#002 - Quick way to hack Italian phonetics!

#002 - Gabi is on a mission in this episode to teach the essentials of Italian phonetics and give a small taste of the spelling and phonetic rules. In the second section, Gabi takes a further look at the arguments and counterarguments for Universal Grammar.


I hope you enjoyed this second episode as much as I did when I made it. We learned the Italian alphabet and tried some fun tongue twisters! We also delved deeper into the arguments which support UG and the counterarguments which disprove them! What side do you take?

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Transcript

Welcome to the Learning Languages in Society with Gabi podcast, where it's all about the fascinating world of languages and culture. Let's rock.

Hi everyone, this is your host, Gabi, and welcome back to your favorite podcast. This is episode number two. So today we're gonna warm up with some really fun and easy ways to start delving into the mysteries of the pronunciation of Italian. 

I know this sounds like a lot, but I thought it would be really interesting and useful to make you start using your tongue and start getting used to new sounds and ways to speak. And I found the perfect solution for these guys. So that's tongue twisters. Yes, tongue twisters. 

But before we begin with the tongue twisters, we're going to talk about the alphabet, the Italian alphabet. Yes, the alphabet. But hey, why? Well, we all think we know the alphabet, right? Short answer, no, we don't. 

The pronunciation of the English language, as we all know, isn't exactly straightforward. And very often words aren't pronounced the way they are written due to multiple facts during the evolution and history of the English language.

So it is a real relief to finally learn the alphabet of a phonetic language, which, essentially means that the words are, for the most part, pronounced the way they are written, with some exceptions. 

Now, this makes learning the Italian alphabet super fun and easy. It's incredibly important, in my opinion, for beginners to first learn the alphabet of the language they're learning. You need to know how to read and write words in the language you're learning and understand the phonetic rules. This is a, like warming up for an athlete before he goes running in a competition. But not only that, guys, you need to get acquainted with the spelling and sounds, and most importantly, you need to start getting an overall feel of the language. 

Okay, so let's start with the word alphabet. In Italian, this word is typically expressed or represented with three different words, namely, l'abbicì, which are essentially the first three letters of the alphabet itself. That is A, B, C. Alfabeto, the direct translation of the words, the alphabet. And then you have a related word, L'abbecedario, which is a book usually illustrated, used to teach children how to read and write.

So without further delay, here we go with the alphabet, A as in Albero, B as in bocca, C as in casa, D as in dubbio, E as in erba, F as in fiore, G as in giocattolo, H silent as in hotel, I as in idea, l as in luna, M as in mamma, N as in nanna, O as in orologgio, P as in pepe, Q as in quadro, R as in ramo, S as in sole, T as in tutù, U as in uva, V as in viola, zeta at the beginning of of the word as for example, in the word zero. Or it could also have that the ts sound in the beginning of a consonant as in the words scherzo, ragazzo.

Now we have foreign consonants in Italian as well. We have j lunga, as in Jersey, we have K cappa as in kursaal. We have W doppia as in Washington. We have X as in xilofono. And then we have ypsilon, as in ypsilon. There are five vowels in Italian, a e i o u, a as in aereo, E as in educazione, I as in isola, o as in hotel, and u as in occhio. 

In Italian, we place a diacritic or diacritical mark, often called accent on the vowels a, e i, o, u accents don't really change the pronunciation of the words. Rather they signal where the word is stressed, phonetically stressed. Now, there are double consonants and single consonants in Italian, just like in English. Double consonants are pronounced slightly longer. Examples of this would be casa casa and cassa cassa. So notice the, the first, word casa house.

Notice the intervocalic /z/ sound in the first word, casa, as opposed to the word cassa, cassa, which means receptacle or container. So the S in between two vowels would have a slightly different sound. That would be casa and the double /s/, the double consonant would be a longer sound, such as in the word cassa. 

Now we have another pair: caro, caro and carro, carro. Caro means dear, as in dear friend, caro amico and carro means wagon or carriage. So notice the difference right there as well. Now we have another pair: sono, sono and sonno sonno. So the first word, sono is the first person singular, and also the third person plural of the verb to be: io sono Michele. I am Michael and loro sono Piero e Giulia, and they are Piero and Gulia. 

And then notice the difference with the second word, sonno, sonno, which would be roughly translated as the noun sleepiness typically expressed in English, as in the phrase, I am sleepy. Okay? This is expressed in Italian as in io ho sonno. I have sleepiness, io ho sonno, I am sleepy. 

Another pair now nona and nonna. Nona and nonna. So notice the difference as well. the first is a shorter sound nona, as in the ninth gate. So ninth as in the title of the horror movie with Johnny Depp, and the second word nonna with double N as in mia nonna era un'ottima cuoca. So my grandmother was a great cook. 

Here we also have the word ottima with a double T sound. So that makes it slightly different as a sound ottima right now, another pair, C and G, which is C and G when followed by a o u, we have a hard sound. Examples of this would be casa, cosa, cuoco. And then you have G with a, o, u: gatto, gonna, guido. 

And then you have the combination C + E c plus E as in the word cedere, and C plus i c + i as in the word cimitero. Same goes for G. We have geografo and gioia. So ge geografo and gi gioia.

And then last but not least, we have the sounds che and chi formed by additional placing and h in between vowels. That is C plus H plus i CI, che as in the word che and C plus H plus I. So C plus H plus I c + h + i as in the word chi.

Examples of this would be cherubino and chiarezza, c h e, cherubino and, c h i, chiarezza.

H is silent as in as in the word hammam and hotel. And Zeta is pronounced /tse/ as in piazza or pizza. But it could also be pronounced as /dz/ in words like zero and zaino at the beginning of the word. Okay? 

Now there are, digraphs, which are a group of two successive letters whose phonetic value is a single sound. This is the case of sveglia, sveglia.

So notice the /gli/ sound right there, which is formed by GLI. Okay, GLI Then we have another  word that would be gnocchi, gnocchi, which is also formed with the letter G plus N in this case, gnocchi. Then we have double G as in aggiungere, aggiungere, so a double G right there. And then we have, g, plus i, girare, and, g plus E, gente. 

Now. So for those of you who wish to practice the alphabet, here is a list of words. You can try to write down and and let me know if if you had a hard time doing it or if you thought it was easy. I'm going to try to go slowly with this, because I know it's a little hard. But try to, try to make an effort and try to do it right. Okay, here I go with the list first.

ANDARE 
BISOGNO 
CARINI 
DEBOLE 
ISTRUIRE 
LAMENTARSI 
MUCCA 
NOCCIOLO 
OCCHIATA 
PASSIONE 
QUALITÀ 
RIDERE 
SUBIRE 
TRARRE 
URRÀ 
VERO 
ZIGZAGARE 
JUMBO 
KARATE (KARATÈ) 
WHISKY 
XEROGRAFIA 
YOGURTERIA

There you go. So that's the little list of words I want you to try to write down. Now, as I promised here, you have some common tongue twisters, or as we say in Italian SCIOGLILINGUA ITALIANI you can leave the, or you can try to write down the translation if you want to. And then, and then let me know how you, how it all went. Okay, so here we go. 

1. Trentatré trentini entrarono in Trento, tutti e trentatré trotterellando. 

2. Sopra la panca la capra campa, sotto la panca la capra crepa. 

3. Apelle figlio di Apollo fece una palla di pelle di pollo. 

4. Tutti i pesci vennero a galla per vedere la palla di pelle di pollo fatta da Apelle figlio di Apollo. 

5. A quest’ora il questore in questura non c’è. 

6. Li vuoi quei kiwi? E se non vuoi quei kiwi che kiwi vuoi? 

7. A che serve che la serva si conservi la conserva se la serva quando serve non si serve di conserva? 

8. Sette zucche secche e storte stanno strette dentro al sacco. 

9. Due tazze strette in due strette tazze. 

10. Al pozzo dei pazzi una pazza lavava le pezze. Andò un pazzo e buttò la pazza con tutte le pezze nel pozzo dei pazzi.

So I hope you had fun doing this little thing right here. Try to pronounce the words, little by little, and try to make the best effort to, to have your tongue twisters aligned with the right pronunciation. Okay? 


Now we have finally come to the second section of our episode Number two, the science of language.

I know that you're excited,  some of you might like this section more than others, but let's try to, let's try to make it fun. Let's try to make you get a little bit more in touch with the science of language and understand how interesting it is. Okay? 

As I hope you recall, in our first episode, we spoke about the word linguistics and what this word actually means. That is the scientific study of language. We spoke about the structure of language or the systematic description of language. 

In other words, we spoke about phonology. So the system of sounds in language. We spoke about morphology, the system of word formation. We talked about syntax. So the hierarchy between words and the patterns in which these words are arranged in language and put together. We talked about semantics, the meaning of words and language as well.

We introduced Noam Avram Chomsky as the founder of Modern Linguistics, and as the founder of the, of the Universal Grammar Hypothesis, okay? We said that essentially universal grammar is conceived as the innate mental and cognitive capacity that all human beings have for the simple fact of being human beings. 

That is, we are endowed with the capacity to learn natural languages, and it is the exposure to spoken language around us as we, as we grow up from being babies into adults, which essentially triggers this capacity and turns it into a fully functional, undeveloped language in adults. Okay? So far, so good. 

Very interesting stuff so far. However, as they say, life is not peaches and cream, and there is a never-ending rainbow of grays in it as it is. So, why do I say this? Well, it seems like the universal grammar hypothesis has been having a lot of pushback over the past decades from all corners of the world of linguistics.

And many linguists are very vocal in their disagreement with Chomsky and other generative linguists. There are a number of arguments in support for universal grammar and there are also a number of counter-arguments. So we're going to start with the first argument in favor of universal grammar, and then we are going to talk about the counter-arguments, okay? 

So we're gonna be doing the same for other arguments in favor of universal grammar. Now, the first argument in favor of universal grammar, that would be the concept of universality or ubiquity in human languages. That is the fact that all languages seem to share some common features or characteristics. Now, this view, however, is not shared by most typologists for example, Evans and Levinson in the year 2009, gave a lot of counter-examples to virtually all proposed universals, including major lexical categories, major phrasal categories, phrase structure rules, grammatically means of distinguishing between subjects and objects, the use of verb affixes to signal tense and aspect, and so and so on.

So, the conclusion is that the, the vast differences in languages across the world shouldn't be explained in terms of universals, but rather in terms of differences or more broadly speaking, under the heading of linguistic diversity. Okay? So that would be the counter-argument to the concept of universality or ubiquity in human languages. 

Now, there's another argument right here that would be number two, the argument is called convergency. So this argument, what does it say? It says that most speakers of a language share the same grammar despite being subjected to different input from the outside world, okay? So the convergency claim is said to be taken as self-evident.

However, it doesn't seem to be supported with any real evidence. So it's not really supported. It has been shown in different studies that adults do not in fact have the same knowledge of the grammar of their own language.

That is, they have different degrees of knowledge of complex grammar, constructions, passives, morphology, et cetera. And I suspect that the level of education also has something to do with this. So I guess that the more educated a person is maybe the, the better knowledge of the grammar of their own language they have, right?

Now, let's talk about the third and most famous argument in favor of universal grammar. So what does this argument say? It says, it's called the poverty of the stimulus, okay? Poverty of the stimulus. So it states that children aren't exposed to sufficiently rich or varied linguistic data in order to acquire and master all the properties of their first language or mother tongue. So basically children aren't exposed to all the knowledge that they actually have of their grammar, which would be essentially pretty strange.

So, for them to acquire such a huge knowledge of their grammar and speak perfectly without actually being exposed to every sentence around them. So that's a very interesting thing. Now, however, as, as I mentioned before, there is a huge counter-argument here. There is a lot of studies that contradict this argument, constructionist and cognitive grammars state that languages can in fact be learned from input. So they give a number of ideas, and there's a number of studies that contradict this very argument. 

So that's that for the counter-argument of the three most prominent, let's say, arguments in favor of universal grammar. Now, there are other arguments in favor of universal grammar. We have the first one called species specificity. So it is said that language is specific to humans, so only humans can speak in an elaborate and abstract way.

But then this disregards the fact that only humans share some other cognitive processes specific to our species as well, such as collaboration, cultural learning, the use of complex tools, and the list goes on. So, for example, functional linguist, Michael Tomasello, suggests that language is best understood as a tool for communication, and as such should be taken into account the speaker's and the hearer's side and their communicative needs. So the social and cultural role of language prevails. 

In other words, it is the need to understand and cooperate with each other, which enables language to emerge. Okay? So they take a different view, they take a different standpoint. they understand that language emerged as, as the need, the human need to cooperate with each other, right? So to collaborate with each other for cultural learning, for the use of complex tools. So all of these, human needs actually were the ones which enable language to emerge.

So we take a different view from the classical generative perspective of innate cognition, right, of innate capacity to learn a language. That's pretty cool. Now, there's there's an article that I read recently, which, um, struck me as being very interesting.and it says the following, it's an interesting speculation in the, in the article, and it basically says that, syntax, so we remember what syntax is, syntax was borrowed from stone toolmaking. So in short, some scholars proposed that the development of tool technologies, as in like our ancestors, you know, using tools, right? Stone toolmaking, those tool technologies or the development of those two technologies relied upon the development of hierarchical control, and were thus selected for computational capacities that made it possible for hominins to fluently use hierarchically structured sentences. 

So that's mind-blowing stuff, right?  That's one thing I did not expect to, to read.

So, stone toolmaking, right? Stone toolmaking. So in short, some scholars proposed that the development of tool technologies relied upon the development of a hierarchical control and were thus selected for computational capacities that made it possible for hominins to fluently use hierarchically structured sentences. I don't know, but that's, that's just something I didn't expect to read. Very interesting stuff. 


So the conclusion would be that the computational machinery which supports hierarchical structure evolved to serve the development of technological skills. So how cool is that? Right? Very interesting. Now, there are, however, obviously a few counter-arguments here to these hypothesis.

The first one would be that both syntax and toolmaking share both common predispositions that are prior to both, that predate both. Okay? So that would be, the first counter-argument. The second would be that it is also possible that the early emergence of proto-grammar helped develop Brocca's area in a way that further facilitated the development of toolmaking.

So remember that Brocca's area is an area in the brain that's associated with the processing of language. Okay? So that would be number two. It says that it is also possible at the early emergence of proto-grammar helped develop Brocca's area, okay? 

So in a way, it facilitated the development of toolmaking, right? Interesting stuff. 

Now, number three, that's another argument. It says that it is possible that syntax or language more generally could have been also subject to natural and sexual selection pressures, and could have contributed to the genetic makeup of humans, which in turn could have contributed to the further development of other cognitive phenomena. 

So you see, they take a different stand right here and as you can see, for every great hypothesis there's counter-arguments and very hard to disprove and so very interesting stuff. 

Anyway, so I would've never imagined that language had anything to do with toolmaking or any of these things I didn't think about the counter-arguments either. So, quite interesting stuff. 

Anyhow, now we're gonna talk about child language acquisition. So this is another powerful, argument in favor of universal grammar. So it is often said that children acquire great amounts of grammar and lexical knowledge by being merely exposed to some language input without explicit teaching, which essentially means that children just basically learn their first language or mother tongue in a very relaxed manner without the need of having a formal teaching of the grammar of their own language.

So basically, they don't have a teacher in front of them, teaching them the grammar of their own language. They just basically just pick up the, you know, the grammar instinctively of their own language and they just put together words and pieces and, and make it make sense. 

So, very interesting. However, as I said before, life is not peaches and cream, and there's a counter-argument for this, which is pretty powerful, apparently. They say that if you make an account of the vast amount of hours that children are exposed to verbal experience by means of watching television, listening to the radio, listening to music from the ages raging from one to five years of age, while they get millions, and I mean, literally millions, literally millions of words over the period of four years, you see, so, well, that would be a great counter-argument actually, if you, if you looked at the data that way.

Moreover, it is demonstrated that the mere exposure is not enough as children of, for example, deaf parents do typically underperform in their linguistic abilities unless exposed to the right kind of input. So there you go, that disproves again this powerful argument in relation to child language acquisition. 

Now, there's another argument called uniformity. So what is uniformity? It is said that children acquire language following a similar path dictated by an innate program, but cross-linguistic studies show that depending on what language they learn, the different grammar structures are learned at different ages. 

For example, the passive forms in English will be learned at earlier stages compared to the passive forms in say, Hebrew. Likewise, the age frame references to wide and vague, and thus misses the point that very small age differences can be quite significant for infants and different learning styles in children give rise to different rates and quality of linguistic production.

Okay, so there you go. There's another huge counter-argument. We actually never think about it this way, but 2, 3, 4 years in the life of an infant is quite significant. So taking into account that very fact makes or disproves a lot of these arguments right from the start. So that's the way it goes. 

Now, we have another one which is called maturation effects. So that's another argument and here it says that exposition to different input in the environment show that linguistic knowledge is heavily influenced by social settings. And while maturation in the brain of the infant plays an important role, the environment and the linguistic exposure with which the child grows makes a significant change in his learning process.

 So, there you go. That's another counter-argument which is that the environment, again, we put emphasis on the environment and the linguistic exposure of the child.

We say that makes a huge change in their learning process. So as you can see, the counter arguments are based on different premises, more based on the environment and other more cultural premises rather than the innate ones. 

And last, but not least, we have one called language and cognition. So that one argument seemed to be a pretty powerful one. But then no again, no, there's a big counter-argument right there. Basically when you compare children who are diagnosed with specific language impairment and children who are diagnosed with William Syndrome, now, when you compare them, if we look superficially, we could make the wrong conclusion that the latter, that is children with William Syndrome may have good language skills, but impaired cognition, and on the other hand, specific language impaired children may have bad language skills and good cognition.

Now, studies have shown that William Syndrome children do in fact, have impaired language skills when we take a closer look at their knowledge in grammar, compared to their peers, and that their learning process also and unfortunately, follows a different course. Now, specific language impaired children, on the other hand, are specifically language impaired, but actually they also have other kinds of cognitive impairments. 

So the distinction between language and cognition isn't quite clear in these examples.


All right. Anyway, thank you so much for having put up with me in episode number two. I hope you had a great time. I had a great time, explaining to you these things. And I really hope to hear from you later on in the future.

Please do not forget to subscribe to my channel and I really hope to see you in the future. Guys. 

Hit the subscribe button and see you in episode number three. Bye-bye, guys. You're awesome!