linguistic musings
Mar. 22nd, 2008 01:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tsukikageA cleft palate will also prevent an individual from being able to produce trills. The palate refers to the roof of the mouth. Humans have a hard palate which covers a soft palate. During fetal development some individuals do not fuse the two sides of their hidden soft palate together correctly, causing a cleft in the roof of the mouth that can prevent the vocalization of trills.
Does this apply to those who have had their cleft repaired?
Had an interesting discussion with my dad about the realities of linguistics. Unfortunately, I don't really know enough to hold a decent discussion with, well, anyone, so it didn't really go anywhere, but basically we were talking about things like whether deep structure, movement actually, or U.G. exist, etc. I will admit that my mind isn't really critical enough to decide what I buy and what I don't, so although I'm skeptical enough to take things I learn with a grain of salt, I mostly just accept what I'm taught and try to remember that there's much left to be discovered, including things that may contradict our current understanding. I also partly blame this on the fact that I am so new to my study of linguistics that I haven't had much of an opportunity to compare what I've learned to other theories that attempt to explain the same phenomena.
Anyways, this all came out of my mentioning that I think it's sort of sad that we have no sort of "linguistic fossils" with which to investigate the evolution and development of Language (and I don't mean attempts at constructing proto-language - I'm talking about how U.G. developed from when we were at a much earlier stage in evolution). I've often wondered, if there's intelligent life on other planets, do they have language such as ours, and if so, is their U.G. completely different from ours? And if so, would it ever be possible for us to learn their language? Or is the majority of U.G. determined by "communicative physics" - do complement/adjunct distinctions simply have to exist?
(Again, I'm probably buying into the specific theories that have been explained to me a little too much here, but I figure you get my drift.)
Back to studying before getting ready to head over to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
carve037's.
Does this apply to those who have had their cleft repaired?
Had an interesting discussion with my dad about the realities of linguistics. Unfortunately, I don't really know enough to hold a decent discussion with, well, anyone, so it didn't really go anywhere, but basically we were talking about things like whether deep structure, movement actually, or U.G. exist, etc. I will admit that my mind isn't really critical enough to decide what I buy and what I don't, so although I'm skeptical enough to take things I learn with a grain of salt, I mostly just accept what I'm taught and try to remember that there's much left to be discovered, including things that may contradict our current understanding. I also partly blame this on the fact that I am so new to my study of linguistics that I haven't had much of an opportunity to compare what I've learned to other theories that attempt to explain the same phenomena.
Anyways, this all came out of my mentioning that I think it's sort of sad that we have no sort of "linguistic fossils" with which to investigate the evolution and development of Language (and I don't mean attempts at constructing proto-language - I'm talking about how U.G. developed from when we were at a much earlier stage in evolution). I've often wondered, if there's intelligent life on other planets, do they have language such as ours, and if so, is their U.G. completely different from ours? And if so, would it ever be possible for us to learn their language? Or is the majority of U.G. determined by "communicative physics" - do complement/adjunct distinctions simply have to exist?
(Again, I'm probably buying into the specific theories that have been explained to me a little too much here, but I figure you get my drift.)
Back to studying before getting ready to head over to
carve037's.