Linguistics: Challenge Puzzles

Here is a fun website with lots of puzzles - from easy to hard - involving linguistics.  Enjoy!

(Hat Tip: SiliconValley.com, USA, technology news)

Human Hearing System: When an ear witness decides the case

The New York Times (USA) has an excellent article on human speech and hearing and how the vision system interacts with hearing.

Enjoy!

Forensic Linguistics: Identify the language of a text

LangID is a new website that will identify the language of any text you can paste into its webpage or upload/tweet/email them with. This free service is based on the Google Ajax API (Application Programmer Interface) and currently identifies around 85 (human) languages with more being added. A list of the languages that it can identify can be found at this link.

(Hat tip: Good Morning Silicon Valley)

Forensic Linguistics: Untangling Tricky Talk

I have a confession to make - I only got an iPod once a friend convinced me of the merits of university course podcasts. I've since become "addicted" to several technical, news, and business podcasts and would not have it any other way.

One of the podcasts I enjoy on a frequent basis is All in the Mind, by ABC Radio National (Australia). Last week's episode was titled "Untangling Tricky Talk" and covered forensic linguistics as well as transcription by deaf people. The forensic linguistic portion was centered around an interview of Paul Foulkes, who gave a very professional account of his discipline.

Enjoy!

Linguistics: Forensic Linguistics used on text message evidence

Dr Tim Grant, Deputy Director of the Centre for Forensic Linguistics at Aston University (UK), is well known in forensic linguistic circles. ScienceDaily has excerpts from an interview with Dr. Grant following the successful conviction of a murderer that relied partly on Dr. Grant's testimony about text messages allegedly sent by the suspect (since convicted) to throw investigators off the trail. I call your attention to the careful and correct use of the phrases "unlikely" and "more likely" to describe the results of the analysis, instead of a phrase such as "proved conclusively".

In addition, here is a link to a BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation, UK) news story about the case and the analysis of the text message evidence. Very interesting stuff!

Human Auditory System: Perfect pitch is more common than previously believed

It turns out that the ability to identify the pitch of a musical note without needing a reference note to compare to is more common than previously believed. This ability is called "perfect pitch" or "absolute pitch", as opposed to "relative pitch".

Using a testing technique adapted from studies involving infant hearing, researchers at the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music and Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences were able to test for perfect pitch in a random sample of people, including people with no musical training whatsoever. In the past, these tests were performed only on people with musical training who could identify notes by name. For more on this study, follow this link.

Fun: Foreign words and phrases that have no exact English translation

English has absorbed many words and phrases from many different languages over the centuries, but there are some that haven't quite been imported yet.  A new book titled Toujours Tingo has quite a collection of very interesting, and perhaps even occasionally useful, words and phrases that exist in other languages but have no corresponding English equivalent.  The Mirror (UK tabloid) has a review.

I have no idea if the translations of these are accurate or not, but a couple that I particularly found amusing, at least the way they are presented in the book, are:

Vrane Su Mu PoPile Mozak - Croatian: crazy, literally "cows have drunk his brain"
Gadrii Nombor Shulen Jongu - Tibetan: giving an answer that is unrelated to the question, literally "to give a green answer to a blue question"

If you want a copy of the book, the details are Toujours Tingo: More Extraordinary Words to Change the Way We See the World, by Adam Jacot de Boinod, published by Penguin Books.

(Hat tip: GeekPress)

Linguistics: Genetic component to tonal and atonal languages?

The Economist magazine (UK, center-left economics and news magazine) has an article on a statistical analysis by Dan Deidiu and Robert Ladd of the University of Edinburgh that shows a correlation between genetics and speaking a tonal or atonal language.

Aside: A tonal language is one where the pitch (tone) used when pronouncing a word changes its meaning.

Finding a correlation in itself is not surprising as most Asian languages are tonal. Where this study might lead, when combined with work by others, is to uncovering which came first - genetic differences that led to the development of tonal/atonal languages or language differences that became tied to genetics.