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At the origin of language structure
Science Daily ^ | 8/27/2015 | Sissa Medialab

Posted on 08/29/2015 10:29:43 AM PDT by JimSEA

There are languages that place the verb between the subject and the object (SVO order -- Subject/ Verb/ Object) while others place it at the end of the trio (SOV order). The order of these elements, far from being purely decorative, influences efficiency of expression. A team from SISSA's Language, Cognition and Development Lab (along with two Iranian institutions) studied the mechanism that controls the transition from the SOV form, considered the "basic" order by scientists, to the SVO order while the language is evolving, demonstrating that when the computational load on the brain is lightened, humans choose more efficient systems of communication which encourage the use of more complex grammatical structures.

(Excerpt) Read more at sciencedaily.com ...


TOPICS: History; Society
KEYWORDS: epigraphyandlanguage; godsgravesglyphs; language
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To: Zeneta
No thangs up in dis biatch found fo’ There is languages dat place tha verb ...

Tell it to Snoop.


Colt 45's Brand Ambassador

21 posted on 08/29/2015 11:45:05 AM PDT by cynwoody
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To: donna

22 posted on 08/29/2015 11:48:13 AM PDT by FredZarguna ( "I pulled the lever on the machine, but the Clark Bar didn't COME OUT!!!")
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To: discostu; Verginius Rufus

Oh my gosh, this is over my head. Here is the perfect sentence:

Language enthusiasts ARE bananas!

(because they enjoy a heavy computational load on the brain!)


23 posted on 08/29/2015 12:03:05 PM PDT by donna (Pray for Revival.)
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To: FredZarguna

Maybe you should replace that banana with a mini “Donald Trump”.


24 posted on 08/29/2015 12:06:31 PM PDT by donna (Pray for Revival.)
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To: donna

Once you get used to it it’s not really a computational load. And really learning other languages helps you understand your own, the best way to learn how we put sentences together is to learn how to put them together some other way. It also helps that most other languages are conjugated, it’s a lot easier to figure out what that adverb is modifying when it matches the verb in some way. And then once you learn that you’ve increased your understanding of adverbs in general, which makes you better at English. And Latin has the additional benefit of being where we stole so much of English from those Latin roots really increase your English power.


25 posted on 08/29/2015 12:12:20 PM PDT by discostu (It always comes down to cortexiphan)
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To: donna
Monkey eats Trump. Even hearing "the final Trump" that seems unlikely.
26 posted on 08/29/2015 12:29:11 PM PDT by FredZarguna ( "I pulled the lever on the machine, but the Clark Bar didn't COME OUT!!!")
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To: donna

Yes! We have no bananas, we have no bananas today!


27 posted on 08/29/2015 12:31:26 PM PDT by Jimmy Valentine (DemocRATS - when they speak, they lie; when they are silent, they are stealing the American Dreaml)
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To: Verginius Rufus
I believe this etymology is incorrect.

There are two theories, neither of them as a Latin word, unless you're referring more generically to romance languages, which borrowed it from a region of what is now the Congo:

There are two common theories: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana#Etymology The word banana is thought to be of West African origin, possibly from the Wolof word banaana, and passed into English via Spanish or Portuguese.

The other is that it comes from the Arabic word for finger. http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2014/08/origin-banana/

The first recorded use is in 1597.

28 posted on 08/29/2015 12:38:58 PM PDT by FredZarguna ( "I pulled the lever on the machine, but the Clark Bar didn't COME OUT!!!")
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To: Jimmy Valentine
I'm going to the banana eat, and let the rest of you thinkers the banana discuss.
29 posted on 08/29/2015 12:39:21 PM PDT by donna (Pray for Revival.)
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To: discostu
“te amo” is literally translated as “you love

I'm no Latin scholar, but I don't think that's true. "Te" is second person objective case, the receiver of an action. "Amo" is first person singular, "I love." So "Te amo" means "I love you."

Your sentence, "You love," would be "tu amas." (I may have the verb conjugation wrong."

30 posted on 08/29/2015 12:52:46 PM PDT by IronJack
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To: IronJack

You cut off the parens which said the “love” was first person singular version of the verb. I was showing that in Latin the subject is often within the verb, so that while we would normally translate “te amo” as “I love you” there is actually no “I” in that sentence, it is simply understood that since “amo” is the first person singular version of “amare” (to love) that it is “I” doing the loving without any need to put “ego” in the sentence. Also seen in another famous sentence “cogito ergo sum”, when we tranlate it into English we include two “I”s that aren’t actually in the sentence, merely understood because of the conjugations. Conjugation is a powerful tool in language and the Romans really used it to their advantage, they let it streamline the language and also give them a tool for added emphasis.


31 posted on 08/29/2015 12:59:32 PM PDT by discostu (It always comes down to cortexiphan)
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To: donna

Me, too.

To me, “monkey banana eats” is harder to process because the monkey could be eating many things.

Easier is “monkey eats banana” because eat is only one thing and then we hear the final banana.
********************************************************************************************************
Well then, if you believe the article extract, the computational load on your brain has to have been lightened allowing you to choose more efficient systems of communication which encourage the use of more complex grammatical structures. There’s no other explanation. /sarc


32 posted on 08/29/2015 1:18:16 PM PDT by House Atreides (CRUZ or lose!)
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To: Zeneta

Wow! Thanks for that!


33 posted on 08/29/2015 1:58:51 PM PDT by MV=PY (The Magic Question: Who's paying for it?)
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To: JimSEA

What about languages that go verb subject object? Like Tagolog?


34 posted on 08/29/2015 2:08:33 PM PDT by LadyDoc (liberals only love politically correct poor people)
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To: House Atreides

In Tagolog it depends if you want to emphsize the eating or the banana.

The verb changes as does the ng vs ang particle that designates s or object.

but you can use subject verb object by adding ay.

In English we change words.

The monkey is eating the banana.

the banana is being eaten vy the monkey.


35 posted on 08/29/2015 2:19:47 PM PDT by LadyDoc (liberals only love politically correct poor people)
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To: FredZarguna
The Latin author in 1606 was simply reporting the African name, not offering an etymology of the word.

Let's not forget the late lamented statesman, Canaan Banana, first President of Zimbabwe.

36 posted on 08/29/2015 2:22:52 PM PDT by Verginius Rufus
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To: discostu

Then I missed your point. I agree that implicit conjugations like those you describe are handy linguistic shortcuts. Spanish is very similar. You can add the pronoun if you choose, but it’s generally not necessary.


37 posted on 08/29/2015 2:39:09 PM PDT by IronJack
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To: MV=PY

I literally “stumbled upon” them a few years back and have checked in from time to time.

It looks as though they are trying to monetize the thing.

I can do 500 words per minute very comfortably and when I am focused, 750 is no problem.

As I said, I think this is a real game changer.

It won’t be long before virtually ever college textbook or heavy reading assignment will be converted to this.

Can you imagine how many books you could rip through at 750 words per minute?

If Google hasn’t already embraced this technology I would be surprised.


38 posted on 08/29/2015 2:52:50 PM PDT by Zeneta (Thoughts in time and out of season.)
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To: Zeneta

It’s trivial to write an app that will do this. Clearly there’s a huge benefit on small screens (phones).

I’d be surprised if anyone can corner the technology. I would expect Amazon to embrace it (except it may reduce Kindle sales).

Eventually I’d expect it to be ubiquitous.

Again, thanks for the post!


39 posted on 08/29/2015 3:54:50 PM PDT by MV=PY (The Magic Question: Who's paying for it?)
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To: Verginius Rufus
A Roman looking at the sentence "monkey eats banana" may wonder whether the monkey is eating or being eaten (not having any idea what a "banana" is). But if he was told a banana is a fruit, he could say Simius comedit bananam or Bananam comedit simius and it would be clear who was the eater and what was the eatee.

It would be "simius bananam comedit", since Latin is and SOV language.

I reject the premise of the article. SVO langauges do not as a rule allow for more complex sentence structures. On the contrary, some of the most complex sentence structures I encountered were by Cicero in his Catilinarian Orations. Latin is a highly inflected SVO language.

The same is true for Attic Greek. Some of the sentences in Plato's Apology and Symposium, as I recall, were so complex, that the author lost the grammatical thread and produced sentences that simply did not parse.

Inflected langauges are different, not more difficult for native speakers.

40 posted on 08/29/2015 4:42:07 PM PDT by nonsporting
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