and learning it's my pleasure to

0:19welcome you tonight and to introduce our

0:21speaker Dr Steph

0:23Pinker Dr Pinker will give a lecture and

0:26we've set up a microphone in the

0:28audience for you to ask questions after

0:30after the

0:30lecture after the program there will be

0:33a book selling and signing in the

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0:36Hall we're so excited about our spring

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1:19to

1:20miss our speaker tonight is a man who

1:23thinks deeply about thinking and we have

1:25been very fortunate to have him on our

1:28stage at the Y several times to share

1:30his fascinating insights with

1:33us he is Professor of psychology and

1:36director of the Center for Cognitive

1:38neuroscience at the Massachusetts

1:40Institute of

1:42Technology he's also a best-selling

1:44author who has already shed light on the

1:46workings of the brain and how it

1:48processes language in his book how the

1:50mind works which was nominated for the

1:53pet Sur prize and the national book

1:55award and was the number one bestselling

1:58book for Amazon . in

2:021997 his previous book The Language

2:05Instinct was also a bestseller and was

2:08named one of the best 10 books of the

2:10Year by the New York Times book

2:13review his new book which will be

2:16available to sign copies of after the

2:18lecture is words and rules the

2:20ingredients of language it explores the

2:22inner workings of the human brain as it

2:25moves from thought to sound to language

2:28please welcome Dr Steve

2:40Pinker thank you very

2:43much I'd like to begin by acknowledging

2:47uh some of the people who collaborated

2:49on the ideas and experiments I'm going

2:51to talk about this evening uh a large

2:53number of uh colleagues former students

2:56collaborators at MIT and in particular

2:58two who are in the audience tonight

3:00Professor Gary Marcus of NYU and

3:03Professor Annie sanghas of Barnard

3:07College language comes so naturally to

3:09us that we're apt to forget what a

3:11strange and miraculous gift it is but

3:14think about what we're doing right now

3:16for the next hour you're going to sit

3:18patiently listening to a man make noise

3:20as he exhales now why would you do

3:22something like that not because I can

3:25claim that the sounds are particularly

3:27mifl but because there's information

3:30that's coded into the precise sequence

3:33of hisses and hums and squeaks and Pops

3:36that I'll make that you can recover

3:38allowing us to share ideas now over the

3:42next hour the ideas that I'm going to

3:46cause you to think our ideas about this

3:48gift language itself but with a slightly

3:52different set of noises I could be

3:53causing you to think thoughts about

3:56anything from theories of the origin of

3:58the universe to the latest twists and

4:01turns of your favorite soap opera plot

4:04uh this is the miracle of language its

4:06vast expressive power and I think the

4:09first question that we have to ask in

4:12understanding language is what is the

4:14trick what's the trick behind our

4:16ability to fill each other's minds with

4:19so many different kinds of ideas the

4:22point of the book words and rules and of

4:24the talk this evening is that there's

4:26not one trick but two of them and they

4:28were both ident ified in the 19th

4:30century by European linguists the first

4:33is the principle of the memorized word

4:37what fand do soer called the arbitrary

4:40sign now the word duck for example

4:43doesn't look like a duck or walk like a

4:46duck or quack like a duck but I can use

4:48it to get you to think the thought of a

4:50duck because all of us at some point in

4:52our lives have memorized an association

4:55between that sound and that meaning that

4:58means that there has to be some

5:00information stored in the mind that

5:02captures that Association which in

5:04simplified form might look something

5:05like

5:06this there is a symbol for the word

5:09itself there is an uh entry for its

5:12sound duck and then some kind of entry

5:15for its

5:16meaning now words simple though they are

5:20convey a number of

5:22advantages uh for one because human

5:24memory is capacious there are a large

5:26number of Concepts that we can express

5:28with words it's been estimated that a

5:30typical high school graduate can uh has

5:34acquired on the order of 60,000 Words

5:37which works out to a rate of learning

5:40words of one every two waking hours

5:43starting at the age of one also the

5:46brain is well equipped to produce and

5:49understand words it takes less than a

5:50quarter of a second for the brain to uh

5:53come up with the meaning behind a word

5:56after hearing it or and also less than a

5:58quarter of a second uh given the thought

6:00to recover the information on how to

6:03pronounce it on the other hand there are

6:05some disadvantages to words you're stuck

6:08with a finite number of predetermined

6:10Concepts those for which your language

6:13already has uh sound meaning pairings

6:17and words are slaves to memory everyone

6:20has to have memorized a word for it to

6:22be useful if you're the only one who

6:23knows a word you may as well not know it

6:25at all that brings me to the second

6:28trick behind language combinatorial

6:30grammar what vilhelm Von humble called

6:33the infinite use of finite media the

6:36ability

6:37to uh produce strings of words in which

6:40the meaning of the string can be

6:42computed from the meanings of the

6:44individual words and the way that

6:46they're combined in order for a speaker

6:49and a hearer to uh convey information by

6:53ordering words they both have to share

6:55some kind of mental algorithm or recipe

6:58or software that uh captures this

7:01information and that's what uh linguists

7:03call a grammar again in simplified form

7:06a couple of rules of grammar that we use

7:09to express our thoughts are these a uh

7:12sentence is composed of a noun phrase in

7:15English followed by a verb phrase that

7:17is the subject followed by the predicate

7:19the verb phrase consists of a verb

7:21followed by a noun phrase the object

7:23followed by a uh sentence the compliment

7:27the power of rules comes from the fact

7:29that they're built out of symbols so for

7:31example the verb phrase symbol that's

7:34the name for the right hand rule is also

7:38listed in the leftand rule so that uh

7:41one can be inserted inside the

7:44other since the words as well bear

7:47symbols indicating how they can be

7:49slaughtered into sentences we have a way

7:52of uh with a finite set of rules of

7:54generating brand new structures on the

7:57fly now among the advantages of

8:00combinatorial grammar are that by

8:02combining symbols new ideas can be

8:05expressed there's a cliche in journalism

8:07that when a dog bites a man that isn't

8:09news but when a man bites a dog that is

8:12news the beauty of grammar is that it

8:14allows us to convey news by rearranging

8:18words in new

8:19orders also because grammar is couched

8:23in abstract symbols like noun and verb

8:26the same rule that allows us to convey

8:29uh dog bites man can also allow us to

8:31convey uh a big bang creates the

8:34universe or any other combination of

8:37ideas in any combinatorial system the

8:40number of combinations grows

8:42exponentially with the length of the

8:44sentence so if there are say 10,000

8:47nouns with which to begin a sentence and

8:494,000 verbs with which to continue it

8:52you already have 40 million uh ways of

8:55beginning a sentence and you're only two

8:57words into it and the number EXP

8:59explodes from there the psychologist

9:01George Miller once estimated that a

9:04person is capable of producing or

9:06understanding 100 million trillion

9:09different sentences 20 words long or

9:11shorter as uh the late Carl Sean might

9:14have said billions and billions of

9:18sentences also there's a sense in which

9:21the number of thoughts that we can

9:22express through language is not just

9:24humongous but it is technically infinite

9:27thanks to a trick of language called

9:30recursion recall that a uh sentence can

9:34contain a verb phrase and a verb phrase

9:37can contain a sentence that means that

9:39you can insert a sentence inside a

9:42sentence and a sentence inside a

9:43sentence inside a sentence therefore

9:46generating sentences of any length and

9:48hence an infinite number of sentences

9:50there is no longest sentence in

9:53principle now it turns out that this is

9:55not a banal uh observation because there

9:58has been a claim that there is a longest

10:01sentence in English where would you find

10:03such a claim well where else the

10:05Guinness Book of World Records world's

10:07longest sentence you could look it up

10:09it's 1,300 words long it comes from a

10:12novel by William Falkner which should

10:15come as no surprise to those of you

10:16who've read the novels of William

10:18Falkner uh I won't reproduce the

10:20sentence in its entirety but here's the

10:22way it begins they both bore it as

10:24though in deliberate flagellant

10:26exaltation and it runs on from there

10:30however I have an announcement to make

10:32this evening this is not in fact the

10:34world's longest sentence and I've been

10:37tempted to attain immortality in

10:39Guinness by submitting the following

10:41recordbreaker faler wrote they both

10:44bored as though in deliberate flatulent

10:48exaltation but then I realized that this

10:50would not be immortality after all but

10:52only the proverbial 15 minutes of fame

10:55because any one of you could then submit

10:57Guinness noted that f wrote they both

10:59bore it Pinker mentioned that Guinness

11:01noted that Falon wrote who cares that

11:03Pinker mentioned that Guinness noted

11:04that Falon wrote dot dot dot well

11:08grammar is a wonderful thing uh allowing

11:10us to convey an infinite number of

11:12Thoughts by rearranging a finite number

11:14of words are there any disadvantages to

11:17grammar well in fact there are and

11:19they're best appreciated by trying to

11:22imagine what a language would look like

11:24if it had nothing but grammar no words

11:28well we don't have to imagine it it's

11:29been imagined for us because in the uh

11:3316th and 17th and 18th century there

11:35were a number of proposals for perfect

11:38languages that would do away with this

11:41ugly process of wrote memorizing

11:45thousands of arbitrary sound meaning

11:47pairings which were considered an

11:49affront to Enlightenment sensibilities

11:52of rational design the most famous is

11:55the analytical language of John Wilkins

11:58the subject of a wonderful essay by

11:59Jorge Luis bores and also of a book by

12:03Umberto Eko in search of the perfect

12:05language Wilkins wrote we should by

12:07learning the names of things be

12:09instructed likewise in their natures and

12:12here's in uh brief how a system worked

12:15Zita in his artificial language meant

12:18dog but you didn't have to memorize that

12:21you could deduce it

12:23because Wilkins divided the universe

12:26into 40 ontological categories and

12:29assigned each one of them a sound so Z

12:32for example stood for animal I for

12:35quadrip t for rapacious terrestrial

12:37European canine and then a pinpointed

12:40the species similarly deba is a portion

12:44of the first terrestrial element uh AKA

12:48flame and Koba is consanguinous relation

12:51of direct ascendant uh to it father now

12:55needless to say this scheme did not

12:57catch on and here we are are centuries

13:00later still memorizing arbitrary words

13:04every two hours of our waking lives and

13:07it's easy to see why it didn't catch on

13:09for one thing you need complex mental

13:12computation for every word every time

13:15someone opens his mouth and blurts out a

13:16word you've got to play a game of 20

13:18questions to figure out what he's

13:20talking about and also the combinatorial

13:23power is overkill for most everyday

13:26Concepts we generally don't have to talk

13:28about a portion of a father or a fire

13:31with four legs and so a scheme that gave

13:34us the ability to do that is really more

13:37combinatorial power than we need it

13:40suggests that the basic design of human

13:42language tries to take advantage of the

13:45strengths of both uh tricks we have

13:48words for common entities for the dogs

13:52and ducks and men for which the

13:54psychological mechanism is memory and we

13:57have grammatical rules for novel

13:59combinations of entities for men biting

14:02dogs and big bangs creating universes

14:05for which the mental mechanism is some

14:07kind of online

14:08computation now how would you test an

14:11idea like this well ideally you should

14:13find a case in which words and rules

14:15express the same ideas but would still

14:18be psychologically and perhaps even

14:20neurologically

14:22distinguishable the point of words and

14:23rules is that we do have such a test

14:26case they're what we uh remember with

14:29Dread as regular and irregular forms

14:32just a little brush up uh regular verbs

14:35uh are uh verbs like walk walked jog

14:39jogged kiss kissed words that form their

14:41past tense in uh predictable ways for

14:44verb after verb all you have to do is

14:47add uh Ed and you have the past tense

14:49form the regular verbs are open-ended

14:52there are thousands of existing regular

14:54verbs in English and new ones are being

14:56added to the language all the time when

14:59the verb to facts came into common

15:00parlament about 15 years ago you didn't

15:03have to run to the dictionary to look up

15:05its past tense form you could figure out

15:07that it was faxed likewise when uh we

15:10first learned spam snarf M mosh and dis

15:13we knew that the past tenses were

15:15spammed snarfed munged moshed and

15:18dissed even uh children can do this if

15:21you bring a 5-year-old child into a lab

15:24and say uh here is a man who knows how

15:26to wug uh the child will easily say

15:30yesterday he wagged a form that they

15:32couldn't have memorized as a word

15:35because the experimenter had made it up

15:37beforehand but uh proof that children

15:40can uh extend the pattern to novel verbs

15:44and there's a sense in which all

15:46children show off this kind of

15:48creativity because children go through a

15:50a stage in which they make errors like

15:53ComEd and bringed and holded uh which

15:56they also couldn't have memorized

15:58directly from their parents but must

15:59have created in their own minds this

16:02brings me to the second kind of verb in

16:04English the irregular

16:07verbs verbs like bring brought hit hit

16:10go went Sing sang sleep slept make made

16:13ring rang fly flu which contrast with

16:16the regulars in just about every way uh

16:19in contrast to the monotonous

16:21predictability of the Irregulars verb

16:23after verb forming its past tense in the

16:25same way the Irregulars are quirky and

16:28ID syncratic the past of syn is sank but

16:31the past of cling is not clang but clung

16:34the past of think is neither than nor

16:36thunk but thought and the past of blink

16:39is not blank or blunk or blot but is

16:42regular

16:43blinked also it's a closed class there

16:46are about 165 uh irregular verbs in uh

16:49English and there haven't been any

16:51recent new ones well this leads to a

16:53simple theory that irregular forms are

16:56words that we learn in the same way that

16:57we learn uh Dog and Duck and man and so

17:01on uh in this case though one of the

17:03words that we learn brought is the past

17:05tense of another one and so that the two

17:07are connected but are otherwise separate

17:10entries in memory corresponding to

17:12separate words regular forms on the

17:14other hand don't have to be stored

17:16because they can be generated whenever

17:18you need them by a rule a rule exactly

17:22analogous to the ones that form

17:24sentences out of subjects and predicates

17:26and so on also their interaction is

17:28straightforward if a word can provide

17:30its own past tense form for memory the

17:32rule is blocked that's why we adults

17:34don't say things like bringed and hold

17:36it and go elsewhere or by default the

17:39rule applies that's why both children

17:42and adults uh can create a past tense

17:47form even if they don't have one in

17:48memory and that's how come we can say

17:50things like wagged and faxed and spammed

17:52and mosed and dissed well I could end

17:55the talk here and words and rules would

17:58end after chapter 1 uh were it not for a

18:01complication to this neat dichotomy and

18:04that is that the irregular verbs are

18:06shot through with patterns you find

18:08families of similar words like keep kept

18:11sleep slept feel felt dream dreamt wear

18:14War bear bore tear tour swear swore

18:16string strung swing swung sting stung

18:18fling

18:19flung also these patterns are not just

18:23inert redundancies in memory but they

18:26are occasionally generalized by Flesh

18:28and Blood uh speakers of the language

18:31every once in a while children will come

18:34out with an error like brang as the past

18:36of bring or uh bite boat wipe in the

18:40history of the language every once in a

18:43while one of these Innovative forms will

18:44gain a tow hold and uh stay in the

18:47language thereafter quit and caught for

18:50example are only a couple of hundred

18:52years old Jane Austin used quitted and

18:55George Washington wrote catched and uh

18:57the most recent irregular snuck sneaked

19:00into the language only about a 100 years

19:02ago and is now pretty unexceptionable

19:06among people under the age of 40 uh but

19:08uh still sounds uh weird and new to

19:11people over the age of

19:1440 this is especially obvious when you

19:16compare dialects of English which have

19:18uh preserved their separate patterns of

19:20Innovations in various rural American

19:23and British dialects you find forms like

19:25climb Clum uh drag drug or one that was

19:28used by President Clinton a couple of

19:30months ago he swole up and

19:33died and um honest he really said it uh

19:38and as a psychologist I've been trained

19:40not to accept anything as a fact until

19:42it's been tested in the lab on either

19:44rats or sophomores now to to my

19:48knowledge no one has studied irregular

19:49verbs in rats but if you bring

19:51sophomores into the lab and you say what

19:53is the past tense of to spling then

19:56about 80% of them will say Spang or or

19:58spung now this process was brought to a

20:01high art by the linguist and uh baseball

20:04pitcher and radio announcer Dizzy Dean

20:07who once uh gave the following play

20:09byplay the pitcher wound up and flang

20:12the ball at the batter the batter Swang

20:14and missed the pitcher flanged the ball

20:17again and this time the batter connected

20:18he hit a high fly right to the center

20:20fielder the center fielder was all set

20:22to catch the ball but at the last minute

20:24his eyes were blowned by the Sun and he

20:26dropped

20:27it

20:28so how do we account for the Dizzy Dean

20:31that's present in all of us well there

20:33have been two alternative theories Each

20:36of which tries to take one of these two

20:39tricks words or rules and stretch it to

20:42account for the other uh phenomenon

20:45according to the theory of generative

20:47phenology from the linguists Noom

20:49Chomsky and Morris Holly rules rule not

20:53only do you have a rule for the regular

20:55past tense aded but there is a family of

20:58rules that fiddle with vowels and

21:00consonants such as changing an i to a

21:03for cling

21:05clung

21:06the problem with the theory is how you

21:09target the right verbs how do you get

21:12the say an rule to apply to string sting

21:15and fling but not to apply to wish

21:19giving wash or FIB giving fub or fish

21:22giving fush and so on there are two ways

21:25in which you might do it and both of

21:26them are problematic you could stipulate

21:29them in a list which is what uh Chomsky

21:31and Holly did say that the rule changing

21:33it a applies to these 17 verbs in these

21:3717 verbs alone but then it's a an

21:40unexplained coincidence why the words in

21:43the list are so similar why you have

21:45string and sting and fling and not say

21:48FIB or uh wish on the other hand if you

21:51try to find the common pattern distill

21:54it out and append it as a condition to

21:56the rule such as

21:58consonant consonant the I vowel and then

22:01the um NG or sound the V or nasal it

22:05doesn't work it fail makes mistakes both

22:08of omission and commission it falsely

22:11includes bring whose past is not uh

22:13brung but brought and spring whose past

22:15is not sprung but sprang and it excludes

22:19stick which should be in because its

22:21past is stuck but doesn't uh fit the

22:24pattern with the sound at the end and

22:26also fails to include spin which really

22:29ought to be in there but also misses the

22:31condition of the rule by a whisker well

22:34this leads to something completely

22:36different the theory of artificial

22:38neural networks or connectionism uh

22:41proposed by David rumelhart and James

22:43mcland and 25 successor models According

22:46to which there are no rules they're just

22:49analogies from memory if you beef up

22:52memory in a certain way in particular in

22:55a pattern associator memory a kind of

22:58neural network you link sounds to sounds

23:01instead of linking words to words so in

23:04this kind of memory you've got a set of

23:07uh units Each of which stands for a bit

23:10of sound in the verb another set of

23:12units Each of which stands for a bit of

23:14sound in the past tense form every input

23:17is connected to every output the memory

23:19is trained by giving it walk walked and

23:22bring brought and Sing sang and play

23:25played and so on it forms associations

23:27between between sounds in the verb and

23:29sounds in its past tense such as in to

23:32Ang or o to O it superimposes these

23:36patterns across different verbs and

23:38therefore it can generalize to new verbs

23:41be if they overlap in sound with old

23:44verbs the reason that it does that is

23:46that similar words literally share

23:49representational real estate so anything

23:51connected to a sound from one word is

23:53automatically connected to that same

23:55sound for all similar words

23:58the problem with this theory is

24:00generalizing

24:02properly pattern associators generalize

24:04to new words that are similar to Old

24:06words and that that works pretty well

24:08for irregular patterns where people do

24:10the same thing both people and a pattern

24:13associator will Having learned that the

24:15past of cling is clung will generalize

24:18that the past of spling is spung it also

24:21works for the regular pattern if the new

24:24word is similar to Old regular verbs so

24:27for example if you um test people and a

24:31pattern Associated Mo model on a novel

24:33verb like tolip well that sounds a lot

24:36like clip flip trip slip strip nip Whip

24:39and so on and so the model like people

24:42can generalize to clipped the problem is

24:45it doesn't work with new words that are

24:47not similar to Old words such as to

24:49plump which doesn't rhyme with anything

24:51in English in fact it's kind of violates

24:54the sound pattern of English here though

24:56people can generalize the regular

24:58pattern to any new verb regardless of

25:00its sound but pattern associators can't

25:03do it if you compare them you find for

25:05example that people will say the past of

25:07plump is plumped but the best that the

25:09model could come up with was bro

25:11likewise uh people say trilled the model

25:14comes up with tree LT people uh say

25:17smeed the model came up with Leaf log

25:20people come up with friled the model

25:22came up with freezel uh and the reason

25:24is instructive that the a pattern of

25:27associator memory lacks the simple

25:29computational device known as a symbol

25:32or a variable like an x in algebra or

25:35verb in grammar it doesn't have

25:38something that can embrace all verbs

25:40regardless of its sound but instead it

25:42forms associations to the individual

25:44sounds if a new verb comes along that

25:47doesn't share any sounds with the ones

25:49in the training set the best that the

25:51model can do is cough up a hairball of

25:53bits and pieces that are the closest

25:55things it's Associated to the sounds

25:57that that are in the new uh word well

26:00this leads to a um modification of the

26:03words and rules theory that takes into

26:06account what these two systems are good

26:08and bad at um I will continue to argue

26:11that Irregulars are words stored in

26:13memory but here's the twist that memory

26:16is not a list of slots that's just not

26:18the way human memory works but is partly

26:21associative much like a artificial

26:24neural network pattern associator memory

26:27namely we connect sounds to sounds as

26:30well as words to words and that explains

26:33why people generalize irregular patterns

26:35to similar words as in Dizzy Dean and

26:38spling

26:39spung on the other hand I'll also argue

26:41that we still need a rule for the

26:43regulars and that explains how people

26:45can generalize the regular pattern to

26:47any word whether it's similar or

26:49dissimilar familiar or

26:51unfamiliar the prediction is that people

26:54uh can apply the regular pattern

26:56whenever memory fail fails for any

26:58reason that memory fails and this simple

27:00prediction helps to explain a wide

27:03variety of facts about language and

27:06people such as where regular and

27:08irregular forms came from the logic

27:11behind apparent grammatical quirks the

27:13use and misuse of Rules by children

27:16where language resides in the brain and

27:18how and why languages differ let me

27:21begin with where regular forms come from

27:24um a lot of information can be found

27:26simply in these statistical structure of

27:28the English language as we find it today

27:31um here's a top 10 list top 10 verbs in

27:35English in order of frequency that is

27:37number of occurrences in a million words

27:39of text B have do say make go take come

27:47see get notice that all 10 of these are

27:51irregular B was have had do did say said

27:54make made go went take took come came

27:56seesaw get got

27:58now there can't be a bottom 10 list uh

28:00for a frequency in the language because

28:03there's a 788 way tie for last place

28:07last place being one in a million which

28:09is the lowest frequency that you can

28:11measure in a million word Corpus but

28:13I'll give you the first 10 words from

28:15that list in alphabetical order here

28:18they are aate abbreviate aore ablate a

28:21bridge abgate a climatize acculturate ad

28:25miix adulterate notice that all 10 are

28:28regular Abate abated abbreviate

28:30abbreviated abore abort and so on

28:33there's a massive correlation in English

28:35and all other languages between

28:37frequency and irregularity the irregular

28:40words are the most commonly used and

28:42there's a simple explanation irregular

28:45forms depend on memory because they're

28:47idiosyncratic and have to be

28:48individually learned memory depends on

28:51frequency the more often you hear

28:53something the easier it is to remember

28:55if a word declines in popular ity uh it

28:58may not be uniformly memorized by a

29:01generation of children uh when it when

29:04the they aren't uniformly memorized the

29:06speakers will default to the regular Ed

29:08converting a verb from irregular to

29:10regular for them and for all subsequent

29:14generations and in fact we can see this

29:16in the history of the language in Old

29:18English and Middle English there were

29:20about twice as many irregular verbs as

29:22we find today if Cher were here right

29:25now for example he would tell you that

29:27the past of to cleave is clove likewise

29:30abide Abode chai chid cow crew gripe

29:34grope R Ro uh and so on the common ones

29:38in Cher's time have stayed irregular to

29:40the present day the rarer ones have

29:43defected to the regular side you can

29:46even feel that force of History acting

29:48today because the remaining infrequent

29:51Irregulars are already starting to sound

29:53a bit strange as if they're slipping out

29:55of the language complete this sequence

29:58for example I stride I stroe I

30:01have STD uh I guess STD but it doesn't

30:05sound completely natural similarly Smite

30:08SM slay slooh bid bade forsake forsook

30:12have a kind of stilted or uh stuffy or

30:15rusher sha feel to them something that

30:17you recognize from writing but that you

30:19wouldn't use in everyday conversation

30:22and you can predict that in a 100 years

30:24these will have gone the way of uh abode

30:27and roow and clove and so on in contrast

30:31low frequency regulars always sound fine

30:34if I ask you to complete this sequence I

30:36abgate I abgate I have abreg there's no

30:40problem uh because even though the

30:43frequency of abreg is the same as the

30:45frequency of Strode and

30:48slooh now you might say um okay well

30:51granted uh I don't use smote all the

30:54time but it's not as if I use the verb

30:56to Smite in uh every conversation either

30:59but the theory predicts that an

31:00irregular can be um an infrequent

31:03irregular can sound strange even when

31:05the verb itself is familiar which is

31:08what you would expect if in an irregular

31:10the verb and its past tense form are

31:13separate entries in memory one of which

31:15can be strong while the other one is

31:17weak take for example the the verb to

31:20forego which is reasonably uh common

31:24especially in sarcastic expressions like

31:26uh to for go the pleasure of as in the

31:28following sentence you'll excuse me if I

31:31forgo the pleasure of watching the video

31:32of your wife giving

31:34birth and now if you take this

31:36expression and you force it into the

31:38past tense you get last night I for went

31:41the pleasure of watching herbs vacation

31:43slides which is rather peculiar

31:46similarly It's Perfectly Natural to say

31:48I don't know how she bears that guy but

31:51I don't know how she bore that guy is

31:53almost

31:55unintelligible you might say I dig the

31:57doors man but you probably wouldn't say

31:59in the 60s your mother and I dug the

32:01doors son uh and here's an example that

32:04I recently clipped out of the newspaper

32:06from the comic strip called zits there

32:08two teenagers one says to the other this

32:10week totally bit bit okay this week

32:15bited that can't be right either this

32:17week has totally bitten almost not quite

32:21back on Monday I didn't know this week

32:23was going to bite so bad I hate

32:25conjugating irregular vulgarity

32:29note however that there's no problem

32:31conjugating regular vulgarities if the

32:33teenager said this week totally sucked

32:36then there would be no comic strip

32:38because there's no problem with the past

32:39tense form and the straightforward uh oh

32:43and um likewise if you choose other

32:46regular verbs that are common in the

32:49present tense but rare in the past tense

32:52um they're still perfectly fine I don't

32:53know how she copes with him I don't know

32:55how she coped with him no no problem she

32:58doesn't suffer fools gladly a uh cliche

33:01or an idiom none of them ever suffered

33:03fools gladly uh no problem again the

33:06explanation is that with irregular forms

33:08you've got two different entries in

33:10memory which can part company in terms

33:12of their familiarity one of them can be

33:15strong while the other one is faint

33:18whereas for an irregular you don't have

33:20to store a separate past tense form you

33:22just create it whenever you need it and

33:24so the past tense form inherits whatever

33:26sense of familiarity or unfamiliarity

33:30had accured to the verb itself well

33:33that's if that's a an explanation of how

33:35we tend to get regulars where do the

33:37Irregulars come from the general answer

33:40is that irregular forms are the fossils

33:42of dead rules Now by symmetrical logic

33:46if uh irregular forms depend on memory

33:50and are uh vulnerable in those

33:52circumstances in which memory is fragile

33:55then if regular forms depend on rule on

33:57a rule they should be vulnerable

33:59whenever a rule is fragile and a rule

34:02can be fragile when they it becomes too

34:05complicated or obscure for a generation

34:07of children to figure out um and indeed

34:10most of our irregular vowel change

34:13patterns come from rules that were

34:15active in the minds of people who lived

34:175,500 years ago the uh Proto

34:21indo-europeans For Whom the past tense

34:23of s was uh s giving us sink sign today

34:27and likewise bear bore was a rule

34:30governed form in their language and now

34:32is memorized uh today well what causes

34:36such a transition why would a perfectly

34:38good rule die out let me give you an

34:40illustration from a more recent case and

34:42one that's a little bit easier to follow

34:45um in the Middle English period uh the

34:49past tense rule was alive and well but

34:51you got to keep in mind that in those

34:53days people were into phonetic spelling

34:55and the spelling of English words

34:57reflected their pronunciation much more

34:59than it does today so ke P was actually

35:03pronounced uh Cape with a long a sound

35:06uh and the rule that added Ed it was

35:09then spelled with a t but it's the same

35:11rule that we have today there was a

35:13second rule in the language a rule that

35:15would shorten the vowel whenever you

35:18glommed on some extra stuff at the end

35:20of a syllable so caped would then get

35:23shortened to kept there this is a common

35:26kind of rule in languages because a

35:28syllable is a unit of timing in speech

35:31if you add a whole bunch of extra junk

35:33to the end of a syllable you tend to

35:35shrink or compress the vowel to keep the

35:38syllable within one tick of the speech

35:41metronome and that's why we have

35:43families of forms generated by these old

35:45rules like sleep slept creep crept feel

35:47felt and mean meant and it applied

35:49across the language and that's why we

35:51have forms like sheep Shepherd Christ

35:53Christmas deep depth at 55 and so on but

35:57then something happened in the 15th

35:59century in a revolution called the Great

36:02Vowel Shift people started to scramble

36:04their pronunciation of the long vowels

36:07what used to be pronounced a was now e

36:10what used to be e was now I and so on

36:13the result was that two forms that used

36:15to be perfectly obviously related kep

36:19and kept no longer were related but had

36:22qualitatively different vowels e and e

36:27uh the shortening rule died because

36:29children could no longer figure out how

36:30to derive one from the other because now

36:32they were completely different in kind

36:35and how we know that is that new words

36:37that entered the language after the

36:39Great Vowel Shift no longer underwent

36:41shortening rule we have perfectly

36:44regular forms like peep peeped from 1460

36:47seep seeped from 1790 leaving at behind

36:51as fossils all of these forms that

36:53formerly were generated in a predictable

36:56Way by rule

36:58well this leads to a more general

36:59question of the nature of language which

37:02is why irregular words sometimes show up

37:05with regular forms a uh puzzle that has

37:08long preoccupied the various language

37:11mavens uh word Watchers verb ofor uh

37:15guardians of proper style and so on for

37:18example you might say all my daughter's

37:20friends are low lives you wouldn't say

37:23all my daughter's friends are low lives

37:25even though the ordinary irregular

37:27plural of life is lives one might say

37:30I'm sick of dealing with all the Mickey

37:31Mouses in this organization not the

37:34Mickey

37:35mice um in the 20 years since the Sony

37:38Walkman uh was introduced no one really

37:42feels comfortable uh with the plural

37:44Walkman and uh some people like the

37:46owner of this Electronics shop actually

37:49bent the regular plural Walkman into the

37:51tubing of a neon sign let me give you

37:55one other example of this class of

37:56puzzles that's illustrated by two little

37:59Leaguers who have a lot of time on their

38:01hands as they're sitting on the bench

38:03why is home plate called that when it

38:05doesn't even resemble a plate why do

38:07they call it a strike when you've

38:09actually missed the ball and haven't hit

38:10anything at all plus why does a baseball

38:13manager wear a uniform when he never

38:15plays and why do they say a batter flyed

38:18out instead of flew out indeed no mere

38:21mortal has ever flown out to center

38:25field well

38:27the first thing that this phenomenon

38:29shows is that sound alone can't be the

38:32input to the inflection process because

38:35the same sound can go in one end of the

38:37Box such as fly and come out the other

38:40other end of the Box either as flyed or

38:43flew depending on some extra input and

38:46the question is what is that extra input

38:50the most popular theory is the extra

38:52input is meaning that the problem with

38:54low life and Mickey Mouse and Walkman

38:57and fly fly out is that you've stretched

39:00the original meaning of a word and when

39:02you do you weaken the associations to

39:05any irregular form stored in memory and

39:07you switch over to the

39:09regular the um problem with a theory is

39:13that

39:14um not to put too fine a point on it but

39:17that it's wrong that 99% of the time in

39:21which you stretch a word's meaning The

39:24Irregular form comes along unscathed bed

39:27for example in metaphors uh where you

39:30obviously by definition stretch the

39:31meaning of a word you never by making a

39:35metaphor alone lose an irregular man men

39:38chess man Chessmen not chess man's

39:42similarly Straw Men snowmen saw teeth

39:45God's children and so on in idioms uh

39:48say to catch a cold is a considerable

39:50stretch of meaning from the ordinary

39:52sense of the word catch but nonetheless

39:54the past tense is not catch to cold but

39:56caught a cold despite that tenuous

39:58threat of meaning similarly we get cut a

40:01deal not cut it a deal took a leak

40:03bought the farm hit the fan blew them

40:04off came off well put out went nuts got

40:07a life had a cow literally hundreds and

40:09hundreds of them all of which are

40:11perfectly happy to bring their irregular

40:14form along the a better theory is that

40:17the missing input is grammatical

40:19structure now what does that mean well

40:21remember that the point of grammar is to

40:23allow people to compute the properties

40:25of a new word from the properties of old

40:27words in the way that they're arranged

40:30the problem with regularized Irregulars

40:32is that they have to opt out of this

40:34scheme they have a structure that

40:36doesn't allow information about an old

40:38word in memory to apply to the new word

40:41let me uh now explain what I meant by

40:44that here's how we ordinarily build

40:46words according to grammatical

40:48Rules start off for example with the uh

40:51ordinary verb uh to eat with its uh

40:55sound its meaning and its irregular past

40:58tense form We join it with a prefix over

41:01to get a new word overeat and the

41:03question is how do we know how to use

41:05the word overeat or in the notation what

41:08do we put up here in this slot based on

41:11everything that goes down here well the

41:13answer is easy

41:15the properties of the new word come from

41:18the properties of a special entity

41:21called the head which is the rightmost

41:24uh morphe inside the word and the

41:28information stored with the rightmost

41:30word percolates up along this pathway

41:32and it applies to the word as a whole so

41:35for example what is the part of speech

41:37of overeat what kind of word is it well

41:39it's a verb because eat is a verb and

41:41that information floats upstairs what's

41:44the meaning of overeat it's a kind of

41:46eating eating too much because the

41:48meaning of eat is e finally what's the

41:52past tense of ovat it's over eight

41:55because the past tense of eat is eight

41:57and that information percolates uh

41:59upwards let me walk you through another

42:01example start out with the ordinary noun

42:04uh man with its sound its meaning and

42:06its irregular plural men join it to the

42:09verb work to form a new word Workman how

42:12do we know how to use the word uh

42:14Workman well we get the information from

42:17the rightmost word inside it the head

42:19man and it transfers upstairs along the

42:22right hand Edge so a Workman is a noun

42:25because man is a noun the meaning of

42:28workman is a kind of man a man who works

42:32because the meaning of Manan is man and

42:34the plural of workman is workmen because

42:37the plural of man is men and that

42:39information uh gets transferred

42:42upstairs but some words can't be allowed

42:45to get their properties from their

42:47rightmost element if they're going to

42:48work the way the speaker wants them to

42:50work the usual pathway has to be blocked

42:55when it is blocked

42:57the any irregular form is trapped in

43:00memory and can't be passed upstairs to

43:03the whole word the regular rule steps in

43:06as the default okay and this explains

43:09all of the funny examples that I've

43:11mentioned so far plus many others let's

43:14start out with low lives the thing about

43:16low life is that

43:18it's not a kind of life the way a

43:22Workman is a kind of man or overeating

43:24is a kind of eating a low life is a kind

43:27of person namely a person who has or

43:30leads a low life so when you form it

43:34start out with the ordinary noun life

43:36join it to the adjective low to form low

43:38life how do you know how to use it well

43:41you can't apply the usual mechanism

43:44because then a low life would be a kind

43:46of life which is not what you want it to

43:47mean so you have to erect a barrier the

43:50irregular plural stored in memory with

43:53life has no way of bubbling up to the

43:56uh topmost node and so you default to

43:59the uh regular and you get low lives

44:01instead of low lives and that happens

44:04whenever you have a compound that works

44:06in this way a still life for example is

44:08also not a kind of life but a kind of

44:10painting and that's why we say still

44:12lives not still lives sabertooths not a

44:15kind of tooth but a kind of cat flat

44:19foot not a kind of foot but a h slang

44:21term for a policeman hence uh plural

44:24flat foots and that explains uh the

44:27Walkman uh which is not a kind of man in

44:30the way that a Workman is a kind of man

44:33incidentally the Sony Corporation has an

44:35official answer to the question of

44:36what's the correct plural of wman the

44:39answer is wman brand personal stereos uh

44:42in the interests of trademark protection

44:44they don't want the term to be uh

44:46pluralized uh which would imply that

44:48it's generic and hence usable by

44:51competitors um now Mickey Mouse is uh

44:55also has to opt out of the usual scheme

44:57because it's a noun based on a name or

45:00an eponym start out with the English

45:02word for mus musculus namely Mouse Walt

45:05Disney turned that noun into a name by

45:08concatenating it with the name Mickey

45:10then an ordinary slang that got

45:13converted back into a noun but this time

45:15a noun that refers to a fool or a

45:18simpleton uh the that means that the

45:20usual pathway has to be blocked once

45:23when Walt Disney turned a noun into a

45:25name because ordinarily nouns give rise

45:27to new nouns not to something completely

45:30different like a name and again it had

45:32to be erected when in ordinary slang the

45:35name was converted back into a noun

45:37because ordinarily new names uh old

45:39names give you new names with the

45:42pathway block there's no way for the

45:44irregular plural mice to travel upward

45:47and hence you default to the regular and

45:50get Mickey Mouses again this is quite

45:52General whenever you pluralize a name in

45:54Toronto a uh hockey player is called a

45:57maple leaf and when six of them skate

45:59onto the ice they are the Maple Leafs

46:01not the Maple Leaves Rena used to export

46:05a car called the elf and a bunch of them

46:07in a lot was not a horde of elves but a

46:10bunch of elves you might say Michael

46:12Keaton starred in the first two uh

46:14Batmans not the first two

46:16Batman and you might say we're having

46:19Julia Child and her husband over for

46:21dinner you know the Childs are really

46:23great Cooks not the children are really

46:25grape

46:27cooks and finally we get to flying out

46:30where here the principle is uh well

46:33explained in the following dialogue

46:35between uh Calvin and his toy tiger

46:38Hobbs uh Calvin says I like to verb

46:41words what I take nouns and adjectives

46:45and use them as verbs remember when

46:47access was a thing now it's something

46:49you do it got verbed verbing weirds

46:52language maybe we can event eventually

46:55make language a complete impediment to

46:58understanding now in fact verbing uh

47:00doesn't make language a complete

47:02impediment to understanding but follows

47:04the scheme I've explained uh perfectly

47:06um the thing about flying uh out in

47:09baseball is that it means to hit a fly

47:12it's a verb that comes from a noun start

47:15out with the regular verb fly to slip

47:18the sirly bonds of Earth and dance the

47:20sky on laughter silvered Wings in

47:22baseball that c converted into a noun a

47:25fly as in a Fly ball or a pop fly

47:28meaning a ball hit on a uh conspicuously

47:32parabolic trajectory that got converted

47:35back into a verb to make an out by

47:37hitting a fly and so we have a verb from

47:40a noun from a verb the ordinary pathway

47:43has to be blocked had to have been

47:45blocked when a fly was created because

47:48ordinary ver ordinarily verbs give rise

47:50to verbs not nouns had to be blocked a

47:52second time when the noun got converted

47:54back into a verb because ordinarily

47:56nouns be nouns that means that flu and

48:00flown are trapped here in memory and

48:02have no way of percolating up and

48:04speakers default to the regular giving

48:07flly again that happens whenever you

48:09have a verb from a noun if Us in hockey

48:13someone uh decapitates an opposing

48:15player and is sent to the Penalty Box

48:17for 2 minutes for high sticking then we

48:20say that he High sticked the goalie not

48:22that he High stuck him because it comes

48:24from the noun a stick you'd say Ventura

48:26Grand standed to the audience played to

48:29the grandstand a noun not Grand stood

48:31and Powell ringed the city with

48:33artillery not rang or rung because this

48:36version of the verb uh to ring means to

48:38form a ring around again a noun has been

48:41verbed to give rise to it let me turn

48:45now to Childhood and to the phenomenon

48:46that I mentioned way at the beginning of

48:48the talk that's Illustrated in the

48:49following cartoon mommy dolly hitted me

48:53Dolly hit me you too boy she's in

48:56trouble uh this is the phenomenon of

48:59children

49:00overgeneralizing uh the Ed to forms that

49:03don't ordinarily take it to produce

49:05errors such as we holded the baby

49:07rabbits the alligator go klunk Horton

49:10here to who or my brother got sick and

49:13puked

49:14it now I think there's a simple

49:16explanation that children's memory

49:18retrieval is less reliable than adults

49:21not because children have a bad memory

49:23but because they haven't lived as long

49:25that's what being a child means if

49:28you're only 3 years old you haven't

49:29heard forms like uh hold held and come

49:32came as often as an adult in cases of

49:35where the child fails to retrieve an

49:37irregular because it's uncommon and the

49:40child has the rule the child applies the

49:42rule to The Irregular to fill the Gap

49:45resulting in an error like here or go

49:48what's the evidence well the evidence

49:51that weak memory is a factor comes from

49:53the discovery uh made by Gary Mar

49:56and uh uh myself that the less often a

49:59parent uses an irregular form the more

50:01often the child will make an error on it

50:03this was true of all 19 of the children

50:06that We examined evidence that the uh

50:09rule has been acquired and that that's a

50:11crucial factor is comes from the fact

50:14long known in child psychology that

50:16errors with the irregular forms don't

50:18appear right away that children go

50:20through a phase in which they don't

50:23produce these errors uh before they pop

50:25out with their first one here's an

50:27example from uh one boy where we have

50:30plotted the percent of irregular past

50:33tense forms that are correct that is

50:35what proportion are uh heard and came

50:38and went as opposed to heared and ComEd

50:40and goed each dot is a month and for

50:43eight months in a row this boy never

50:45produced an error before he came out

50:47with his first one shortly shortly

50:49before his third birthday at which point

50:51he continued to make them at a rate of

50:53about 5% for several years uh afterward

50:56well what happened at this point here

50:58why does a child wake up one morning and

51:00start to say uh Horton here to who um

51:03the answer comes from when you look at

51:05what the child was doing with the

51:06regular verbs in his vocabulary uh

51:09whether he was saying yesterday we walk

51:12uh or yesterday we walked and if you

51:15look at that you see that the boy goes

51:19through a transition from leaving the

51:21regular forms unmarked most of the time

51:23to supplying them more often the not

51:26that is going from saying yesterday we

51:28walked to yesterday we walked and the

51:30transition is exactly the point at which

51:32he makes his first error like ComEd and

51:35heared so this is in a sense a picture

51:38of a that catches the child in an act in

51:40the act of acquiring a rule before he

51:43had the rule when memory came up

51:45empty-handed and he couldn't retrieve

51:48the past tense of say break he had no

51:51choice but to say yesterday we break it

51:54after he has the rule then he it's

51:56possible to say yesterday we breaked it

51:59and so the graph shows the rule coming

52:01into existence both in the child

52:04applying it correctly where it does

52:06belong and applying it incorrectly where

52:08it doesn't belong let me switch now to a

52:11completely different kind of evidence uh

52:13cases where the word system or the rule

52:15system in the brain are directly damaged

52:18by disease or injury the prediction is

52:21that damage to memory for Words should

52:23hurt the Irregulars damage to the brain

52:27system for grammatical computation

52:29should hurt the regulars and uh Michael

52:32Alman and I looked at a uh set of

52:34neological patients and we began with

52:36patients with damage to the this part of

52:39the brain the uh left hemisphere uh on

52:42the side in the parasylvian area towards

52:46the rear which gives rise to a symptom

52:49called anomia typically where the

52:52patient has difficulty retrieving words

52:54they'll be unable to to name objects

52:56they will be um uh use a lot of generic

53:00words like thing and guy and stuff but

53:02nonetheless can be fluent and can speak

53:05in more or less grammatical sentences

53:08but without the words slotted in on time

53:11we found that irregular forms for this

53:13kind of patient were harder than

53:15regulars which is exactly what we would

53:16expect if Irregulars depend on word

53:18memory that the patients make a large

53:21number of Errors like children swimmed

53:23and breaked and and that they are

53:26pretty good at doing a wug test today I

53:28wug yesterday I waged uh because that

53:31does not depend on memory which is what

53:33is impaired we compared them with

53:35patients with damage to the front half

53:37of the brain in the same hemisphere

53:39where uh a stroke will often leave the

53:42patient with a symptom called a

53:44grammatis where the patient will have

53:46difficulty assembling words into

53:48sentences and uh speaking in fluent

53:52grammatical utterances often the

53:54patients will have less severe

53:56difficulty in coughing up individual

53:58words we found as predicted that this

54:00time the Irregulars are easier than

54:03regulars because the easier the

54:04Irregulars depend on word memory which

54:07is more preserved in these patients

54:09there were few or no regularization

54:12errors like swimmed which depend on the

54:14operation of a rule and they could not

54:16do a wag test uh which also depends on

54:18the operation of a rule we got a similar

54:21dissociation between Alzheimer's disease

54:24patients who of course have a severe

54:27impairment in memory often including

54:29memory for words and who therefore find

54:31irregular forms harder as compared to

54:34Parkinson's disease patients who have

54:36difficulty in planning and sequencing

54:38speech and therefore have more problems

54:41with regular verbs which depend on

54:43assembling things in real time well um

54:47before I conclude I just want to mention

54:49one possible confounding uh

54:51factor and that is that regular verbs

54:54are the majority in English um I

54:57mentioned briefly at the very beginning

54:59of the talk that English has uh

55:02thousands and thousands of regular verbs

55:04but only about 165

55:06Irregulars perhaps the regular pattern

55:09is generalized more freely just because

55:11it's most frequent not because it's

55:14computed by a separate system in the

55:16brain um in order to rule out that

55:20possibility you would need to find a

55:22language where a regular or default rule

55:25rule applies to a minority of forms now

55:28note that this at first might look like

55:30an oxymoron because when you learn a

55:32language often the teacher will simply

55:34equate the regular form with the one

55:37that's most common in the language but

55:40in the way that I've been using regular

55:42it doesn't apply to the statistics of

55:44words in the language but to a bit of

55:46psychology namely whatever operation the

55:49speaker applies when memory comes up

55:52empty-handed and so in theory there

55:55could be a language in which a regular

55:57rule only applied to a minority of forms

56:00the question is could such a language

56:02exist in reality could there be a

56:04language that's so malicious so Twisted

56:10so perverse that would actually Force

56:12its speakers to memorize by rote a

56:16majority of the conjugational and

56:18declensional forms in the language well

56:21I going to read you now a quote from an

56:23essay by Mark Twain

56:27called the horrors of the German

56:30language a person who has not studied

56:33German can form no idea of what a

56:34perplexing language it is one is one has

56:37washed about in it hither and thither in

56:39the most helpless way and when at last

56:41he thinks he has captured a rule which

56:43offers firm ground to take a rest on

56:45amid the general rage and turmoil of the

56:4810 parts of speech he turns over the

56:50page and reads let the people make

56:52careful note of the following exceptions

56:54he runs his eye down and finds there are

56:57more exceptions to the rule than

56:59instances of it perfect and indeed uh

57:03German has uh three kinds of participles

57:06that they it forces its Learners to cope

57:09with ones with a vowel change and en

57:11which are uh the vowel changes are

57:14unpredictable hence irregular ones with

57:17an unpredictable vowel change and T the

57:19so-called mixed verbs also irregular and

57:22finally participles that simply add the

57:24T which are regular the uh plural system

57:28is even more horrifying with eight kinds

57:31of plurals four different suffixes uh e

57:35r en and S some plurals that don't have

57:38a suffix and then just to keep Learners

57:39on their toes uh some of them can

57:42unpredictably change the vowel in the

57:44process called umlout um nonetheless

57:47this is what uh Gary Marcus and I call

57:50the exception that proves the rule

57:53because despite a huge difference in the

57:56statistics of English versus German Ed

57:59being uh applying to 86% of the top

58:03thousand verbs in English and only 45%

58:05of the top thousand verbs in German

58:08psychologically they behave in virtually

58:10the same way so we use the Ed for rare

58:14verbs like ablated where we couldn't

58:16have memorized the past tense form

58:18German speakers use T for rare verbs

58:21such as gtit where they couldn't have

58:22memorized the past tense form soldered

58:26we use it for weird verbs that uh can't

58:28be analogized from something similar in

58:30memory German speakers use it for weird

58:33verbs as in a g PL PL by the way is

58:36German for

58:40plum in English we verb things and when

58:43we do we use the Ed as in fed out in

58:46German you can also verb things and they

58:49use it for uh the T for verbs from nouns

58:52as in gous housed and English-speaking

58:55children say singed German speaking

58:58children say uh gasin the plural system

59:01offers an even more dramatic contrast uh

59:0599.6% of English nouns take s only 7% of

59:09German nouns take s nonetheless we have

59:12plumps they have plows we have the Julia

59:15Childs they have uh Thomas man and his

59:18wife uh Mrs man D Thomas mans not D

59:21Thomas

59:23Menor we enjoy

59:25uh films about the cape Crusader

59:27Batman's they enjoy films about uh The

59:31Alchemist F uh

59:34FS we import eles they export

59:38Cadets English-speaking children say

59:40men's germane speaking children say mans

59:43despite the fact that they've only heard

59:45a smattering of nouns with s on it this

59:48leads me to the final point which is why

59:51English and German are similar in

59:52grammar but different in number numbers

59:55and for that you need a mixture of

59:57history and

59:58psychology in protog Germanic the

1:00:01ancestor of English and German spoken

1:00:03more than 2,000 years ago a majority of

1:00:05verbs are what we would today call

1:00:08irregular but even then an ancestor of

1:00:11the Ed or t suffix was used to for words

1:00:14that were borrowed from other languages

1:00:16and hence had strange sounds and for

1:00:20derivations from other grammatical

1:00:22categories it just so happens that an

1:00:24English the major growth areas for verbs

1:00:27in the next couple of Millennia were

1:00:30loans from French because of 1066 and

1:00:33all that when William the Conqueror

1:00:35invaded and forced the French language

1:00:37on the British Isles for the next couple

1:00:39of centuries and Latin because of the

1:00:42influence of the church and later

1:00:44Renaissance Scholars I've estimated that

1:00:46about 60% of English verbs came into the

1:00:49language from French and Latin and also

1:00:52since we like to verb things uh we find

1:00:55that another 20% of our verbs were uh

1:00:58originally nouns or adjectives note that

1:01:01both kinds of verbs had to be regular

1:01:04according to the logic of grammar that

1:01:06I've been sketching out throughout this

1:01:07talk so it's not that a majority of

1:01:11verbs are regular and that pounds the

1:01:13regular pattern into people's heads

1:01:15leading them to use the regular as the

1:01:18default as the uh pattern associator

1:01:21Theory would have it but rather the

1:01:23history tells us that that's exactly

1:01:25backwards that instead speakers have

1:01:28been using the regular as the default

1:01:30literally for thousands of years and

1:01:32that's why the majority of verbs uh in

1:01:35English are regular it's because the

1:01:37regular rule got first dibs on almost

1:01:39all of the new arrivals of the last two

1:01:42Millennia so to sum up despite the

1:01:45identical function of regular and

1:01:46irregular forms just two ways of talking

1:01:49about something that happened in the

1:01:51past or more than one of something we

1:01:53find that people avoid Irregulars and

1:01:56apply the regular suffix in a variety of

1:01:58circumstances that have nothing in

1:02:00common except a failure of access to

1:02:02information in memory these include rare

1:02:06words like abrogated and chided

1:02:09difficult to analogize words like

1:02:11plumped and friled words with

1:02:13inaccessible Roots like low lifes and

1:02:15flyed out words poorly recalled by

1:02:17children as in break and holded and

1:02:19words poorly recalled by patients with

1:02:21disorders of word retrieval such as a IA

1:02:24and Alzheimer's

1:02:26disease it suggests that regular

1:02:28inflection is computed by a mental

1:02:30operation that does not need access to

1:02:33the contents of memory namely a symbol

1:02:35combination rule which can step in as

1:02:37the default rules therefore free us from

1:02:40the constraints of

1:02:42memory therefore I'd like to suggest

1:02:45that we've identified distinct mental

1:02:47mechanisms that implement the two

1:02:49principles of language responsible for

1:02:51its vast expressive power memory for the

1:02:54arbitrary sign underlying the word and

1:02:57symbol combination for the infinite use

1:02:59of finite media underlying grammatical

1:03:02rules thank you very

1:03:15much and are there any questions I think

1:03:18a microphone has been set up and I've

1:03:20been asked to ask you to uh step up to

1:03:23the microphone so so that everyone else

1:03:25can hear your

1:03:33question has anyone studied the

1:03:35different effects of the injury to two

1:03:38parts of the brain on people who speak

1:03:40German people who speak German

1:03:46um let's see my our collaborators in

1:03:49Germany Harold Clauson and Richard Visa

1:03:52are in the process of doing that um

1:03:54but I they have not published their

1:03:56results and I can't um I can't tell you

1:03:59what they found although it's an

1:04:01excellent question and that one would

1:04:03expect similar patterns that you find in

1:04:06English again despite the vast

1:04:08differences in the statistics so that's

1:04:10exactly the right kind of question to

1:04:12further test the theory and I only wish

1:04:14I could give you the

1:04:15answer yes thank you so with my limited

1:04:18thought process I'm trying to frame an

1:04:20intelligent question here um I was

1:04:23thinking oh it's a two-part question

1:04:25it's probably not even connected but

1:04:29number one is there any sense that you

1:04:30can extrapolate to all human speech and

1:04:34all the processes and all the languages

1:04:35because I was thinking for example about

1:04:38languages with inflections like Chinese

1:04:41but more to the point I was thinking of

1:04:44a

1:04:45language that maybe

1:04:47Works in a much simpler and more logical

1:04:50way Hebrew where n over 90% of the words

1:04:53are formed from trilet Roots where

1:04:55there's a limited number of conjugations

1:04:57where there are no tricks of spelling

1:04:59where you can conjugate out uh just

1:05:02using uh it's almost mathematical as you

1:05:05know yeah so I wonder if you'd comment

1:05:07on that yes and in fact I I recently

1:05:09published a paper with uh the um

1:05:12psychologist Iris barent applying these

1:05:14ideas to Hebrew and it works uh in a

1:05:17number of ways it works quite well um in

1:05:19particular uh while uh the English the

1:05:23Hebrew plural system again has some

1:05:25rules such as masculine uh nouns take IM

1:05:29uh feminine nouns take but there are a

1:05:32handful of exceptions and the exceptions

1:05:36therefore the Irregulars which have to

1:05:37be memorized behave very much like the

1:05:40English ones so for example uh if I can

1:05:42remember one of our um instances uh kir

1:05:46means wall and ordinarily uh you'd

1:05:49expect the um plural to be uh Kim but

1:05:54it's an irregular form in the plural is

1:05:56kirot however if I if I have the example

1:05:59right if there are any Hebrew speakers

1:06:00you can in the audience you can correct

1:06:01me but if you change it to say Mr and

1:06:05Mrs Kier you create turn the noun into a

1:06:08name now you refer to them as the Kim

1:06:12not the kirot uh likewise if you have

1:06:15the word now as a lone word from another

1:06:18language and you say you know the French

1:06:19they put creme Cassis into champagne and

1:06:22they call it a kir would you like a

1:06:24couple of them then Hebrew speakers

1:06:25again say a Kim exactly like the flly

1:06:28out in the low lives uh in English so

1:06:31despite the fact as you point out that

1:06:33there are that Hebrew has no well

1:06:36documented historical connection to

1:06:38English it's not a Germanic or even an

1:06:40Indo-European language despite the fact

1:06:43that you assemble words in Hebrew not by

1:06:45joining things end to end by but by

1:06:48sticking vowels inside of slots inside

1:06:51of uh Roots nonetheless the logic of

1:06:54regularity and irregularity seems to be

1:06:56quite comparable and the even nicer

1:06:58punchline is that um in Hebrew the facts

1:07:02that I mentioned about um how German has

1:07:05a very different statistical pattern to

1:07:07English but nonetheless obeys the same

1:07:09logic that is true to an even greater

1:07:12extent in Hebrew where a lot of the

1:07:14sound patterning that we see in English

1:07:16like ring rang Sing sang drink drank

1:07:19doesn't apply to Hebrew but nonetheless

1:07:22you get the same interaction between the

1:07:24rule governed in the memorized

1:07:27forms has anything that uh in in your

1:07:30studies caused you to uh form a view

1:07:33about the way we teach language to

1:07:35children and whether it's being taught

1:07:37properly um certainly nothing that I've

1:07:39talked about today would be directly

1:07:41applicable you you would certainly

1:07:43expect that um since there is some

1:07:46evidence that the ability to acquire

1:07:48language instinctively um declines with

1:07:50age particularly um in uh late childhood

1:07:54and early adulthood uh after puberty it

1:07:56becomes increasingly difficult to

1:07:58acquire the syntax and sound pattern of

1:08:01a foreign language uh effortlessly that

1:08:04a lot of what ordinary kids um have to

1:08:07do with irregular forms adults might

1:08:10even have to do with regular forms that

1:08:12is there's a lot more memorization of

1:08:15cases that are rule governed but when

1:08:17you're a child it's easier to discern

1:08:19the rule when you're an adult you might

1:08:22have to do a lot more uh memorizing and

1:08:25and um adults often will Mis memorize

1:08:28forms I have a colleague a distinguished

1:08:31professor at MIT born in Italy who uh

1:08:34consistently says uh he's choosing it uh

1:08:36for example an irregular form but not

1:08:38the right

1:08:42one I was wondering if you would um

1:08:45comment on also that some were many many

1:08:48sounds become multiple meanings and duck

1:08:50is a pretty good example that you were

1:08:51using at the beginning and how this

1:08:54comes about and then your mind has to

1:08:56separate out the appropriate one yeah

1:08:58this it it's true that the um most

1:09:01common words in a language tend to have

1:09:04multiple meanings if you look up a word

1:09:06like set in the dictionary there can be

1:09:09up to a 100 different meanings listed

1:09:11for it whereas a low lower Frequency

1:09:13Word like Matrix or triangulate might

1:09:16have only one or two meanings this is a

1:09:19one of the reasons that computer

1:09:21language understanding systems are still

1:09:22so primitive um that we apply our common

1:09:27sense to winnow out all of the

1:09:30inappropriate meanings whereas computers

1:09:32which are bereft of Common Sense uh will

1:09:36app literally not know which of the many

1:09:38meanings to uh to use fortunately um as

1:09:42I mentioned in this particular

1:09:44circumscribed domain meaning has a uh

1:09:47very narrow role in general when you

1:09:50only change the meaning of a word

1:09:53without changing ing its grammatical

1:09:54structure all of the Irregulars come

1:09:57along for the ride so of

1:10:00the 20 or however many uh definitions

1:10:04there are of set in the dictionary all

1:10:07120 of them are irregular today I set

1:10:10yesterday I set um the only case in

1:10:13which a meaning change interacts with

1:10:14anything that I've said is when the

1:10:16meaning change also changes the um

1:10:19grammatical structure such as a name to

1:10:21a noun a noun to a name a verb to a noun

1:10:24and so

1:10:25on yes uh with words that rhyme and have

1:10:31similar meanings like Dash crash

1:10:35smash whether it's a violent um is there

1:10:39anything you can say about those or

1:10:40there any rules or just whatever you

1:10:43could say yeah uh forms like automat PF

1:10:47like Dash crash smash uh and so on or

1:10:50phonetic symbolism sound symbolism cases

1:10:53where you're not actually talking about

1:10:55a noise but nonetheless there's

1:10:57something about the word that feels

1:10:59right G given what it means like flutter

1:11:03where flutter you can't hear something

1:11:06fluttering but nonetheless the motion of

1:11:09your tongue calls to mind the actual

1:11:11meaning or

1:11:12cantankerous um sneer snob snoody uh and

1:11:17so on uh listless lazy lethargic they're

1:11:22often these families of words

1:11:24first of all they are these families are

1:11:27counter examples to s's principle of the

1:11:30arbitrary sign because there's at least

1:11:32a little bit of the sound that isn't

1:11:35completely arbitrarily paired with the

1:11:37meaning um also these families tend not

1:11:40to be governed by a rule there isn't a

1:11:43rule in English that says if a word

1:11:44begins with SN then it refers to

1:11:48snobbishness or if it begins with uh L

1:11:51it refers to um

1:11:54low energy um it's more statistical and

1:11:57the generalizations are made in a uh

1:12:01probabilistic manner much like um spling

1:12:05Spang dizzy Deans blind blound and so on

1:12:08and so I suspect that the generalization

1:12:10of a sound to a word with a similar

1:12:13meaning uh might be due to the same

1:12:17property in memory that allows us to

1:12:19generalize from uh drink drank to spling

1:12:22Spang namely the fact that similar

1:12:24sounds literally overlap in the brain

1:12:27and that which is associated with One

1:12:28automatically transfers to the other the

1:12:30pattern associating property of

1:12:34memory do German children discern the

1:12:37rule from the speech they hear around

1:12:38them or are they taught it explicitly

1:12:40and if the first how do they discern it

1:12:42if there's not a statistical yeah basis

1:12:44for it um they must discern it obviously

1:12:46not explicitly by being taught um

1:12:50likewise as in in English children of

1:12:52that age aren't given given uh grammar

1:12:54lessons um we don't know for sure how

1:12:58children do it it can't really be

1:13:00statistically in the sense of sheer

1:13:02number of words that exemplify a pattern

1:13:04because in German the words the nouns

1:13:07with s are a minority nonetheless it's

1:13:10one of the two patterns that the German

1:13:12children are willing to generalize um we

1:13:16suspect that um it may be that children

1:13:18use the kinds of information that are a

1:13:20little bit similar to the ones that a

1:13:21linguist would use in deciding whether

1:13:24something is truly regular namely if

1:13:27you're a German speaking child trying to

1:13:29decide whether say s or e r is the uh

1:13:33regular a couple of the tip offs are the

1:13:36fact that s applies to weird sounding

1:13:38words like Hobby and outto um and

1:13:41therefore are unlikely to be stored

1:13:45together with the ending As Natural

1:13:47words in the language it applies to

1:13:49aatopia and if you recognize the sound

1:13:53in a word then it's got some extra stuff

1:13:55stock onto the end you can infer that

1:13:58that stuff was added to the word rather

1:14:00than being a part of the word um it

1:14:02could be due to words that are um uh

1:14:07heterogeneous in sound that all take the

1:14:10same ending and so uh that is evidence

1:14:14that that ending applies regardless of

1:14:16sound and our uh we uh Gary Marcus and I

1:14:20have looked at at least in the case of

1:14:21English what kind of words do children

1:14:24of that age have in their vocabulary do

1:14:27they have automa PE words do they have

1:14:30words with unusual sounds with po

1:14:32multiple syllables and so on and the

1:14:34answer is that they do so we don't know

1:14:37that children use the structure of words

1:14:39as evidence for an ending being applied

1:14:43by rule but if they're if they were

1:14:45equipped to do so the information would

1:14:48be there they wouldn't need Clairvoyance

1:14:50or ESP they could figure it out

1:14:56are some of the rules that you mentioned

1:14:58uh like the tendency to use regular

1:15:00endings for loaned words common to all

1:15:03languages or virtually all if so why are

1:15:06they for example in our genome these

1:15:09rules yeah um I I would say that that's

1:15:13kind of more or less true I wouldn't say

1:15:15it's exactly true but in General Lone

1:15:18word in in many languages in fact in all

1:15:21the languages that I've looked at and

1:15:23I've tried to sample ones that were from

1:15:25very historically and geographically

1:15:27unrelated language families a lone word

1:15:31from another language will take the

1:15:32regular ending a uh word converted from

1:15:36another category very often will take

1:15:38the regular ending U and and so on so

1:15:41the pattern that is the fact that it's

1:15:44true in eight languages doesn't mean it

1:15:46applies to all 6,000 languages but it's

1:15:49interesting that in languages as far

1:15:51flung as Hebrew Chinese um ninian

1:15:55languages this pattern more or less

1:15:57seems to hold and it wouldn't be

1:16:00directly coded in the genome in the

1:16:01sense that there'd be a a gene for the

1:16:03regular past tense but it could be that

1:16:06the way that the genome organizes the

1:16:10language system in the brain as the

1:16:11brain develops um gives rise to a

1:16:14certain kind of rooting diagram sort of

1:16:16the how the boxes and arrows are set up

1:16:19might be coded in the genome and it's a

1:16:22consequence of what information is fed

1:16:25into which process that gives rise to

1:16:28these quirks and phenomena for example

1:16:31the fact that the um Regular seems to be

1:16:35added kind of as the last step in the

1:16:38assembly line of building a word so that

1:16:40you build a word you add stuff you

1:16:42fiddle with it and when you're just done

1:16:45and ready to stick it into a sentence

1:16:46that's when the Ed or the S gets added

1:16:48on that kind of information processing

1:16:52architecture

1:16:53is what we're guessing is coded in the

1:16:55in the genome certainly nothing as

1:16:57specific as a particular suffix a

1:16:59particular rule a particular process in

1:17:01in the

1:17:06language there are no verb conjugations

1:17:09or plurals of verbs in Vietnamese and

1:17:11I'm wondering if that's highly unusual

1:17:13in the

1:17:14language um not necessarily um that in

1:17:18Vietnamese and Chinese as well there is

1:17:20no inflection and um the

1:17:25um and languages have a mixture of um

1:17:31Reliance on syntax as you have in

1:17:33English and Chinese where most of the

1:17:35action consists of stringing words

1:17:37together in phrases and Reliance on

1:17:40morphology or building words where most

1:17:42of the action consists of stringing

1:17:44together lots of prefixes and suffixes

1:17:46in a word English is mixed we have some

1:17:49inflection adding Ed adding s iing but

1:17:52we rely more on syntax the claim um of

1:17:56the the theory that I'm making today is

1:17:58that the what all languages do have is a

1:18:02storage mechanism and a combinatorial

1:18:05mechanism and that there's a close

1:18:07relationship between the combinatorial

1:18:09mechanism for words in phrases which is

1:18:12what Chinese goes crazy with and the

1:18:14mechanism for assembling prefixes and

1:18:17suffixes inside a word which is what a

1:18:19language like Latin or many African

1:18:22languages go crazy with uh but that

1:18:24these at the level of psychology and

1:18:26perhaps at the level of Neurology the

1:18:28main distinction is combinatorics versus

1:18:31storage and and uh retrieval is it odd

1:18:34though Vietnamese is written with

1:18:36letters that are similar to the English

1:18:38language and yet pronounced more like

1:18:40Chinese so there's sort of a contrast

1:18:42between which way the grammar develops

1:18:45in general it's an interesting point

1:18:47because it shows that the written form

1:18:48of the language is really more a matter

1:18:51of historical ACC accident than of the

1:18:54inherent logic of the language and

1:18:57writing systems are rare they're recent

1:19:01in history they tend to be um evolve a

1:19:05small number of times from very complex

1:19:07civilizations and then tinkered with and

1:19:09improved over hundreds of years um and

1:19:13they're in a sense psychologically very

1:19:14unnatural they're almost like the

1:19:16internal combustion engine or the you

1:19:19know the cotton gin their inventions and

1:19:21so it just so happens that Vietnamese

1:19:24didn't have an indigenous writing system

1:19:27very late in its history instead of

1:19:29going to the trouble of involving one

1:19:30from scratch it just applied readymade

1:19:33the Roman alphabet but it could have

1:19:35been cilic it could have been the

1:19:38Chinese characters which is what the

1:19:39Japanese uh began with it's kind of

1:19:42whatever was handy depending on which

1:19:45missionaries were around which

1:19:46conquerors which neighbors uh and so on

1:19:49but it there is doesn't necessarily have

1:19:51to be a match between the way the

1:19:53language works and whatever writing

1:19:55system you apply to it thank

1:19:58you you've mentioned the distinct

1:20:02mechanisms for the two different

1:20:05principles of language you've identified

1:20:07does that require still another

1:20:09mechanism to determine which of these

1:20:12two mechanisms to invoke yeah I very um

1:20:16indeed if you have two mechanisms you

1:20:17need something that coordinates them

1:20:19chooses selects or chooses which two

1:20:22utilize well basically um you don't need

1:20:26anything very complicated to choose

1:20:28between them as far as as we can see the

1:20:30idea which I mentioned very briefly and

1:20:32and didn't return to is that in general

1:20:35when you have something in memory it

1:20:37turns off the rule that would generate a

1:20:39corresponding form so if you come up

1:20:42with brought as the past tense of bring

1:20:44that turns off the aded process and so

1:20:48to coordinate these two basically you

1:20:51just need kind of a oneway inhibitory

1:20:54linkage as the memory system says I

1:20:56found something that sends a signal uh

1:20:59turning off the rule box to learn it and

1:21:03to decide where to store it and what

1:21:05mechanism to use is there still

1:21:09another mechanism behind that that is

1:21:12required um no I don't learning process

1:21:14itself um you decide what to invoke

1:21:17whether it will be a rule or before it

1:21:21will be either

1:21:24before it will be used either stored

1:21:28either at according to the rule or the

1:21:30word mechanism how would the brain

1:21:34decide which of these abilities to make

1:21:37use of in the learning process yeah no

1:21:40it's a good question and um as far as we

1:21:42can tell to begin with a child really

1:21:46has no choice but to memorize everything

1:21:47as if it's a word because the rules

1:21:50couldn't possibly be coded in the genome

1:21:52they they differ depending on what

1:21:54language you speak added to form the

1:21:57past tense is not something you could be

1:21:59born with so to begin with the idea is

1:22:02that kids memorize walked the same way

1:22:04they memorize uh uh BR or rang um and in

1:22:09fact we have evidence that that's the

1:22:11case that the that early on at the point

1:22:14I showed you in the graph before the

1:22:15child is generalizing the rule there

1:22:17seems to be very infrequent and sporadic

1:22:20use of regular forms like like played

1:22:23and walked

1:22:25and the uh the hunch is that the child

1:22:29juxtaposes individually memorized pairs

1:22:32like walk walked play played uh talk

1:22:35talked explain explained and so on

1:22:38notices that words come in two ever so

1:22:41slightly different forms is equipped

1:22:44with some kind of algorithm that doesn't

1:22:46just write it off as variety for the

1:22:49spice of life or you know oh Mom she

1:22:52sometimes sticks s's at the end for no

1:22:54possible reason um but rather looks for

1:22:57a rationale for systematic variation why

1:23:00is Mom sometimes adding s let me see

1:23:03what the difference is between when she

1:23:05says dog and when she says dogs aha

1:23:08there are a bunch of them now and the S

1:23:10is there therefore the S is used to

1:23:12indicate a bunch of that gets enshrined

1:23:16as a rule peeled off the individual

1:23:18words then it can be then the child can

1:23:21run a muck with it and apply it every

1:23:23which way that's the general

1:23:28idea can the process of applying the

1:23:31regular

1:23:32form to words that have not or forms

1:23:38rather that have not been memorized or

1:23:40that or where memory fails can can that

1:23:44be applied to the spelling of

1:23:47dyslexics um where I've seen for example

1:23:52went spelled very very often wh NT is

1:23:58that is that an application of the

1:24:01regular pattern of all of the question

1:24:03words that are learned early on that

1:24:05begin with wh and because the sounds is

1:24:08what is that why um and there are many

1:24:11many spelling

1:24:13failures um that seem to follow regular

1:24:16patterns and if that is so um is is

1:24:20there um a a a training technique that

1:24:25you could suggest that could um reduce

1:24:29that yeah um in fact there are many

1:24:32parallels between spelling and um and

1:24:34grammar there are um something like 87%

1:24:38of English words are spelled according

1:24:40to regular rules but then there's this

1:24:42133% of exceptions like o f for of and

1:24:46ey for I and so on the Irregulars tend

1:24:49to be highest in frequency because they

1:24:52have to to be filtered through the

1:24:53memorization of subsequent gener

1:24:55Generations when you have damage to

1:24:57memory you tend to get overgeneral

1:24:59spellings like

1:25:02um um like the one one that you

1:25:04mentioned or say um i e for instead of

1:25:08aisle um and uh conversely when there's

1:25:11a problem in grammatical combination you

1:25:15often have an inability to spell new

1:25:17words like to plam or to Ginge um so

1:25:21there are a number of parallels um and

1:25:25and there must be some psychological

1:25:28commonality um I wouldn't be prepared to

1:25:31say simply because of my own ignorance

1:25:33how you would translate that into a

1:25:35curriculum other than being aware of the

1:25:37fact that a student could spell a word

1:25:39correctly for two very different reasons

1:25:42either by applying a rule or by

1:25:44memorizing it and that you have to sort

1:25:45of diagnose which of the two a student

1:25:48is using moreover that um the the these

1:25:52can be that that uh in cases where

1:25:54there's a misspelling it may not just be

1:25:56random garbage or noise but might be a

1:25:59case of a child over applying a rule to

1:26:02an irregular case so it may not be

1:26:05stupidity laziness sloppiness but one

1:26:08system applying where the other one

1:26:09ordinarily

1:26:11does thank you

1:26:13thank uh this uh question is probably a

1:26:16little bit less technical um I'm raising

1:26:19um um a 2-year-old daughter English and

1:26:21German bilingually and I'm you know

1:26:23hearing your talk I I was like

1:26:25struggling to find some kind of a

1:26:27practical implication on how to best

1:26:30Riser bilingually English and German for

1:26:33example I've noticed it's I'm witnessing

1:26:35firsthand how uh how much easier it is

1:26:38for her to to learn English words for

1:26:40example like one of her first words was

1:26:42bubble and the German word is cphon

1:26:44blaza it's so much more cumbersome is

1:26:47and there are many examples like that

1:26:49and her German really is is totally

1:26:51lagging behind so I was I was struggling

1:26:53to find some kind of a practical

1:26:55implication since you mentioned you know

1:26:57English and German in your talk how to

1:26:59best raise a daughter in you know

1:27:01bilingual in English and German yeah

1:27:04well despite Twain's uh Mark Twain's

1:27:07complaint about the awful German

1:27:08language it's really awful only to

1:27:11adults kids obviously must be doing fine

1:27:14with German otherwise it wouldn't have

1:27:15survived to the present day with all of

1:27:17these multiple plural forms and so on um

1:27:20you know Twain also said i' I'd rather

1:27:22um I'd rather decline two drinks than

1:27:25one adjective in German

1:27:28and but this is two more question two

1:27:31more questions um but the thing is that

1:27:33if kids continue to hear it continue to

1:27:35use it uh then then they they will

1:27:37Master it as they have for you know

1:27:40Generations the trick is uh it's

1:27:43generally kids are a bit faster in

1:27:44coping with two languages when they come

1:27:46from different speakers when Mom speaks

1:27:48one language and dad speaks another that

1:27:50gives them a a little bit of help and

1:27:53they'll generally retain it if they have

1:27:55to use the other language with their

1:27:57peers that if it's just Mom and Dad

1:28:01especially if Mom and Dad are bilingual

1:28:03the child will force the parents to use

1:28:06the dominant language say English

1:28:08whereas if the child goes to summer camp

1:28:11plays with cousins every summer uh has

1:28:13reason to use it with other kids that's

1:28:16a better uh portent of of keeping both

1:28:19languages makes sense thank you okay and

1:28:22and just these these last two and I've

1:28:23been uh asked to bring the proceedings

1:28:26to a close after these two okay I have

1:28:28three unrelated questions they're all

1:28:33brief the first is do you have any idea

1:28:36of what prompted the big vowel reduction

1:28:39in the 15th century and the second is um

1:28:44how do you feel about uh the cobbling

1:28:48together of prefixes suffixes and words

1:28:51the you called it morphol morphology

1:28:54morphology it seems as if it's happening

1:28:57more and more words like dequ or

1:29:03self-actualize um and the third is uh

1:29:08Japanese

1:29:09sounds um is spelled exactly the way

1:29:13it's pronounced in English is that

1:29:15because the language was isolated for so

1:29:19long and when the English decided

1:29:22to translate it it it happened very

1:29:25systematically or you're talking about

1:29:27the the transliteration of Japanese into

1:29:29Roman characters yes oh yeah okay first

1:29:33no one really knows what caused the

1:29:35Great Vowel Shift the two main theories

1:29:37are that it was a kind of uh uh sequence

1:29:41of enhancements that as

1:29:44um because around that time people were

1:29:47swallowing the second syllables of words

1:29:51um and were um the reason that we have

1:29:54all of these crazy silent vowels at the

1:29:57end of words like make M A ke is that it

1:30:00used to be Maka and then the e at the

1:30:03end eventually got dropped alt together

1:30:05because words were becoming more and

1:30:07more similar because of this uh slurring

1:30:09of the second syllable people started to

1:30:11exaggerate differences among vowels to

1:30:14compensate and they started off say with

1:30:16one vowel contrast they exaggerated the

1:30:19difference between them but then the

1:30:21vowel that they exaggerated started to

1:30:22bump up against some second vowel so

1:30:24they had to exaggerate that in a

1:30:26different direction to differentiate it

1:30:28and you got kind of a billiard game

1:30:30where the different vowels got knocked

1:30:31around in space and when all was said

1:30:34and done no one was any better off than

1:30:37when they began but it was all done one

1:30:38vowel at a time the other is that it was

1:30:41kind of social differentiation that as

1:30:44French had vanished as a means of

1:30:46distinguishing the um the beautiful

1:30:49people from the hooy uh you needed some

1:30:52fussy way of speaking in order to show

1:30:54that you were an aristocrat and so

1:30:56people started to uh exaggerate their

1:30:59speech in fancy ways and it could be

1:31:01that both of those theories are right in

1:31:03terms of um Mor uh morphology is there

1:31:07more and more of it um it's something

1:31:09that English has been doing for an

1:31:10awfully long time there are cases in

1:31:12which you know things like you know to

1:31:15prioritize and to you know accessorize

1:31:17and so on can kind of grade on the ears

1:31:20because it's something that Bureau RS

1:31:22and um uh sort of the Dilbert business

1:31:25crowd uh tends to do to impress people

1:31:28with how scientific their approaches uh

1:31:31often though it does add to the

1:31:34expressive power of a language Strunk

1:31:36and white for example were upset about

1:31:38the word to moisturize saying well why

1:31:40can't you just say to moisten but of

1:31:42course anyone who uses a moisturizer

1:31:44knows that moisturizing and moistening

1:31:46aren't the same thing I mean if you

1:31:47moisten your skin you can just use a

1:31:49water pistol uh but moisturiz in means

1:31:52just it's a a completely different

1:31:54concept and so even though some of these

1:31:56forms have lots of syllables they're

1:31:58kind of ugly they do allow us to convey

1:32:01ideas and that's I think one of the

1:32:02reasons they're indispensable and in

1:32:05terms of Japanese the transliter

1:32:07transliterations where you apply one

1:32:10writing system to another language for

1:32:12the benefit of the speakers of the first

1:32:16language they're generally regular

1:32:18simply because that's the way you

1:32:20concoct that's the way you apply the

1:32:21system uh to begin with the irregularity

1:32:24tends to accumulate over centuries as a

1:32:27system is entrenched and doesn't track

1:32:30the changes in pronunciation the

1:32:32language is kind of a the speech is a

1:32:34moving Target but the spelling stays put

1:32:37and so the spelling over centuries

1:32:40becomes more and more irregular compared

1:32:42to the sounds and so that doesn't happen

1:32:44when you artificially extend uh a one

1:32:47writing system to another

1:32:49language and what last question

1:32:52uh the questions related to the great V

1:32:54shift um what do you think are the most

1:32:56powerful forces that change

1:32:59language um and the great Val shift that

1:33:03obviously has the name the great Val

1:33:05shift can you uh give us uh any current

1:33:08examples of something that's significant

1:33:10or any changes in language um from

1:33:13recent times that you can equate to that

1:33:16sure dude um the uh the kind of Valley

1:33:20Valley Girl speak for example uh where

1:33:23we recognize fairly recently a shift in

1:33:27pronunciation or um if you've ever

1:33:30listened to a a person in their 20s uh

1:33:32whenever they use a sentence they

1:33:35pronounce it as if it's a question uh

1:33:37and this is kind of recent uh that would

1:33:41be another example and for all we know

1:33:42that could be put a permanent stamp on

1:33:45the English language as people like me

1:33:47uh die and people who

1:33:50are uh and people who are now in their

1:33:5220s uh out last I understand what you're

1:33:58saying thank you very much thanks to all

1:34:01of

1:34:02[Music]

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