Week 4 Lab: Language

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"The past, the present, and the future walked into a bar. It was tense."

-It is possible that all languages share a common origin
-Whether or not this is true, there were far fewer languages in the beginning of humanity
-Tribes would break into separate groups in search of new land to live on
-Isolated populations then developed in different ways, including in the department of language
-3000 to 8000 languages in the world, depending on who you ask
    -Sometimes dialects of the same language are so different that they may be unintelligible to other         speakers of the same language

-Hearty welcome vs. cordial reception: very different linguistic connotations
-"Hearty" and "welcome" come from Saxon
-"Cordial" and "reception" come from French
-France ruled England for a period
     -The aristocracy spoke French, the commoners spoke Saxon
-French and Saxon languages became more intertwined 
-We still associate French words with higher status, likely because of this origin story

-12 tenses in English
    -Simple past/present/future
    -Every ensuing combination of these simple tenses as progressive, perfect, and perfect progressive
-The idea of past/present/future does not exist in every language
-Sometimes the past is divided into tenses based on how long ago someone is referring to (days, weeks, years, ect.)
-Mandarin has no tenses and is based solely on aspect
-Some tenses are based on mood (such as the urgency, necessity, or probability of an event)

Are tenses...
-Different ways of describing the same "fundamental reality"
-Reflection of diff. ways of thinking about the world and time
How many languages can you identify? Source: Pixabay


 Bibliography

 Story Lab: Language. Youtube playlist. Web Source

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