The genes involved in learning to sound out words are different from the ones involved in learning to recognise words by sight, according to an Australian study.
Read the full article at ABC Science Online
Linguists are calling for an online public database, similar to the human genome project, that would allow researchers to collaboratively share different studies of language impairment.
Read the full article at New Scientist
We can listen to a car radio and drive while keeping an eye on changing traffic conditions — separate complex tasks completed without much trouble. But if two people are talking to us at the same time, our perceptual frequencies get jammed.
Read the full article at Cornell Chronicle Online
Jane from lingforum.com contacted me about a new discussion forum for linguists. It works with a webforum-based interface, and can be accessed at http://www.lingforum.com/forum/. Lingforum is still very new, so comparisons with other linguistics related discussion groups such as those found at linguistlist.org should probably not yet be made. I wish all the best for lingforum.com.
I also followed some links from lingforum.com and found my way to http://www.lingnews.net/, which I might describe as a community-based version of Lingformant (i.e. rather than having one editor, any registered member can post articles). If you think that the range of articles here at Lingformant is too narrow (I didn’t, for example, bother to post about the whole linguistically rather irrelevant circus surrounding Hugo Chávez’s recent comments on Chomsky’s book and death, which has obviously done a lot to boost the sales of Chomsky’s political writings, as well as made MIT send out a statement that Chomsky is still very much alive), then Lingnews may be something you would like to take a look at. Or better yet, subscribe to both Lingformant and Lingnet, and while you are at it, also add Inttranews, Language Log and Phonoloblog (see links on the side column) to the mix. If you still continue to miss linguistics articles, there must be something wrong with you!
Birdsongs are so distinctive they are often used by ornithologists to identify individual birds. Now a novel study shows that birds are not “pre-programmed” to sing their song – rather, birds listen closely to their tune to keep their songs note perfect.
Read the full article at NewScientist.com
If this year’s winner of the Loebner Prize is on the right track, call-center data could be what’s needed to achieve the ultimate goal of artificial intelligence (AI): creating a computer program smart enough to hold a natural conversation.
Read the full article at Technology Review
Women are being filtered out of high-level science, math and engineering jobs in the United States, and there is no good reason for it, according to a National Academies report released on Monday.
Read the full article at Reuters
Collaboration among USC, UCLA, UC Berkeley and Italian university finds strong mental link between actions and words.
Read the full article at University of Southern California Newsroom
While it is widely accepted that the output of nerve cells carries information between regions of the brain, it’s a big mystery how widely separated regions of the cortex involving billions of cells are linked together to coordinate complex activity. A new study by neuroscientists at the University of California, Berkeley, and neurosurgeons and neurologists at UC San Francisco (UCSF) is beginning to answer that question.
Click here to read the full story at University of Berkeley news room
From the ConCat website: “OT assumes that the grammar of a natural language consists of a set of constraints, called Con, plus an ordering on these constraints. In many (but not all) versions of OT, it is assumed that Con is universal: the ranking is the only difference between languages. There is as yet no agreement on the contents of Con. Furthermore, there is a lot of confusion in the literature about the orignal sources and formulation of many constraints. ConCat aims to build an encyclopedia of constraints which have been proposed, citing their original sources. ConCat assumes the form of a wiki: it can be freely edited by any interested party. All constraints are welcome; it is not our goal to present one particular view on constraints.”
Click here to visit the ConCat archive
A writing system lost for 3,000 years has been rediscovered on an ancient stone tablet in Mexico, archaeologists say. The tablet is the earliest example of writing in the New World, pushing back the origins of writing in the region by several hundred years, according to a paper that will appear in tomorrow’s edition of the journal Science.
Read the full article at National Geographic
Infants and apes apparently adopt the same tactics for remembering where things are, but as children develop their strategies change, a new study shows. The findings might reveal in part how the minds of our distant ancestors shifted gears to embark on the road toward humanity.
Read the full article at LiveScience.com
Evidence is emerging from Africa that colours were being used in a symbolic way perhaps 200,000 years ago, a UK scientist working in the region claims.
Read the full article at BBC News
New research published in the August, 2006 journal Current Anthropology by Neandertal and early modern human expert, Erik Trinkaus, Ph.D., professor of anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis, suggests that rather than the standard straight line from chimps to early humans to us with Neandertals off on a side graph, it’s equally valid, perhaps more valid based on the fossil record, that the line should extend from the common ancestor to the Neandertals, and Modern Humans should be the branch off that.
Read the full article at Washington University in St. Louis newsroom
A 16-year-old Asian male elephant at Everland Zoo in Yongin is reportedly able to pronounce eight words of Korean.
Read the full article at Seoul Times
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