Four Pressures on Language

Psycholinguist Dan Slobin (1979) says that there are four pressures on language that keeps the language in a dynamic equilibrium.

Be Clear
It is important for a language to be clear so that there will be no misunderstandings and people won't be confused. People's mind is usually expecting one-to-one mapping. If a language form represents several different meanings, it will be hard to people to acquire the language.
For example, in Russian, the feminine noun takes the ending -a when it functions as the subject while the masculine noun functions as the object also end with -a. This become a one-to-many mapping which is very confusing that makes it hard for people to acquire the language.

Be Processible
To be processible means both speaker and listener can produce and understand. It is important for a language to be match with how the human brain works. For example, sentences with relative clauses is easier for people to understand when relative pronoun is included. That is,

The student who the teacher hit cried.
is understood faster and easier than
The student the teacher hit cried.

Be Quick and Easy
Quick and easy is also the pressure of language because people might be in a hurry or the speaker doesn't want to talk with too much effort. For example, we all know "I got to go." is an expression of leaving. When the speaker is in a hurry or doesn't want to talk too strenuously, it might sound like "I gotta go." This kind of contraction is pretty common in our daily life. However, the grammatical marker is not clear in the sentence which might bring difficulties for people to understand and later on leads people to replace the expression with new ones. This kind of changing process is keeping the language in a dynamic equilibrium.

Be expressive
As language is for communication, it must be able to express things. In order to fulfill the requirement, to be semantically expressive and to be rhetorically expressive are important. To be semantically expressive means to express things meaningfully. To be rhetorically expressive means to express things "well and powerfully." For example, "YuSuKe broke the glass yesterday." and the sentence can change into many different forms depends on what the speaker want to emphasize. That is,

YuSuKe broke the glass yesterday.
Yesterday YuSuKe broke the glass.
It is YuSuKe that broke the glass yesterday.
It is the glass that was broken by YuSuKe yesterday.
It is yesterday that YuSuKe broke the glass.

--

Work Cited

Nash, Thomas. Discovering Language: An Introduction to Linguistics for Students in Taiwan. 2nd edition. pre-publication version. 2008.

本文整理自Thomas Nash的Discovering Language: An Introduction to Linguistics for Students in Taiwan，未經該書作者同意不得轉載。

What makes a tongue twister tongue-twisting?

Last Friday we had a little activity in intro. Linguisitc class, and later on we figure out what makes a tongue twister tongue-twisting.

Conflicting Patterns

The conflicting patterns confuse people because people tend to follow the pattern that is either invented by themselves or the grammar pattern of the language. The conflicting pattern can be simply divided into two:syllable structure and sound sequence.

1. Syllable Structure

The reason syllable structure can be confusing in the tongue twister is that people tend to figure out some pattern to follow. And tongue twisters use syllable structure. For example,

She sell seashell on the seashore.

Despite the preposition (on) and the article (the), "seashell" and "seashore" are both two syllable structure. As mentioned earlier, people tend to figure out some pattern to follow, no matter the pattern is making sense or not. Therefore, as people read the tongue twister faster and faster, it might sounds something like "Sheshell seashell on the seashore."

2. Sound Sequence

Usually the spoken language avoid conflicts in sound sequence because it is hard to pronounce the slightly different sounds again and again correctly. For example, 

	Which	witch	wished	which	wicked	wish	?
initial	wh	w	w	wh	w	w
vowel	i	i	i	i	i	i
final	ch	ch	shed	ch	ked	sh

• The initial consonant of each word are either pronounced "wh" or "h"
• All the vowels of each word is pronounced "i".
• The final consonant of each word are pronounced "ch", "sh" or "ked" (here view "shed" and "sh" as the same)

The sound sequence of initial consonant is "ABBABB" while the final consonant is "AABACB". The conflicting patterns of the initial consonant and the final consonant confuses people and brings up the tongue-twisting effect when speaking the tongue twister.

Stress/ Tone Pattern

Usually stress/tone pattern is not obvious in English but pretty clear in Mandarin Chinese, because of the special feature of four different tone. For example,

門前一口井，
好像一面鏡，
鏡裡幾顆星，
星光亮晶晶。
石落水井中，
打碎水中星，
擊破水中鏡，
井中鏡破星碎。

Here "井"(Jĭng), "鏡"(Jìng), "晶"(Jīng) all pronounced "Jing" but with different tone, which is very confusing because it break the rule of "a simply pattern to follow."

Phrase/Clause Structure

Similar phrase/clause structure can be confusing, too. For example,

I saw Esau kissing Kate. I saw Esau,
he saw me, and she saw I saw Esau.

This tongue twister is mainly with the pattern of "who saw who", but change the subject and the object constantly, which, again, break the rule of "a simply pattern to follow."

--

Judy Chou, Eng dept. @ FJU

please noted the original author when quoting.

淺談中國傳統思想與其塑造的人格

不是什麼偉大的文章，純粹敘述。

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自古以來，中國人的人格形成過程深受群體價值觀念孝道的思想支配和影響。幾千年來，這些的傳統思想不斷的由中國人實踐著，甚至一代一代傳承且發揚光大著。以下分兩部份淺談中國傳統思想以及其塑造出的人格。

• 群體的價值

中國傳統文化傾向集體價值觀。傳統中國人的自我是「有意義的他人」，意指個體的存在必須跟基於自己對於他人的意義與價值。例如傳統中國女子自身的價值是建立在她賴以生活的文化意識認定上，文化意識認定她的行為符合眾人的期望，她本身的價值才算被肯定。

群體價值最明顯的例證就是家族主義。 自古以來，中國人最重視的莫過於血緣關係及家族關係。傳統中國社會奉「長幼尊卑」為高原則。因此長者盤據在社會、社區、家族以及家庭中的核心地位，理所當然的成為所有人的楷模，並且支配家族中其他人的行為思想。且長者是祖先功業及道德的傳達者，同時也背負了前人的願望等，使得長者在群體中的高地位及權威歷久不衰。祖父母、父母身為長者，是家族中的模範也同時是家族中的權力者，負責發號施令，裁決家族內所有大小事物。年幼者及女性是受支配者，必須尊重長者，遏止個人意識，絕對服從且溫順。這樣的地位不平等，形成了在下位者必須遵從在上位者的指揮，甚至必須崇拜在上位者。

在中國人的崇拜中，最明顯的莫過於對神的崇拜與祖先崇拜。神的崇拜較近似宗教部份，在此略而不談。祖先崇拜在中國人的觀念中佔有相當重要的地位。延伸自孝道，長者在社會及家族中的地位崇高，且在死後仍具有相當大的影響力。祖先死後肉身雖葬在墓地，卻將其靈魂及支配的魔掌伸到家族的祠堂和家庭的神龕：他們生前的功績被大肆傳頌，他們生前未完成的事業和願望就成了後人的目標和負擔。以這樣的形式持續影響族人的思想和行為。

對於祖先崇拜的主要表現有二：一是祭，二是繼。

祭，是在於祈求靈魂保佑子孫後代，並且凝聚同宗通族的認同感。祭拜結束後，全族的人共同食用祖先吃過的肉(祭拜時，菜餚置於神龕前，象徵給祖先靈魂食用)，藉以增強血脈相連的觀念。

繼，便是繼承父母甚至是祖父母的血脈，繼承其德性，繼承其未完成的願望與事業。因此生兒育女，繁衍後代是精神上的延續祖先們的意志。

因此，在這樣被傳承下來的群體意識壓迫的中國人，形成了一種奇怪的習慣。做任何事情之前，首先考慮的不是我怎麼看/評價這件事，或者這件事對我有什麼影響，而是考慮別人怎麼看/評價這件事，別人會怎麼看/評價做這件事的我。而這個「別人」就是先是家族裡的長者，其次是家族中的其他人，再來是同一單位的上司和同事等。從中國人的語言習慣中也可以窺見一些這樣的現象，例如「應該」這個辭彙的使用方式。「我應該要認真唸書」，「我應該要尊重長者」，「我不應該跨越禮教界線」，「應該」告訴我們作到了這個「應該」，才算規規矩矩的符合長者的期望及社會期待。漸漸的這樣的習慣形成固定的思考模式，到最後個人的行為都必須先尋求集體的認可才可行。

• 孝道

孝道與中國傳統文化的關係在於回報親恩以及權力與地位的不平等。

回報親恩看似是無可非議的：既然父母有養育之恩，子女理當有回報的義務。這樣的回報通常都是建立在理想的狀況下，即這樣的回報是出自於內心真實感情的回饋。但是當回報親恩的意義被無限放大，使得「偉大的親恩及養育之恩」成為幾輩子都還不完的負擔時，報答父母成為子女的最重大人生目標，子女因此成為父母予取予求的對象，並且在父母與子女的關係間形成一強烈的牽絆。

權力地位的不平等在於，「父慈」與「子孝」之間並非對等的關係，既使父母不慈，子仍不能不孝。又慈與孝的解釋權在父母手上，父母可以將自己對子女的羞辱打罵全解釋為慈愛的表現﹝最常見的解釋就是「我這樣都是為你好。」﹞，不合理的體罰、言語的侮辱都可以由「打是情，罵是愛」來帶過。而只有在子女不冒犯父母的權威時，才會被視為是孝，進而有機會得到父母慈愛的對待。

傳承香火是孝的重要內容之一。所謂「不孝有三，無後為大」便是中國傳統思想對生育後代最直接而明顯的例證。延續香火的用意同前述祖先崇拜中「繼」的意義，在此不重述。

• 扭曲的人格

在群體價值觀念及孝道思想的影響下，形成了「議論系統」及「壓制系統」。

在議論系統中，每個人都是這個議論系統的成員，但同時每個人也都是這個議論系統的評論對象，形成了「哪個人前不說人，哪個背後無人說」的現象。這樣的議論系統使得眾口可以鑠金，玉石成岩石，近似現代社會中的輿論系統。這樣的狀況下，每個人都是「被人看的」「被人評論的」，而非自己看/評論自己。

然後群體價值及孝道的束縛形成了「壓制系統」，使個體自我壓縮其人格，造就了「角色的自我」以及「真實的自我」的雙面性格。「角色的自我」是面對集體意識時的防護，盡責的扮演父母、子女、學子、教師等符合社會期待的角色；「真實的自我」面對的是自己本身的思考及理想等。這樣的雙面性格使得生存在中國傳統思想下的人們得以在虛假的表面與現實間自由穿梭，卻也因此帶來許多難以根治的習慣問題。

我想人們是有意識到因為「被評論」及「雙面性格」形成的扭曲人格的，只是越是知道這樣的扭曲越是不敢面對罷了。

Notebook讀後碎碎唸

I am who I am because of you. You are every reason, every hope, and every dream I've ever had. And no matter what happens to us in the future, every day we are together is the greatest day of my life. I will always be yours.

And my dear, you will always be mine.

這是Nicolas Sparks的Notebook裡面，男主角Noah寫給女主角也就是他的妻子Allie的其中一封信裡的最後一段。我很喜歡的一段。貼在twitter上面礙於字數忘了附上出處=w=

前兩天剛看完這本書。本來看了前半以為這是又一本老梗的愛情小說。整本看完之後有點感動，尤其是後半段的部分。很難想像在共度多年的婚姻之後，面對得了阿茲海默症的妻子，充滿陌生跟害怕，要怎麼繼續愛下去。曾經Allie幾度戰勝了失憶症，彷彿讓Noah重生，注入了動力讓他繼續拖著漸漸老去的身軀，忍受關節的疼痛，每天陪Allie用餐，讀詩給她聽，和她散步。大多數的時候，失憶的Allie面對她曾經熟悉現在卻陌生的Noah總是充滿防備，甚至不時對他尖叫，而且終日為看不見的幻覺所苦。 最後在一個夜黑風高(?)的晚上，Noah溜進Allie的房間偷看睡著又失憶的她，奇蹟似的她醒來了而且還記得他。然後故事以女方緩慢的解開男方的釦子作結。

嗯，閱讀難度普通，我覺得結局有點囧，不過想感受一下偉大愛情的人可以看＠Ｑ＠