Register  Login  Active Topics  Maps  

Iversen’s Multiconfused Log (see p.1!)

  Tags: Multilingual
 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log Post Reply
3959 messages over 495 pages: << Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... 157 ... 494 495 Next >>


Fasulye
Heptaglot
Winner TAC 2012
Moderator
Germany
fasulyespolyglotblog
Joined 5597 days ago

5460 posts - 6006 votes 
1 sounds
Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto
Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 1249 of 3959
19 August 2009 at 10:42pm | IP Logged 
Iversen wrote:
I don't feel that I have languages that in se are declarative and others that are procedural - which could be the outcome if it was important how the different languages were learnt in the first place. For me it is simply a question of level: at a certain stage a certain language functions at a certain level of automation, and the better you are, the more of the language has been automated, leaving time for thinking about the content.


Iversen, I am not familiar with these technical terms. Could you please define what a "procedural language" and what a "declarative language" is?

Fasulye
1 person has voted this message useful





Iversen
Super Polyglot
Moderator
Denmark
berejst.dk
Joined 6453 days ago

9078 posts - 16473 votes 
Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan
Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 1250 of 3959
20 August 2009 at 1:51am | IP Logged 
It is not two kinds of languages, but two sides of each and every language.

According to this model declarative elements are those that can't be derived from other things, - i.e. wordstems, irregular verbal forms, unpredictable but fixed combinations (such as verb + preposition in English) and probably also idiomatic expressions and quotes.

Procedural elements are those that can be derived through automatized rules, - and these are everything from regular verbal forms to complete sentences. So in a sense you can say that you memorize the chunks of a language with the brain structures that deal with declarative elements (and these include the wellknown Hippocampus), and then you apply some regular rules to them using the brainstructures that deal with procedural elements (including Broca's area - Wernicke's area isn't mentioned in the article).

However the border between the actual language elements in these two groups is more fuzzy than the article suggests. For instance etymological residues, partly irregular derivation and inflexion and mangled expressions are all a fact of life for a language student. This also applies to the happy feeling that everything gets more and more automated the better you know a language. Ironically native speakers don't inflect as much as beginners according to some studies, - instead they remember each verbal form as a separate entity because they have seen it so many times before. But as a general rote memorization becomes less and less important for the learning process, and derivation - including the formation of complete sentences - take over.

Another link to the article : http://www.psy.ed.ac.uk/research/lang/lprg/Ullman2001.pdf


Edited by Iversen on 20 August 2009 at 10:50am

1 person has voted this message useful





Iversen
Super Polyglot
Moderator
Denmark
berejst.dk
Joined 6453 days ago

9078 posts - 16473 votes 
Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan
Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 1251 of 3959
20 August 2009 at 9:19pm | IP Logged 
GR: Σήμερα προσπάθησα να μάθω αν είναι εύκολο ή δύσκολο να διέλθει το σύνορο μεταξύ Ελλάδας και Αλβανίας. Είναι εύκολο να λάβει το πλοίο από την Κέρκυρα στο Sarande, και φαίνεται να υπάρχει πούλμαν από (ή μέσω) την Ιωάννινα στην Αλβανία. Το πρόβλημα είναι ότι θα προτιμούσα τα ανατολικά σύνορα, αλλά δεν φαίνεται να υπάρξει δημόσιες μεταφορές πάνο στο σύνορο εκεί. Θα πρέπει να ερευνήσει όταν έχω έρθει στην Φλώρινα.

RO: Prima parte a mea itinerar este fixat: eu plec cu trenul de Bucureşti la Porţile de Fier, unde am o noapte la un oraş cu numele "Drobeta Turnu Severin" (!), unde trebuie să visitez "Muzeul Regiunii Porţilor de Fier". De acolo va continua la Timişoara, unde din păcate am doar o singură noapte. De acolo pe la Belgrad cu un tren de dimineaţă.

SER: У Београду, тамо је карневал бродова за време моје посете. Од Београда до Солуна возом.

GR: Στην Ελλάδα θέλω να παραμένω μια νύχτα στη Θεσσαλονίκη, και τότε θα τρέξω στη Φλώρινα και την Καστοριά. Η περιοδεία τελειώνει στα Τίρανα.

--------

These are my plans for the next trip: I'll be travelling by train from Bucureşti to the 'Iron Gate', a place where Donau is squeezed into a narrow gorge, and here I have reserved a room in a town called "Drobeta Turnu Severin". Then I go to Timişoara (where the uprising against Ceaucescu started) and onwards to Beograd, where my visit is timed to coincide with a 'Boat carnival' (whatever that is - I found it on the internet while looking to Serbian texts). From Beograd to Thessaloniki by night train, and after that a few nights in Flroina which is very close to the Albanian border. The problem is that I have grave doubts about transport into Albania. I'll have to ask the locals when I get there, and otherwise it may be possible to cross the border to the North of Ioannina, or even go to Corfu which has an excellent ferry connection to Saranda. Because I don't know where I enter Albania I can't fix my first night(s) in Albania, but I will end my journey in Tirana.

There are a couple of linguistical problems involved in such an itinerary, - first and foremost that I don't speak Albanian, not much Greek, even less Serbian, but at least basic Romanian. And I can't carry my usual arsenal of dictionaries and grammars so it will to some extent be "swim or drown" (or speak English, which is humiliating). I may be listening more than speaking. I will try to write in this log if I can find some suitable computers (i.e. NOT Cyrillic and NOT Greek keyboards!). And insofar I can find scientific or touristical magazines in the local languages I'll of course buy them.

Edited by Iversen on 20 August 2009 at 10:15pm

1 person has voted this message useful



Felipe
Triglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5780 days ago

451 posts - 501 votes 
Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese
Studies: Italian, Dutch, Catalan

 
 Message 1252 of 3959
20 August 2009 at 9:30pm | IP Logged 
Esp: Ya sabrás que estoy estudiando rumano otra vez. Al leer esto me di cuenta de que lo entiendo más que antes, pero aún así, no lo puedo hablar. Con el tiempo voy a escribir en mi propio log multilingüe y aquí en rumano. Por cierto, buen viaje.
1 person has voted this message useful





Iversen
Super Polyglot
Moderator
Denmark
berejst.dk
Joined 6453 days ago

9078 posts - 16473 votes 
Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan
Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 1253 of 3959
20 August 2009 at 9:34pm | IP Logged 
Gracias.
1 person has voted this message useful





Fasulye
Heptaglot
Winner TAC 2012
Moderator
Germany
fasulyespolyglotblog
Joined 5597 days ago

5460 posts - 6006 votes 
1 sounds
Speaks: German*, DutchC1, EnglishB2, French, Italian, Spanish, Esperanto
Studies: Latin, Danish, Norwegian, Turkish
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 1254 of 3959
20 August 2009 at 9:52pm | IP Logged 
Iversen wrote:
There are a couple of lingustical problems involved in such an itinerary, - first and foremost that I don't speak Albanian, not much Greek, even less Serbian, but at least basic Romanian. And I can't carry my usual arsenal of dictionaries and grammars so it will to some extent be "swim or drown" (or speak English, which is worse). I may be listening more than speaking. I will try to write in this log if I can find some suitable computers (i.e. NOT Cyrillic and NOT Greek keyboards!). And insofar I can find scientific or touristical magazines in the local languages I'll of course buy them.


Hmmmmmmm, scientific magazines in Serbian and Albanian? Sure you can read and understand them in Romanian and Greek. I think, it's more meant as an inspiration for the future than that you could understand them right now. As I am collecting the Turkish magazine "EKIN", which is on sale in Venlo, but I haven't the language level yet to benefit from it.

Fasulye

Edited by Fasulye on 20 August 2009 at 9:58pm

1 person has voted this message useful





Iversen
Super Polyglot
Moderator
Denmark
berejst.dk
Joined 6453 days ago

9078 posts - 16473 votes 
Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan
Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian
Personal Language Map

 
 Message 1255 of 3959
20 August 2009 at 9:59pm | IP Logged 
Well, I have already read articles from the internet in Serbian about astronomy and medicine and other subjects, - although I do cheat: I have a Google translation, but I can see that I'm getting closer and closer to being able to understand the content without looking at the translation. After all the languages in popular scientific articles is full of international loanwords, which makes them much easier to deal with than ordinary literature. If you want some really comprehensible input, then try nuclear physics!

On my night table (which is in fact a common chair) I have a number of printouts of such articles, so I can follow my daily progress rather closely. And as you may have noticed above I have just concocted my first two sentences in Serbian (though admittedly very simple Serbian). So far just an experiment, but there will be more later.

Edited by Iversen on 20 August 2009 at 10:05pm

1 person has voted this message useful



Lingua
Decaglot
Senior Member
United States
Joined 5326 days ago

186 posts - 319 votes 
Speaks: English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Danish, French, Norwegian, Portuguese, Dutch

 
 Message 1256 of 3959
21 August 2009 at 10:10am | IP Logged 
Iversen wrote:
I would like to draw the attention to an article called "A neurocognitive perspective on language: The declarative/procedural model".

The main point in this article is that "Language depends on two mental capacities: a memorized 'mental lexicon' and a computational 'mental grammar'.


This model fails to account for the idiomaticity of language. To account for this a model must rely less on syntactic computation and allow a much larger role for stored (i.e."memorized") "chunks" of language.


"The growth of corpus linguistics (see McCarthy 1998: Chapter 1 for a brief
historical sketch) has convinced linguists that vocabulary is much more than
the ‘unordered list of all lexical formatives’ which Chomsky (1965:84) referred
to it as. Pioneering studies of large corpora by linguists such as Sinclair (1991)
have shown lexis to be a far more powerful influence in the basic organization
of language and of meaning than was ever previously conceived. Corpora reveal
the regular, patterned preferences for modes of expression of language users
in given contexts, and show how large numbers of users separated in time and
space repeatedly orient towards the same language patterns when involved in
comparable social activities. Corpora reveal that much of our lexical output consists
of multi-word units; language occurs in ready-made chunks to a far greater extent than could ever be accommodated by a theory of language insistent
upon the primacy of syntax."

http://www.cambridge.org/elt/touchstone/images/pdf/Explorati ons.pdf



1 person has voted this message useful



This discussion contains 3959 messages over 495 pages: << Prev 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360 361 362 363 364 365 366 367 368 369 370 371 372 373 374 375 376 377 378 379 380 381 382 383 384 385 386 387 388 389 390 391 392 393 394 395 396 397 398 399 400 401 402 403 404 405 406 407 408 409 410 411 412 413 414 415 416 417 418 419 420 421 422 423 424 425 426 427 428 429 430 431 432 433 434 435 436 437 438 439 440 441 442 443 444 445 446 447 448 449 450 451 452 453 454 455 456 457 458 459 460 461 462 463 464 465 466 467 468 469 470 471 472 473 474 475 476 477 478 479 480 481 482 483 484 485 486 487 488 489 490 491 492 493 494 495  Next >>


Post ReplyPost New Topic Printable version Printable version

You cannot post new topics in this forum - You cannot reply to topics in this forum - You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum - You cannot create polls in this forum - You cannot vote in polls in this forum


This page was generated in 0.6406 seconds.


DHTML Menu By Milonic JavaScript
Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved
No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization.