The LINGUIST List

Here at LL Headquarters, there are a lot of wugs to be seen.  Homemade wug clocks.  Wug magnets.  Wug mugs (say it ten times fast).  Even a couple of wug tattoos.  The adorable little mascot of language acquisition studies is a beloved staple around here.

That is partly why we are so delighted to feature as our Linguist of the Day Dr. Jean Berko Gleason, who in addition to the Wug Test has done a great deal of amazing work in the field of psycholinguistics.  She shares with LINGUIST readers the story of how she came to be a linguist, excerpted here:

“The languages, and the literature we read, The Wild Duck in Norwegian, for instance, and parts of the Mahabharata in Sanskrit were absorbing, but they were not really what I was looking for. Quite by happenstance, I enrolled during my senior year in a new course called the Psychology of Speech and Communication, taught by a young assistant professor named Roger Brown, who had recently arrived from the University of Michigan.  The lectures were a revelation, beautifully organized, and full of startling ideas…”

Read more at the Hall of Heroes!

Tweet

We are pleased to announce that Mamoru Saito is our newest Linguist of the Day!  Dr. Saito is renowned for his work with syntactic theory, comparative syntax, and the structure of Japanese; however, he wasn’t always a prominent syntactician.  Visit the Hall of Heroes to read his tale of how he found his way to linguistics; his story begins:

My path to linguistics was probably a bit unusual. I was already 24 when I started studying linguistics in 1978. I was fortunate to receive three key pieces of advice that led me into the field.

I was stubborn, independent and in retrospect, stupid when I was a teenager in Japan. I pretty much ignored schoolwork and spent much of my time reading novels and philosophy books. That continued until I suddenly felt that there were more things I ought to know and that I wanted to be “taught.”

What were the three pieces of advice?  Read more and find out!

Tweet

We’re proud to announce that our second 2012 Linguist of the Day is Nikolaus Himmelmann!  Dr. Himmelmann is renowned for his work in language documentation, typology, Austronesian and Papuan languages, and more; his story begins:

Before getting to university, I had never heard of linguistics as an academic discipline and only found out about it during my first term, when I was studying English and law. As part of the English program, I had to take an introduction to (English) linguistics and another class on the linguistic analysis of texts (nowadays widely generally known as discourse analysis). And I was immediately hooked.

Read the rest of Dr. Himmelmann’s story at the Hall of Heroes!

Tweet

Each year during Fund Drive, LINGUIST List has the honor of bringing you the autobiographical accounts of how some of the field’s top scholars came to be linguists.  Every week, we’ll bring you a new tale of a linguist’s sagacity, perseverance, and wisdom as inspiration to fledgling and veteran linguists alike!

Over at the Hall of Heroes, our first LINGUIST of the Day is François Grosjean; Dr. Grosjean has worked in psycholinguistics, language processing, and bilingualism, to name just a few of his research topics.  His tale begins:

When I think about my first linguistics course, my mind wanders back to a large lecture hall in the mid-sixties at the University of Paris. Around 300 of us were attending a lecture on English Linguistics taught by Antoine Culioli. Suddenly, in his quiet voice, Culioli asked, “Is François Grosjean there?”. I raised my hand and he continued, “Tell me, in British English, would you say …(X)… or would you say …(Y)…?”. Because of my secondary schooling in England, I was one of the (quasi) native speakers that lecturers would call upon as linguistic informants. I don’t remember the two alternatives Culioli gave me but I believe they concerned some very subtle difference in the use of a preposition. With 299 pairs of eyes looking at me, and not really seeing how the two alternatives diverged, I ventured, “The former, I think!”. Culioli nodded his head and replied, “Yes, that’s what I thought”. He continued his lecture and I sat back and breathed a sigh of relief. Since then, I have the greatest respect for people who are informants!

…Read the rest of Dr. Grosjean’s story here!

Tweet