Tag: Language
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The Relation of Speech to Reading and Writing
In this post, we examine another argument made against the naturalness of reading by Alvin Liberman in 1992. The distinction, according to Liberman, may be that one is biological in evolution, while the other is cultural.
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An Interlude: What do we mean when we say learning something is unnatural?
An interlude reflecting on what we’ve learned from the Goodmans and Gough and Hillinger on the debate of whether learning to read is natural or unnatural.
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Learning to Read is Natural
In this paper, the Goodmans claim that learning to read is natural. Are they right?
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What is (un)natural about learning to read and write?
What is (un)natural about learning to read and write? In a series of posts, we’ll examine three seminal papers investigating the nature of literacy development and its relation to language learning.
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The Science of Reading Across Languages
Digging into “Is the Science of Reading Just the Science of Reading English?” by David L. Share
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Irregularity Enhances Learning (Maybe)
In this paper, the author makes an argument that the contrasting forces of “discriminability” and “regularity” both serve to make language something we pick up pretty much naturally, even if we don’t know all the words in the language.
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Language Within and Beyond the Brain
As I was preparing for a session I was facilitating recently, I went down a rabbit hole on language use and cognition. I know saying “went down the rabbit hole” typically bears a negative connotation, but I gotta say, I love me some getting lost in meandering exploratory nerdy byalleyways. While rabbit holes may oft […]
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Language and Friendship
I know Twitter gets a lot of flack as a cesspool of polarization and facile debate, but I have to say that if you are a nerd like me and follow lots of other nerds, it’s a veritable goldmine for nerdy indulgence. Case in point, I recently came across this fascinating paper shared on Twitter: […]
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Language and Cognition
There was a fascinating summary thread I came across recently that I want to dig into, as there’s some really interesting and rich areas of tension to unpack. Here’s the thread: The final plenary of @ICCG_11 #icc1 is by the brilliant @ev_fedorenko: "The language system in the human mind and brain" pic.twitter.com/oqg6O0Cixf — Michael Pleyer […]
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Universals of Language
In my last post, we looked at a wonderful paper, “Universals in Learning to Read Across Languages and Writing Systems“, that outlines operating principles of reading and writing across languages, as well as some key variations. Continuing on this theme, I wanted to highlight another recent paper, “The universal language network: A cross-linguistic investigation spanning […]
Language & Literacy 