Mathematics and Linguistics
Hi, I am a mathematics student, finishing my undergrad. I've always had a interest in Linguistics and I'm currently reading some books on the subject. Now I'm wandering if there is a connection between Abstract/Pure mathematics with Linguistics, obviously excluding statistics and computation, because of the formal way that Pure Mathematics (and also Logic) is treated and also from some influence on the philosophic views of Wittgenstein on both mathematics and linguistics.
My point being that some, but not many, mathematicians worked also as linguists (manly algebrists in my POV), I think the most famous one being H. Grassmann. And one current hot topic of today is Applied Category Theory, which I've found some articles of it being applied on Linguistics (although I do not have yet the necessary background in Linguistics to understand).
So I would like to know more between this seemingly loose connection between both areas. I would be glad if anyone could help.
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I'd recommend you take a look at Partee et al's Mathematical Methods in Linguistics which shows how mathematical concepts (i.e. set theory, functions, first-order logic, lattices, Boolean algebras) are used in the field of formal semantics going back to the work of Richard Montague.
If you exclude statistics (which is *cough cough* the best part - in fact I think there's a lot more potential for statistical theory to play an important role in linguistics than it currently does) and computation, you pretty much exclude most of the connections, but here are some that still remain and that I'm aware of:
Very simple ODEs are not uncommon in the German school of quantitative linguistics.
The German school of quantitative linguistics is also known to flirt with discrete probability distributions a lot; if you look at some book-length treatments, you'll find quite a few distributions you've never heard of. Inevitably some of this work is going to be linked to have we can make inference on model parameters, which of course takes us back to statistics.
Dynamical systems are used in articulatory phonology and related areas. Sam Tilsen at Cornell has done a lot fancy stuff along these lines (that I don't really understand, lol).
Graph theory shows up fairly frequently, most notably in the modelling of social networks for sociolinguistics. (I'm going to be involved in a project that applies graph theory to another area soon, but I don't think anything has been published on it yet, so I can't point you to anything to read.) This is probably about as far removed from statistics and computation as this post will get (which isn't very, I know).
Optimisation (idk if this is too 'computation-y' for you) is important for models of learning, for obvious reasons.
Game theory is sometimes used in pragmatics.
Information theory is practically everywhere in linguistics these days; as a young scholar I think knowledge of its basic concepts is absolutely essential if you're working on a structural subfield of linguistics. It's particularly important in psycholinguistics and phonology, and I can definitely see it begin to gain importance in syntax as well.
Again, the most interesting connections are going to be through statistics, computation or signal processing and not directly from maths to linguistics, but these are the most direct connections from maths to ling that I can think of off the top of my head.
Does the entirety of formal langue theory fall under the umbrella of "computation" ? For that matter, does generative syntax (Phrase structure grammars, CCGs and the like) ?
Adding to what others have suggested, I’d reccomend taking a look at CFGs and PCFGs.
I was a mathematics major before going to grad school in linguistics. There are a lot of connections between math and language, but the one I primarily use is formal semantics (i.e., the math of meaning). The main math subfield that intersects with semantics is logic and set theory, but people work with all sorts of other kinds of math too. Seconding the Partee book recommendation also--there's a lot there beyond semantics, including more computational stuff.
MATE I studied Maths and Linguistics at university as joint honours! There were very few of us, and only one uni in the UK did it at the time, but to me they work well together. There was little academic crossover but I think often the logic and mindset is the same
Funny enough i was just curious about this myself. I'm currently a Physics, Linguistics, and Math major in uni and trying to find some fulfilling interdisciplinary subject of at least math and linguistics.
My current syntax course seems to have a great deal of first-order logic and lambda calculus (not mathematically rigorous, but the structure being much more objective is better than sociolinguistics IMO). Im going to be taking computational linguistics and HPSG later, and was wondering other math-y linguistics courses there are.
Yeah definitely look at Sam Tilsen's stuff, and articulatory phonology in general. You'll get to combine all three :)
Hi Reddit Linguists!
I was born and raised in the CA Bay Area (and so were my parents) and am a monolingual English speaker, but other native Californians regularly ask where I'm from, as they think I have a foreign accent.
There isn't much consistency when I ask where the accent sound like it's from. I've heard people suggest everything from Russia (common) to the American South (rarely).
I found this thread on this sub when I was Googling: https://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/qe9iaf/apparently_i_have_a_foreign_accent_in_my_native/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
And thought you all might be able to help me the way you helped him, so I recorded myself on Vocaroo: https://voca.ro/1iEFnnVQ2wio
I don't think I have any special considerations beyond a permanent retainer wire cemented to the back of my bottom teeth (where my tongue rests) but I seem to recall people asking about my accent long before I got the retainer or had braces.
Like many folks, I'm a little self-conscious about hearing/recording my own voice, so I tried not to slip into "presenter voice" but I might have failed. I can try reading a menu or something if the thing I recorded doesn't sound right.
I'll be really stoked if I can get to the bottom of why people hear a foreign accent when I speak the only language I know! I'm not even sure how this happens to someone, and while I'm pretty sure there's nothing "wrong" with my accent, I'm hoping it's not a speech impediment.
Thanks so much for reading and listening!
The sounds i'm talking about are: German Umlaut phonemes "ö" [ ø ] and "ü" [y] and English-Icelandic-specific [θ] and [ð]
The reason i'm asking is bc all those phonemes also appear in Romance languages but i havent found them in major Slavic langs (Polish, Czech, Slovak, Slovenian, Serbo-Croatian, North Macedonian, Bulgarian, Ukrainian, Russian) but maybe they appear in minor(ity) langs like Kashubian, Rusyn, Sorbian etc.
Is anyone on r/linguistics familiar with the Kurpian dialect of Polish?
I was reading the Polish Wikipedia article on the topic and wanted to know how certain letters/sounds in the dialect would be transcribed phonetically.
"å" (original Polish description: tylne "a" nieco zbliżone do "o" English translation: back "a" that's somewhat close to "o")
"ï" (original Polish description: pośrednie między ogólnopolskimi "i" a "y" English translation: intermediate between standard Polish "i" and "y")
Would å be transcribed as [ɑ] or [ɒ]? What about "ï?"
Ok so I'm very confused about the sound the IPA letter ɪ is supposed to make. It seems like it represents a different sound in different languages.
So far, I've seen it used in a couple situations (i'm a dutch native speaker):
In dutch, ɪ is used to describe the sound of the dutch vowel i in the word 'ik' But...
In german it is used to describe the sound of the vowel i in the word 'ich', which to me does not sound at all like the dutch vowel, instead being closer to (but not the same as) an IPA i (or dutch ie as in 'lieg').
And in many linguistics youtube videos (mostly by native english speakers), people tend to pronounce ɪ almost exactly the same way as IPA ɛ, not at all like dutch 'ik' or german 'ich'.
So, I guess my question is: which sound was originally meant with the symbol ɪ, is it supposed to be close to ɛ, i or neither? And what happened that it came to represent three distinct sounds?
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