The word of the day for April 7, 2007 is “linguistic” — adjective of or relating to language or the study of human speech including the units, nature, structure, and modification of language.
I wish that I had taken more languages in school, and also that I had made an effort to keep current in the ones I did take. Of course, Latin isn’t much called for these days, but German would probably be useful. If there had been an opportunity to learn Chinese before whatever facility allows children to learn accents and inflections easily, I would have liked my mother to sign me up for that. I don’t think she would have, but I would like to be able to speak Chinese—and Italian, maybe French or Japanese or ... you get the idea.
When I went in Thursday to get my tire fixed, I noticed the mechanic appeared to be having a problem getting my lights and wipers to work correctly. I went into the shop to give him advice, but one of the other mechanics hollered at me that the fellow working on my car was deaf. Well, that’s one way of getting out of listening to unwanted advice. The only words or phrases I can remember in American Sign Language with any confidence do not lend themselves to: “the light switch is on the left side of the dash.” I did call my sister and ask how to tell the mechanic “thank you.” [Her directions worked very well—fingers to the lips move down while saying “thank you.” Like blowing a kiss to the floor, I said. Yes, but without pursing one’s lips, she insisted, and don’t expect him to sign “you’re welcome” because they don’t.] When I attempted the procedure, he did repeat the “thank you” gesture at me, and we grinned at one another like fools for a couple of seconds, so I suppose we understood one another well enough.
The quote for today is from Noam Chomsky (b. 1928), U.S. linguist, philosopher. Current Trends in Linguistics, “Topics in the Theory of Generative Grammar”, p. 11, ed. T. Sebeok
The most striking aspect of linguistic competence is what we may call the ‘creativity of language,’ that is, the speaker’s ability to produce new sentences, sentences that are immediately understood by other speakers although they bear no physical resemblance to sentences which are ‘familiar.’
;^) Jan
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