Coursera: Miracles of Human Language (Notes)
It's a wrap!
This is my final weekend geeking out in the Coursera course on Miracles of Human Language by Leiden University. The course deadline for all quizzes and final exam is May 11. All good things must come to an end and I must say I LOVED THIS MOOC (massive open online course)!
The MOOC is perfect for me in that it has one final deadline (great for busy working adults), and you don't have to worry about being penalized for not meeting a deadline. It contains digestible short videos, really useful reading materials, and quizzes that make you think. Those (the quizzes) are hard!
Now, more about the Professor who really is the Happy Dutch Guy. Our dear professor, Marc van Oostendorp, is a real joy to listen to and watch.
One of the funny moments:
Passion fruit is not about feeling passion while eating a fruit. Got me laughing there. We were on the topic of morphology. The passion fruit example is about the three criteria for a sentence which is a string of words. The three criteria are spaces, meaning, and pronunciation. So back to the passion fruit: It's one thing, a passion fruit. It's one concept.
What I particularly liked about this MOOC:
The active involvement of the professor's students namely Marten and Inge. They're in the weekly discussions asking questions and conducting interviews (with Prof. Chomsky and with other interviewees too).
The downloadable transcript for each week. (This is SO handy!)
Some important points I picked up along the way:
In the beginning, you just hear people speak and you have no idea where the word boundaries are. You learn this only by experience, by being exposed to it enough. (Learners of foreign languages such as Yours Truly can definitely relate to this...)
It is interesting to note that when a person is asked to gesture “the girl is catching a fish” (like when you play a guessing game), people tend to gesture the girl (S), followed by the fish (O), lastly, the action of catching (V). The word orders then is SOV (subject-object-verb). This seems to be the natural order that we humans like. (So... the next time you play the game, try to observe what's being done!)
It is important to distinguish the pragmatic layer of meaning next to the semantic layer of meaning.
Pragmatic is always there; always different. Every sentence we say has a pragmatic meaning. We change the world by saying the things we do. (Let us all say positive things and think positive thoughts! Change the world in a positive way while we're at it.)
Sometimes it (pragmatic) is not so explicit but it's still there. Even when we don't say something, that can have a meaning. By not saying something (or the right things about something) the other person is going to infer that we mean something else than what we are actually saying. (Sounds like a dangerous ground to thread on. Don't assume...)
If you want to know how language works in the mind, we simply can't avoid meaning.
Language is not just there to convey semantic and pragmatic meaning. It also reveals many things about us. Language varies and changes. I liked the prof's demonstration using his attire and the red tie. He looked really dashing there, by the way.
I really enjoyed the interview with Prof. Chomsky. I'm looking forward to receiving his book, The Architecture of Language, from Book Depository, an order I placed last month. I'm so glad I did because now I get to read his words after listening to him.
I have particularly enjoyed Roberta's videos as one of the informants in the course. She gives us everything Abruzzese and because I understand Italian, I kind of get this Neapolitan language from the Abruzzo region. Her video demonstrating politeness in the final week's (Week 5) video was hilarious and so true! Italians could go on and on about something…
I've learned so much in this five-week introductory linguistics course. It is the perfect launchpad for my further exploration with language and linguistics. My first language-related Coursera course is The Bilingual Brain by the University of Houston. I can't get enough of language and linguistics, and can't wait to dig deeper! Who knows, one day I may end up pursuing a linguistics degree.
