Cognitive Aspects of Being a Linguist: How Does a Linguist’s Mind Work?

In addition to my ongoing academic research on the nature of human language, I am also a professional translator and language teacher. In the past few years, I have been offering language services in face-to-face/telephone simultaneous interpreting to clients from different parts of UK and US, and I have taught foreign languages (mainly Chinese, both Mandarin and Cantonese) to university students and working adults in the northern part of England. I really enjoy these extra-curricular activities, since they allow me to utilize my language skills to the benefit of my community. It is also a nice break from my research, which can get quite tiring at times, especially after staring at trees and graphs on the computer screen for 10+ hours. It is hard to explain my interest in languages. While I firmly believe in the power of cold logic in human decision-making, I also realize that human beings are sentimental beings and our minds do not always function logically. I have hence given up trying to over-analyse and make sense of everything and have tried to just observe and accept things as they are. I remember that it was in the Fourth Form (Year 10) at school (February 2002, to be precise (!)) that I decided that I wanted to become a linguist began reading avidly about human language and exposing myself to as many foreign languages as I could. Thinking back, it was an entirely spontaneous decision. There was no logic or calculation behind it. I just felt that it was the right thing for me to do. There was one episode, however, which really sticks out in my mind. It was a train journey that I took from my school (Sherborne) to London on the first exeat (weekend schoolbreak) of Michaelmas Term 2001 (very shortly after 9/11). A Chinese guy was sitting opposite me, and we started talking in Cantonese. I could tell that he was from the mainland, as his Cantonese was not perfect. The train operator came over and asked to check our tickets. I duly showed him mine, but when my compatriot failed to show his, the operator decided to call the police and detain this man at our destination. However, this man spoke no English and when they interrogated him on the platform, they suddenly asked me to translate for them (Chinese-English, both ways). It was a messy affair, and the whole thing dragged on for close to an hour. It was eventually cleared up when this guy’s friend came to pick him up and offered to pay for the journey. The police officers thanked me cordially and shook my hand. This Chinese guy, on the other hand, cursed to me (not at me) about how the English were wankers etc. I was delayed on my journey to my guardian’s and did not reach their home till late that night. But for some reason, I do not recall being irritated or inconvenienced at all. In fact, I remember feeling quite glad that I was able to help a helpless man and local authorities to sort out their issues. I did not realize it then but it was probably that moment that I started to acquire a passion for languages and the social interaction that goes with them. I have mentioned before that episodes in one’s early life can dramatically alter one course of life. This was one of those that changed mine forever.

When I arrived at an English boarding school at the age of thirteen, my English was somewhat limited (still is not much better), and despite its title, this is not a grammar blog, though it does hinge on a linguistic phenomenon. It is more of a childhood reminiscence (yes, once again), as it deals with a particular episode that happened when I first arrived in England. As my old schoolmates and teachers can firmly attest, my English (both written and spoken) was riddled with grammatical errors when I first started at school. As a linguist, it is interesting for me now reflecting upon some of these learner’s mistakes that I made, since they reveal the structure of my brain (!). Rather than going under the knife, I much prefer to analyse it externally and see how this little organ of mine actually works. Anyway, a very common mistake in my speech then was that I did not distinguish between direct questions and indirect questions. As is well-known, English uses subject-auxiliary inversion for question-formation e.g. Stan / is in the following example:

1a) Stan is there.

1b) Where is Stan?

1c) *Where Stan is?

In indirect questions, however, (standard) English famously prohibits this inversion, which is one of the main pieces of evidence for arguing that the English left-periphery for interrogatives is the same as the complementiser layer which is selected in indirect statements (e.g. that, if, whether) (see e.g. Radford (1997)). For example:

2a) Where is Dan?

2b) *I do not know where is Dan.

2c) I do not know where Dan is.

I remember being corrected several times by my schoolmates for saying things like 2b) and they all insisted to me that the verb (here is) must stay in-situ (2c)) rather than come before the subject (here Stan), as in direct questions (2a)). Funny recollection this one, and one which is well attested in the first language acquisition of infants. Although I am now researching on linguistics, I have never claimed to be grammatically perfect or infallible in any of the languages I use. In fact, as a foreign language learner, I too had to go through the hoops and learn languages the hard way (verb tables, declensions/conjugations, vocab list etc etc etc). If anything, I am only too familiar with grammar mistakes (both mine and others) since as a linguist I am constantly on the lookout for them. As mentioned before many times, this is how we learn, namely by being pinned back by setbacks, and through every mistake and mishap we experience we learn to bounce back and come back stronger/better. Don’t give up.

I have rambled on before about my recollection of certain childhood episodes which have had a lasting influence on me. I have also given a brief explanation of how and when I decided to become a linguist, which was a pivotal moment in my early life. My recent work on Chinese dialectology has made me recall a particular episode in my childhood which also left a deep and sweet impression on me. Taiwanese media is, strangely, somewhat popular in Hong Kong and China. For commercial reasons, there is a lot of coverage of Taiwanese media on the other side of the pond and Taiwanese singers are idolised to a significant degree (though perhaps not as much as they are in their native Taiwan) on the mainland where their songs and albums are often widely sold. As a result, we have a habit of watching Taiwanese channels conducted in (Taiwanese) Mandarin (and thankfully so, since listening in Taiwanese would have been impossible, or at least so without some proper training). As explained, there are striking similarities and differences between Chinese dialects, and watching TV in another dialect was (and still is) an exhilarating experience for me as a child, since I could and could not understand what was going on, if this makes sense (!). I could because all Chinese dialects share the same grammatical system with microvariations, so I could follow the linguistic logic of what was transmitted to me, but I couldn’t because the phonology and lexicon of (Taiwanese) Mandarin were so different from my native Cantonese that I could not really grasp what they were saying, despite having a strong ‘feel’ for it (I was only young then, and my Mandarin was not yet up-to-scratch). Nonetheless, I was naturally inclined to do some cognitive exercise in my head and compare what I was hearing/reading to what I knew in my native Cantonese (supplemented by the standard literary Chinese I had learnt at school, which was based on modern Mandarin), and many funny patterns immediately and constantly emerged in my young and curious mind. As discussed, the comparative-historical method comes in very useful when reconstructing cognate varieties and one can easily spot morphophonemic correspondences between Chinese dialects. There was one in particular which fascinated me more than others, and it was 樂 ‘happy’, pronounced /le/ in Mandarin and /lok/ in Cantonese. There is a regular correspondence between Cantonese /-ok/ and Mandarin /-üe/: 覺 Cantonese /gok/ ~ Mandarin /jue/, 學 Cantonese /hok/ ~ Mandarin /xue/, 殼 Cantonese /hok/ ~ Mandarin /que/, 角 Cantonese /gok/ ~ Mandarin /jue/ etc. The vocalic correspondence for 樂 is Cantonese /lok/ ~ Mandarin /yue/, which is wide off the mark and really baffled me, since I was expecting total regularity in morphophonemic correspondences (which is also the common assumption in modern morphophonological theory ever since the Neogrammarians in the 19th century, a famous quote from whom: ‘sound change is totally regular and exceptionless’). However, in my young and inquisitive mind I quickly turned to another reflex of 樂 ‘music’, which is pronounced Cantonese /ngok/ ~ Mandarin /yue/ where the correspondence is regular. This was a major inspiration for my young and feeble linguistic brain, since it made me realise that human language was both regular and irregular, which makes its underlying rules and mechanisms so fascinating (one could also mention the polyphony in Mandarin 角 /jiao/ (cf Cantonese /gok/, as above), which is actually its common pronunciation in its standard usage ‘corner’, and the phonologically regular Mandarin /jue/ is really reserved for its specialized meaning ‘acting part/role/character’). This was another one of those childhood experiences that made me the person I am today, and it was very a sweet one. I wish I could go back in time and live like a child again, but unfortunately this is not possible, since I am getting on with age and experience and I cannot possibly revert to innocence again. Feeling nostalgic, but also bittersweet. Time to crack on with my research in Chinese dialects.

In addition to my native Chinese dialects, I also specialise in Romance linguistics, and in the summer 2011 I took part in the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) summer institute at the university of Colorado. It was an awesome experience, since it was the first time in years that I had visited America, and Boulder, Colorado was a delightful place (mountainous rain notwithstanding). The education was fantastic too, since I enrolled in some fascinating courses and made lots of contact in my professional field. That summer was so full of memorable episodes that I cannot even count them all. There was one particular occasion that stood out, and it was a particular pub-night where I was chatting with three Romance-speakers, one Italian, one Spanish and one Brazilian. Halfway through the evening, we decided to perform a linguistic experiment, since we were all linguistic nerds (!), and that was to test the boundaries of mutual intelligibility of modern Romance languages. We started talking in our own respective Romance language (in my case, I was speaking mainly in Spanish, though constantly moving ‘laterally’ across sister languages by reconstructing linguisitic correspondences and applying/reversing the Comparative Method…!). The remarkable thing was: it worked! We managed to have a long and sustained conversation in our respective Romance languages. We did not understand each other perfectly, and there were oftentimes when we had to pause and repeat the sentence that we had already uttered. Nonetheless, when we spoke at a slower, more emphatic rate, we managed to work out most of what each other was talking about. We were also linguists, so we were able to apply our linguistic training to our comprehension. It is often noted that Spanish and Italian are relatively well understood, as they are both phonetic languages. French and Portuguese are much less intelligible, as they are not phonetically regular. On this occasion, I am happy to recall that the three Romance languages in question (Spanish-Italian-Brazilian Portuguese) were mutually intelligible and we managed to have a conversation in them. It would have been nice to have a French speaker to complete the Western Romance jigsaw, and perhaps to have an Eastern Romance representative to stretch our Romance horizons. Nonetheless, it was an absolutely exhilarating experience for me as a Romance linguist to chat in three mutually intelligible Romance languages with three native speakers. All those who know me know that I am obsessed with Romance languages. I try to speak as much of it as I can, certainly with all my Romance-speaking friends. On that particular evening, I felt like I was living in a modern Roman Empire, as if I were a foreigner having a chat with three Roman citizens who came from different provinces and spoke different dialects of Latin. It is hard to explain my infatuation with Latin/Romance. I picked it up at school and have been obsessed with it ever since. Maybe my Chinese ancestors were a tradesmen/merchants on the Silk Road and came in contact with the Romans and had to learn Latin in order to communicate with them. Those historical interactions passed on to me and I am somehow destined to do research on Latin/Romance. Amazing.

It is no secret that code-switching between languages is a specialized skill which places a burden on one’s brain, since it is never easy switching between two or more language systems, especially when they are quite different and operate on different types of grammatical logic. There is evidence that in multilingual societies code-switching between commonly used language varieties is automatic and that multilingual speakers are trained since birth to communicate in more than one language, which comes as second nature to them. Speaking from personal experience, growing up in Hong Kong we certainly had to counter-balance Cantonese (vernacular) and Mandarin (formal literary) in our day-to-day usage (English too as HK used to be a British colony), which gave rise to native multilingual proficiencies among the educated masses. When I became an interpreter, I started using some more exotic combinations, though mainly centred around English since I was working for clients in England and the US, so I was regularly asked to do Spanish-English and Chinese-English both ways. I certainly did find it difficult going from one language to another, since these languages were really quite different (especially Chinese-English) and I always had to think very deeply and carefully so as not to make grammatical mistakes in my translations. There was one particular occasion though which gave me probably the hardest type of code-switching I have ever done. At my first ever LSA Institute in 2011, I was fortunate to be in the company of my fellow linguists, and there we exchanged many amazing linguistic encounters, especially during our evening pub crawls after long days of linguistic seminars and lectures. I remember one occasion where I was seated between a native Spanish speaker and a Japanese coursemate and I ended up code-switching between Japanese and Spanish as I alternated conversations with them. That was a totally new experience for me since I had never code-switched between these two languages before and I dare say that it gave my brain a lot of exercise. I suddenly had to move from head-initial Romance structures to head-final Japanese constructions, not to mention the many phonemic differences and completely different vocabulary which made it quite a roller-coaster for my linguistic brain. I remember at the end of it feeling so exhausted from having to think that hard about different grammars (and grammatical analysis was and still is what I do for a living) that I had a huge headache and had to go to bed immediately. It was quite a strange experience, though utterly exhilarating as it gave my brain some very healthy cognitive exercise. In my day-to-day life I regularly have to code-switch between different languages, but doing it within really unusual language combinations (like Spanish-Japanese) rarely happens. Wonder when/where I can do that again as my brain is just itching for some new exercise. Don’t scientists say that multilinguals have healthier brains than monolinguals? If so, I expect to live to a hundred!

I mentioned last time a nerve-racking experience of code-switching between Spanish and Japanese, which, given their huge disparities, did not make it easy (or fun) for me to alternate between them simultaneously and spontaneously on a social function (pub night), though it did give me a massive headache…! One may surmise that, all things being equal, the complexity in code-switching positively correlates with the linguistic distance between the languages in alternation, and there is probably an element of truth here. However, it is by no means straightforward switching between closely related languages either, since I have switched between Western Romance languages (also on a social function, not to mention at the same LSA institute in 2011- God bless the LSA!) and, massive fun though it was, it was not easy, since the problem here is not the linguistic discrepancies which take up much of one’s cognitive energy but rather the highly similar yet subtly different microvariations that often than not trick you into making grammatical mistakes. It is very natural in these circumstances to assume too much similarity and say unnatural, even if intelligible, utterances. In second language acquisition, this is commonly known as ‘false friends’ i.e. apparent and superficial similarities that are actually different. To give a famous example: Spanish sensible and sensato do not mean what they seem to English speakers, since sensible really means ‘sensitive’ and sensato means ‘sensible’- a very common mistake committed by no other than myself in my early learning days of Spanish. In foreign language learning, therefore, it is much better to start from scratch and revamp the entire language, since it is not always easy to decide how much or how little to assume. This is certainly the case with Romance languages, which share a great deal in common but also quite a lot of differences which distinctively characterise each of them. In the conversation where I was switching between Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, I remember a particular turn where I was asking questions and I had to be very careful with choosing the word for ‘why’, since although there is a pan-Romance way of expressing ‘why’ as *per quod (Spanish por qué, Portuguese por quê, French pourquoi, Italian per chè etc), in the context of saying ‘how come?’ (circumstantial explanation rather than causal explanation i.e. clarification for background rather than motive/intention) these languages all use different terms: while Spanish por qué more or less does the job, Italian uses come mai which is distinct from per chè, and French and Portuguese usually employ the cleft construction here: (Ptg) como é que…, (Fr) comment est-ce que… lit. ‘How is it that…’. Pretty cool non-etymological correspondence, but also annoyingly tedious from a language learning perspective since just as one thought that one could simplify Romance by assuming across-the-board generalisations one discovers that there are many subtle shades of meaning that are realised differently in different cognate languages. Such joys of the Romance languages, yet also such pains in getting to grips with them. It is a different game playing around with these closely related languages, since it is not about making sharp and rapid U-turns in the highway of one’s brain but rather learning to swerve and sift zig-zag through the tiny cavities of one’s neurological circuits without hitting anything. Learn the rules of the game before even daring to win.

When I was on conference leave in Paris in November 2018, I took a taxi to go to and from the airport, which was nice and convenient (not too expensive either). My French is embarrassing, since my speciality in Romance lies mainly in Iberian varieties (Spanish mainly). With my level of Spanish and Latin, I can read and understand French without too much trouble but speaking and listening are a bore, since French, as we all know, is not a phonetic language, unlike Spanish and Italian etc. It is hard enough to pronounce French and even harder to understand spoken French, especially if it is spoken with a strong accent at native speed. While I was on the taxi on my return journey home, I was chatting with the driver who spoke little English so we started talking in French. It went relatively smoothly with few accidents and I talked to him about the characters of my beloved French Revolution: Robespierre, Maras, the Jacobins, Girondins, Necker, Louis XVI, Antoinette, Napoleon etc and we both got quite agitated by simply talking about the achievements of these great historical figures. Towards the end of our conversation, I said, ‘La situation historique est vraiment complicat.’ (‘the historical situation is really (intended) complicated’). He corrected me by saying, ‘No, c’est compliquée.’ (‘no, it is complicated’). I had inferred from Spanish and related varieties (complicado) that the French cognate for ‘complicated’ would be *complicat, but it turned out that this was a ‘false friend’ and the French equivalent was actually compliquée. I was quite embarrassed and got pretty red-faced with shame, guilt and anger, since even though I had the legitimate excuse of not being a proper French speaker, I still couldn’t live with myself making such an obvious grammatical mistake in the very place (Paris) of the French Revolution. This was utterly unprofessional of me, and I must seek forgiveness from all my colleagues in Romance linguistics and my French-speaking friends. Alas, my French is not up-to-scratch and I should not even set foot in France until I sort it out (which should not be particularly compliquée, given my background in Latin and Romance). Wherever I am, however, even if I am not in France, the modern French ideals of humanism and enlightenment stick with me forever: liberté, égalité, fraternité!

As a professional linguist, I have sat through quite a few specialist exams which are designed to measure and qualify one’s proficiency in foreign languages. These exams come in many sizes, shapes and forms, since in addition to the traditional written-style tests in which one answers a mixture of short and long answers (Multiple-Choice, gap-filling, essays etc), there are also oral and listening tests which are designed to stimulate one’s ability to respond and react in simulated language scenarios. From a scientific perspective, one may consider these the ‘practical exams’ in language learning, even if there is no need to wear lab-coats or helmets (though there is of course no prohibition from dressing up). I have had a mix of good and bad experiences with doing language exams, which explains the fact that I have had some good and bad results. There was one particular exam, however, which left a big impression on me, especially on the perenially important theme of language acquisition. In Summer 2006, I sat an Advanced Spanish exam which I sought to use to prove my credentials as a Spanish linguist. Throughout the academic year 2005–2006, I tried to get as much practice of my Spanish as I could by befriending lots of Hispanic people at my alma mater (Oxford) and I especially enjoyed my numerous conversations with my friends from Argentina, who, in addition to generously tolerating and correcting my many mistakes, gave me an overview on the dialectal variants of Spanish across the Atlantic. It was fascinating for me as I had always learnt the Iberian variety which most learners of Spanish study when they get into it, and it is easy to forget that there are dozens of national languages in Latin America which are no less prominent politically and these display fascinating similarities and differences from their historical homeland. I thoroughly enjoyed my interactions with my Argentinian friends at Oxford, which laid the basis for our long friendship which has lasted until this day. I also kept my language learning going by refining my knowledge of Spanish grammar and acquiring new vocabulary, but the main acquisition process of my Spanish in 2005–2006 was mainly social and informal, as I relished the opportunity of chatting with my newfound Latin American friends and we would converse frequently, at times at great length, on all kinds of topics and themes in Spanish. Gradually and unconsciously, my level of Spanish probably grew in ways that were quite different from how it would have developed under formal instruction, as it became part of my communicative core and a linguistic tool which I slowly felt confident in using in day-to-day scenarios. When I was preparing for my Advanced Spanish exam, I routinely went over all my language notes and academic material, and when it came to sitting the actual exam, the whole process seemed surprisingly smooth for me in that I did not find it nearly as difficult as I had anticipated. I was totally expecting a huge, if not impossible, ordeal, since this was the highest qualification from a well-accredited and internationally recognised institution who advertised this level to be near native, but to my utter and pleasant surprise, much of the material on paper seemed quite transparent to me, and I completed it with few accidents. This was one of the very few times in my life that I came out of an exam feeling content rather than obsessing about every single detail which I had got wrong or was not sure about, and when the results came out some two months later it came as no surprise to me that I achieved the highest possible grade (in all humility). It seemed that my regular informal training throughout the academic year turned out to be the perfect preparation for this otherwise tough hurdle. I have mentioned before how one’s perspective need not match reality, especially when seen externally by others, and this episode is especially interesting for me in terms of language acquisition. Throughout our education, we were constantly told to learn grammar, make vocabulary-lists, memorise tables etc etc etc, all of which is fine with me as I am a formal linguist and I would be the last person in the world to ever complain about learning grammar/vocab (in fact, if anything, I would be encouraging this formal way of learning languages and inflict my masochistic tendencies on all language learners who come my way). However, one of the takeaway lessons from my first year at university is that there is another kind of informal language learning which has proven to be most effective, since instead of trying to get to grips forcefully with every single aspect and detail of the language at hand, I was encouraged to let it sift through me in regular real-life social interaction. It became an unconscious acquisition process which probably struck deeper in me that any grammar books/manuals that I had ever encountered then or since. Another paradox of life.

I mentioned before that in addition to my academic research in theoretical linguistics, I am also interested in applied linguistics as I have been doing professional interpreting and language teaching for several years. One of my most enjoyable teaching experiences has got to be my time at the Manchester International Society (IntSoc) where I taught Chinese (Mandarin/Cantonese) and Spanish at various levels ranging from beginners to advanced. For those of you who do not know, IntSoc is situated on Oxford Road in Manchester right next to KroBar opposite our Student Union, and it is closely affiliated with the University of Manchester as it regularly organizes social and academic events for students at Manchester including those at MMU and Salford. I met loads of people there who came from all around the world, and making their acquaintance greatly enhanced my linguistic and cultural education. Many people at IntSoc knew that I was a language teacher of Chinese (Cantonese/Mandarin) and Spanish and a regularly participant in several other language courses too, namely Italian, Portuguese, Japanese and Korean. Many of them were surprised that an Asian guy could speak several Romance languages (in addition to English), though there were many remarkable linguists in IntSoc, which is why I loved going there so much and contribute to their promotion of foreign languages and culture. I remember one girl who was ethnically Japanese but born and bred in Brazil. She spoke little Japanese and Brazilian Portuguese was firmly her native tongue. As I was learning Portuguese, I was keen to practise it with native speakers so we often hanged out and conversed in Portuguese (I am grateful to her for pardoning my so-so Portuguese and for helping me by correcting my many grammatical mistakes). There was one conversation which was particularly interesting: she saw me coming out of my Chinese class where I was bidding farewell to my students, and as I was exiting, I spoke Spanish with some Spanish speakers who were coming in. She was amazed by my code-switching and asked me what other languages I knew beside Chinese, Spanish, Portuguese, English. I mentioned to her several other languages and she was even more astounded. She asked me what I was (literally in Portuguese: ‘o que você é?’), implying what nationality I had, and I distinctly remember saying to her, ‘I am a human being. I may be ethnically Chinese, but I have been around the world for a fairly long time and the more places I visit, the more I appreciate cultural diversity as well as human universality. I am not confined to one place and I consider myself first and foremost a human being.’ I loved saying that. I remember feeling the flush all around me as I declared to be a ‘human being’, which was pretty exhilarating. It still gives me chills saying, ‘I am a human being!’, as inspired by the character of John Merrick in ‘The Elephant Man’. This is one of many reasons why I love studying languages, since I love discovering the differences between human languages as well as the common universals that underlie them (I am also fascinated by artificial languages, but that’s for another time). I have been around the world long to say that I prefer to be classified as a ‘human being’ than to be tied to just one place, though I am very aware of my cultural origins. And as a linguist, I would like to consider myself a ‘human linguist’ above all else, since in addition to recognising the many many differences that exist between us and separate us in numerous distinct communities, it is important to see the many many similarities that are shared between us all and bind us together as human beings. In the words of John Merrick in ‘The Elephant Man’, ‘I am a human being!’ #humanlinguist

PS: those of you who are interested in reading more about this may consider reading my grammatical notes on Chinese dialects (Mandarin/Cantonese) which also display similar microvariations which I have spent my whole life thinking about and have indeed done some cool code-switching in. Recently, I have also published articles on Asia Times some sociolinguistics of China. Please get in touch if you are interested.

Originally published at http://keithtselinguist.wordpress.com.