MetaFilter posts tagged with language and science

What language is music?

univac — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 18:52:25 -0800

Western musical intervals are derived from speech tendencies, according to Duke scientists. Specifically, "most of the 12 chromatic scale intervals correspond to peaks of relative power in the normalized spectrum of human vocalizations." A somewhat more layperson-friendly summary of the study is here. Some think that language and musicality evolved in tandem (see the singing Neanderthals), and Mendelssohn thought that the communicative ability of music is even more precise than that of language (as related by Oliver Sacks, at 9:05 - .mp3 link).

On royal curiosity and language deprivation experiments

voltairemodern — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 08:23:23 -0800

Frederick...made linguistic experiments on the vile bodies of hapless infants, "bidding foster-mothers and nurses to suckle and bathe and wash the children, but in no wise to prattle or speak with them; for he would have learnt whether they would speak the Hebrew language (which had been the first), or Greek, or Latin, or Arabic, or perchance the tongue of their parents of whom they had been born. But he laboured in vain, for the children could not live without clappings of the hands, and gestures, and gladness of countenance, and blandishments." Emperor Frederick II was not alone in his curiosity on this score: Both Psammetichus I (664-610 BCE) and James V (1513-1542 CE) also organized their own versions of the experiment. We tend to think of such research as having been abandoned wholesale by the time of the 20th century, though there have been cases of “feral children”, even very recently. (And other, similarly cruel experiments have been performed, for example, in an attempt to discover the source of stuttering.) Yet the grandiose questions about language that perplexed both the royal “scientists” organizing such experiments as well as the more contemporary scientists studying feral children, remain largely unanswered. This indicates to some that "the forbidden experiment may belong to a...group of experimental problems that persistently seem meaningful but are not."

Pyow-pyow

chuckdarwin — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 01:42:28 -0800

A troop of putty-nosed monkeys in west Africa has been found to use a rudimentary language.

A Theory of Humor | Why something is funny, why it sometimes is not, and when it crosses a line.

iamkimiam — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 11:48:27 -0800

Theory of Humor. A scientific paper, written by Tom Veatch, describes his Theory of Humor. When is something funny? When is it not funny? When does it cross the line? Why are puns generally shitty? And the mysterious and magical powers elephant jokes have on children, revealed! A great data set to use for practice in applying the theories presented in the paper can be found here.

Cheers | Prost | Gayola | Na zdraví | Skål | Slainte | etc.

Blazecock Pileon — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 12:48:15 -0800

Multicultural toasting as an accoutrement for Gunther Anderson's guide to making liqueurs at home [ Principles | Science | Materials | Example recipe | and more... ]

Metafilter has a front page. This is a post. Post is on the front page. Post is about language.

Gyan — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 23:00:00 -0800

Recursion and Human Thought - Why the Piraha don't have numbers

Life-size blue whale

homunculus — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 18:10:44 -0800

Life-size blue whale. A Flash project from the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society. And in other news: Secret Language of Whales Revealed! [Via MammalFilter.]

Theory of science communication

Gyan — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 06:51:53 -0800

Belief and knowledge - a primer on science communication

Coming soon to a cinema near you

Gyan — Sun, 23 Jul 2006 12:40:34 -0800

The Human Speechome Project - "A baby is to be monitored by a network of microphones and video cameras for 14 hours a day, 365 days a year, in an effort to unravel the seemingly miraculous process by which children acquire language.". Selected video clips. Paper (PDF, 750KB). To test hypotheses of how children learn, Prof Deb Roy's team at MIT will develop machine learning systems that “step into the shoes” of his son by processing the sights and sounds of three years of life at home. Total storage required: 1.4 petabytes.

Speak Deutsch?

Gyan — Mon, 14 Jun 2004 18:28:34 -0800

Being Bilingual Protects Against Some Age-related Cognitive Changes.
Full paper link.