Wikipedia+project+communication+page

Here is a list of the ideas that we came up with for the wikipedia project:
 * 1) LOLspeak
 * 2) social networking and communication skills
 * 3) extinct or rare language
 * 4) Crow languages
 * 5) Reform english language to be more phonetic
 * 6) I found a stub page (not very developed) titled Spoken Language. It has two paragraphs and I added several links to other wikipedia pages to it already. I think there is a lot that can be done with this one so if anyone is interested, this is the one I am going to be doing I think. It needs a lot of additional info added to make it a complete page, but it should be easy enough to expand on.
 * 7) I also found a page called Bow-wow theory which is a theory on the evolution of language that is really needing to be expanded on. --Sami

Feel free to post other ideas as they come to you ;)

Hey guy, I missed the last two weeks of class got sick one week and then got called into work the next. These all seem like great ideas, I like the second and third ideas they seem very interesting to me.

Hey yall, I propose we try to winnow down the choices before next weeks class, what do you guys think?

So I plan on coming tonight with a few possible articles found from the library database on spoken language. I'm really not very good at this editing wikipedia thing and might need some help! Also, I wanted to make sure what I've found is appropriate. ~Ruby 5/24

I found some great quotes to use in our wikipedia project from 2 of the 3 books I got from the library. I figured I would put them all on here and we can pick and choose which ones could work.

From Spoken and Written Language: Exploring Orality and Literacy Volume IX:

"Formulaic expressions function as wholes, as a convenient way to signal knowledge that is already shared. In oral tradition, it is not assumed that the expressions contain meaning themselves, in a way that can be analyzed. Rather, words are a convenient tool to signal already shared social meaning. Thus, in an oral tradition, as has been pointed out elsewhere, it does not matter whether one says 'I could care less' or 'I couldn't care less'. The expression is in either case, a handy way to make reference to a familiar idea. The meaning is in the context. In contrast, in literate tradition, the meaning is in the text." (pgs 1-2)

"In oral tradition, thought it 'exqiusitely elaborated' through a stitching together of formulaic language which he calls 'rhapsodic'. In literate tradition, thought is analytic, sequential, linear." (pg. 2)

"Truth, in the oral tradition, resides in common sense reference to experience, whereas in literate tradition it resides in logical or coherent arguement." (pg. 2)

"Plato would have banned poets from participation in education in the Republic. Because of their ability to move audiences emotionally, poets were a dangerous threat to the transition to literacy, by which people were to learn to suspend their emotions and approach knowledge through analytic, logical processes." (pg. 2)

"Strategies associated with oral tradition place emphasis on shared knowledge and the interpersonal relationship between communicator and audience. In this, they 'elaborate' the metacommunicative function of language: the use of words to convey something about the relationship between communicator and audience. Literate tradition emphasizes the communicative function of language: the use of words to convey information or content." (pgs 2-3)

" In oral language, the point intention or significance of the language, the 'speaker's meaning' is perserved in the mind of the listener; as the actual words, syntax, and intonation are ephemeral, they are rapidly exchanged for those interpreted meanings which can be preserved. In written language, the words and syntax, the 'sentence meaning', is preserved by the artifact of writing, and mental recall becomes the precise reproduction of that artifact." (pg. 20)

"Reading a text may be expected to produce a bias towards the detection and memory of the sentence meaning, for what was said, while listening may be expected of the speaker's meaning, for what was intended or meant." (pg. 21)

-There was also a really cool study described that delved into the difference in what happens when a child listens to a story vs. when a child reads a story, the following quote was from the Results section-

"Those children who listened to the narrative stories were found to be better able to remember statements which were concerned with the central events of the story than statements about irrelevant or peripheral events. The Grade 3 and Grade 5 children who read the narrative stories better remembered these irrelevant details. In other words, children appear to listen more to what was MEANT, but to read more for what was SAID. Alternatively, listening results in particular memory for the thematic or central aspects of the story, whereas reading distributes memory across all aspects of the story represented in the written text." (pg. 30)

"Speakers interact with their audiences directly, whereas writers do not." (pg. 36)

In my second source, The Child's Path to Spoken Language I found the following quotes:

"To speak of 'language acquisition' is to imply that language is an extraneous object of knowledge for children which is first 'acquired' and then spoken. The contrary is equally plausibe: in learning to speak children learn a language." - Elena Lievan and John McShane "Language is a Developing Social Skill"

"Infants are exposed to linguistically relevant stimulation while still in the womb, and there is evidence to suggest that infants react to prenatal stimulation ins developmentally favorable ways. This evidence includes the finding that neonates can generally distinguish between their own mother's voice and the voice of another mother, and the observation that newborns seem to prefer the language spoken by their mother to disparate languages." (pg. 23)

"Neonates do not merely prefer the resonance properties of their mother's voice. They also seem to prefer her vocal movements in effect- as we adult observers think of it- the language that she spoke when they were still in the womb. Jacques Mehler and his colleagues have found that at four days of age, babies born in Paris of French speaking women prefer the sound of French to Russian. Babies whose mother spoke a different language during pregnancy lack this preference for French over Russian; indeed they give little evidence that they even discriminate these languages." (pg. 39)

From the article I found Last week, I'm thinking I'm just going to put in little blurbs about the different theories of language and link them as applicable. If someone else wants to they can use my article to explain the argument about written language being natural or not... ~Ruby 5/31

Hey Guys, My my stuff got deleted off of the wikipedia page. The kwamikagami guy is a "know it all" and I'm almost thinking anything we add is going to be deleted. I think his reason for deleting my language evolution stuff is that is should go on the "language" page. If ya'll want me to try to add more stuff, I can. I agree, it's very frustrating to put work into something and have it taken away. But at least we are working on it!~Ruby 6/1 = = Hey, so all my things got deleted as well, I added a bunch of links I thought were relevent and a couple sentences I thought fit into the paragraph. Apparently It wasn't good enough. has anyone else had any luck with editing?

Hey yall, I'm kinda at a loss as to what to add after reading the talk page. Everything that I would have added he seems to have a problem with. Should we try working on another article?

Here is the [|link]

I also created a separate page that directs Rick to the direct link and thought we could once again supply our user names, so that it is all in one place. Ruby 6/7