Welcome to the Listening Time Podcast.
Hey everybody, this is Connor and you're listening to episode 67 of the Listening Time Podcast.
I hope you're all doing well today.
Remember that if you want more Listening Time episodes, if two episodes per month isn't enough for you, then make sure to become a Listening Time member to receive my bonus podcast episodes.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The link is in the episode description below this episode.
That's patreon.com slash listening time.
And in my advanced podcast episodes, I speak at normal speed.
I speak fast.
And so you get to practice with real English.
And of course, I provide the transcript for you.
And so you have this to help you understand what I'm saying, and and this is what you need if you really want to reach an advanced level of listening if this podcast is already pretty easy for you to understand, then it's time for you to move on to the advanced podcast, where you can practice to become an advanced listener.
So remember to sign up to become a Listening Time family member today.
All right, in today's episode, we're going to talk about something very interesting for me.
I've been reading a book recently.
I haven't finished yet.
But it's a very interesting book and I'd like to talk about it today.
The title of the book is The Atoms of Language and it's written by Mark Baker.
So I want to talk about this today.
I'm going to talk about some of the main points in this book.
This book talks about the structure of human language and how all the languages of the world are both similar and different at the same time.
It's a really fascinating subject, in my opinion. and I hope that it's interesting for you as well.
Before we start, remember to give this podcast a five-star rating and please share this podcast with anyone else who might find it useful.
Also, remember that you have the transcript available for this episode.
That's in the episode description, so go down and click on that if you need it.
All right, let's get started.
Are your ears ready?
You know what time it is.
It's listening time.
Okay, so let's talk about this book, The Atoms of Language.
So this book talks mainly about the syntax of language, not the other features of human language.
The syntax refers to the arrangement of words and phrases. phrases within a language.
So how we place our words, where we place them within our sentences.
So, of course, there are some similarities between different languages and differences between different languages in terms of their syntax.
And he explores this topic and he does so in a very interesting way.
So he looks at this topic using the idea of parameters.
So in linguistics the word parameters refers to the features that languages can have that differentiate their syntax from other languages.
Okay, so these are the characteristics that make languages either similar or different in the way that they're constructed.
And so this is a very big theory in the linguistic world and it's one of the best theories to explain the differences and similarities between human languages.
So let me give you one example of a parameter.
This is called the null subject parameter.
This parameter states that languages either always need subjects in their sentences or they don't always need subjects if they're not necessary.
So, all languages, I'm pretty sure, fall into one of these two categories.
Either you need subjects in your sentences or you sometimes don't need subjects, depending on the type of sentence.
Okay, so let me give you an example of this.
In English, we always need subjects in our sentences.
So even if it doesn't seem like there's a subject, we still need to put a subject.
And in English, we use the word it in this case.
For example, let's talk about the weather.
When we talk about the weather.
There are some interesting sentences that we use in English where we use the word it as the subject.
For example, we can say, it's raining.
We don't say the sky is raining or the clouds are raining.
We just say it's raining.
This word it doesn't really refer to anything.
It's not talking about any real thing.
But in English, we can't just say raining.
We need to say it's raining.
Or, for example, we also say it's hot and it's cold.
That word it doesn't refer to anything in these sentences either.
However, in a language like Spanish, when we say sentences like this, we don't actually have a subject, we can just say está lloviendo.
This means, is raining.
There's no it there.
It's just the verb is and raining.
So this is very different in English and in Spanish, because in English if you say a sentence without a subject, it sounds completely wrong.
However, in Spanish, sometimes you don't need a subject.
And there are many sentences like that where you can use the correct form of the verb to indicate what subject you're talking about.
And in English, you can't do that.
So this is one example of a parameter, right?
Languages fall into one of these two categories.
Either they need subjects or they don't need subjects.
And depending on which category they fall into, this will affect a lot of other sentences in that language.
One other type of parameter that I want to mention is the word order parameter.
There are really two main types of word order, right?
There aren't many different types.
There are just two main types.
And then, of course, there are some minor types as well.
But these two main types make up the vast majority of all the languages in the world.
So these two main types are like 95% of the languages where word order matters, if I'm not mistaken.
So, for example, one of the main types of word orders is the word order that we have in English, where we have subject verb, object.
So for example, John hit the ball, right?
The subject is John, hit is the verb, and ball is the object.
And then we have another very popular word order type, which is the Japanese type, for example, where you have subject object, verb.
So the object usually comes before the verb in these languages.
So these are the two main types of word order.
And, like I said, there are a few other types, but a very small percentage of languages have those types.
So in general, when we talk about different word orders, we talk about two main types of word orders.
And this is really surprising.
Let me tell you why.
If you were to just think about this topic, about how many different types of word order we could have in human language.
People would usually think that there's either one main word order or that there are tons of different word orders, many different word orders.
Because, for example, some people would say that there's probably just one word order.
Because this is the way that our brain logically thinks.
It always thinks about the subject first and then the verb and then the object.
So all languages should follow that natural order, that logical order of how we think.
That's one way people might think about this topic.
If they were to just guess about how many word orders there are, they might just say one, because that's the way our brain thinks.
Or some other people might say that there are many different types of word orders and that they're pretty random, because languages just have all these different random features and random orders and so there's probably a ton of different word orders.
So most people would think that it's either one of those two options, either one word order or many different random word orders.
However, there are two, exactly two main types.
Like I said, there are more, but I'm talking about the main types.
And this is really interesting because why should there be two main types?
Why aren't there three main types or four main types?
It's a very interesting question that the author explores in this book.
Language is not completely random like many people might think.
There are actually rules that are just naturally there when it comes to language.
And the author explores this in detail with some of the other parameters that he talks about.
But the main point that I take away from this, this idea that languages aren't just random.
They have a set of rules and some languages choose one option and some languages choose the other option of the parameter.
This is all part of the theory of universal grammar.
This theory states that there are certain innate constraints on what a language can be.
In English, the word innate refers to something natural, something that is already there.
For example, I could say, he has an innate ability to teach.
I'm saying that he was born with that ability.
It's a natural ability.
So in universal grammar we have the idea that there are innate constraints or restrictions on what a language could be.
We can't just have a language with all these really random features in it.
There are really only a few choices that the language can make, so to say.
So, for example, there are almost zero languages in the world that have the word order object subject, verb.
If languages were just randomly constructed, then we wouldn't expect to see this type of phenomenon.
We would expect there to be some languages that are subject-verb-object, some that are subject-object-verb, some that are object-verb-subject, some that are object-subject-verb, etc.
And we would expect these to be relatively equal in number.
Right.
We wouldn't expect there to just be two main types of word order.
And we definitely wouldn't expect there to be zero or almost zero languages that have the object subject verb, word order.
It really doesn't make sense.
Why don't languages have that word order?
There are thousands of languages in the world, and almost zero of them have this word order.
It doesn't really make sense if we think that languages are just randomly constructed.
So this is the idea of universal grammar that there are already certain rules and restrictions in the human brain that limit the types of languages we can create in our world.
So this is a really fascinating idea and I would recommend that you read more about this if you think this is interesting.
You can look up articles on universal grammar or read books about this.
And what's also interesting about this is that the idea of universal grammar is that language isn't completely determined by our history and our culture and things like that.
And this is what most people would assume.
They would assume that because of our history and our culture, languages develop in certain ways.
Of course words can be developed in this way and certain parts of the language can, but in terms of the syntax, the way that we order the words in our sentences, it's not really determined by these factors.
So, for example, we see neighbor cultures, cultures that are right next to each other geographically, in the same region, that have completely different types of languages.
And yet we have some cultures that are very far from each other, that are in different parts of the world, And they have the same language structure or very similar language structures, even though these cultures have had no contact and no influence on each other.
So we can see that this aspect of language isn't determined by the history or the culture of the people who are speaking it.
It's determined by this idea of universal grammar that languages can either be this way or that way.
And some languages choose to be this way and some languages choose to be that way.
Some languages are more like English in their word order and some languages are more like Japanese in their word order.
And this is the vast majority of languages.
There aren't just many, many different types of word order among the languages of the world.
It's not like that.
So this is the idea of universal grammar.
So some of you might disagree with this, or some of you might not know much about this, but I encourage you to, like I said, read more about this and think about this, because it's a very interesting idea to consider.
So lastly, I just want to talk a little bit about language acquisition and what these ideas have to do with the way we acquire language.
So when we think of how children and adults acquire language, we can see that children definitely have an advantage.
I'm sure you've seen this before.
If an adult and their child move to a new country, usually the child learns that language very fast and the adult doesn't.
This is a very common scenario.
So why does a child have such a head start when it comes to acquiring a new language?
In English the word head start refers to when one person gets an advantage and they get to start early or do something early before the other competitor, for example.
So children have a head start when it comes to acquiring languages?
It seems so.
One idea is that children are exposed to a rule, or a couple rules when they're just listening to the new language and they have this ability to deduce or infer other rules from that first rule, right.
So, for example, if they hear the sentence it's raining after a while, they can understand that in this language, subjects are necessary, right?
The fact that the word it is there means that subjects are necessary.
And this is not something that they consciously think necessarily.
And it's not something we analyze when we're listening to native speakers talk, but it's something that's in the child's brain and it helps them understand other rules of the language.
So if they see in this sentence that the person is saying it but they're not referring to anything, then the child's brain starts to understand that, that this is a feature of the language, that the language needs a subject, even if there's no real subject.
And so the child starts to understand these rules without even realizing it.
And this is something that children have the ability to do that adults can't really do well.
We know this that adults are not as good as children in seeing these patterns and understanding them.
So because children have this ability, they're able to acquire languages much more easily.
And so because of universal grammar, because...
Languages aren't just randomly constructed, but they have a very solid base, or a stable framework, so to say.
Children can very easily detect these patterns and start to understand them more.
So it's something that's already in their brain.
It's like this.
We're born with a certain way of speaking language.
Regardless of what language we speak, our brain is made to construct language in a certain way.
Right.
There are certain things that we just need to do.
We need to construct when we're speaking a language.
And there are certain things that are off limits.
There are certain combinations or options that we simply can't choose when we're creating a language.
And so, because of these limitations, these natural constraints, children can easily use this part of their brain to recognize patterns.
So in summary, language is so incredibly different from other subjects that we learn.
And so we shouldn't learn languages the way we learn other subjects like math or physics, for example.
This is my opinion.
I don't think that we should approach language like we approach other topics, because it works so differently in our brain.
I think we should pay more attention to this idea of universal grammar and parameters, and we should think differently about how humans acquire language.
All right, why don't we stop there for today?
This might have been a very deep topic for you.
It might have been a little hard to understand.
That's okay.
You have the transcript available and you can try to listen multiple times to try to understand everything I'm saying.
Remember that if you want more content, If you want extra episodes and my listening practice seminars, then become a Listening Time member.
If you want my advanced podcast, then become a Listening Time family member today.
The link is in the episode description below this episode.
Click on that if you want my advanced podcast episodes.
And please remember to share this podcast with anyone else who might find it useful and give this podcast a five star rating.
All right.
Thank you all for listening to this episode.
And I'll talk to you on the next episode of Listening Time.
