The Boston University undergraduate Linguistics Association will be screening two videos in the coming weeks -- one on each Thursday surrounding Thanksgiving. Come if you can! BULA Fall Semester Movie Nights: IN SEARCH OF THE FIRST LANGUAGE Thu, Nov 20, 7pm Geddes Language Center CAS 537C (Viewing Room) THE HUMAN LANGUAGE SERIES Part 1: Discovering the Human Language Thu, Dec 4, 7pm Geddes Language Center CAS 538 Some blurbs about the videos: IN SEARCH OF THE FIRST LANGUAGE http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/teachers/programs/2120_firstlan.html There are almost 5,000 different languages spoken in the world. Many linguists believe that these 5,000 evolved from about 200 distinct and apparently unrelated families. Whether or not all of these language families could have developed from a single language is the issue explored by this episode of NOVA. There is a controversy among linguists as to whether a primordial language once existed. Some claim that after about 10,000 years, any language has changed too much for anyone to ascertain the original tongue. They argue that theories about languages before 10,000 years ago are pure speculation. Others are turning to DNA patterns to support theories of language origin. All of these linguists are collecting information that they hope will help them find relationships among the various families of languages. THE HUMAN LANGUAGE SERIES http://equinoxfilms.home.mindspring.com/series.html Our species alone has the miracle of syntax. Program One is about words, sentences, and Universal Grammar - the system claimed to be common to all the world's languages. "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" is gibberish, but grammatically correct. Does this show that structure can be separate from meaning? We learn that the "Chomskyan revolution" changed language study into a search for what goes on inside the brain. (How does a child just know that the marble "inside" the box isn't "near" the box?) We find out that the human language has two great ground plans. (Warlpiri, an Australian language, works the same way as Latin.) There are no "primitive" languages anywhere. How good is the human language at what it does? Language is poor at describing faces, but there is no other way to declare, "There is not a giraffe standing next to me." The great achievement of language is that we can think in abstractions; that we can say anything we can think; that only we can say new things.