What are (linguistic) nothings? ~ Reading comments and studying Saussure together
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- čas přidán 15. 12. 2022
- My last animation about why linguists believe in invisible words was captivating, also confusing. Let me consider your feedback and try once more. Join me and we'll study zeros again.
~ Links mentioned this time ~
Sources for this video: docs.google.com/document/d/1_...
Support impacted people: docs.google.com/document/d/1y...
Saussure in French:
fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Cours_...
gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt...
Saussure in English:
archive.org/details/courseing...
Subscribe for more: czcams.com/users/subscription_...
Become my patron: / nativlang
~ Briefly ~
Today we do two things together. First, let's look at the love and confusion expressed in your comments on "Zeros", and let me add a bit of thoughtful commentary. Two, we'll read what Saussure had to say about those unpronounced but meaningful signs we met in "Zeros". All along the way, instead of explaining things to you, I'll animate our study time as we learn and read and think through this together.
~ Credits ~
Art, animation, narration and music by me. Other credits linked in sources document above (relinked here):
docs.google.com/document/d/1_...
A good study partner? Did you enjoy this style of video? Next time, something other than nothing(s).
Yes to both, actually, although I do like your more narrative and poetic style better. Spectacular job as always.
Any chance you would give your thoughts on the Indo-Uralic theory? I find Frederick Kortlandt's version particularly convincing.
nice, I know zero symbol in zero article page (the english a/an and the).
Could you research about the Vietnamese langauges and tell it to other enthusiast?
I feel like you're too hard on yourself - last video was good! this is also good! thank you for your work!!
For anyone not a linguist- in your first week at university, you will identify, easily, slightly awkward people, sat by themselves, making strange sounds as they work their way though their mental map of the IPA. These are interesting people. Talk to them.
Beautiful animation as always. Doggo is a big plus!
I remember starting out Arabic and walking around trying to make pharyngeal fricatives and getting the weirdest looks
I’ve had a few people look over my shoulder at my linguistics problem sets and comment about how ridiculous my homework looked- honestly I kind of love those interactions. Another opportunity to share the magic of this field!
Recently, I've been trying to practice click consonants by pronouncing them alongside vowel sounds. If my family ever overhears me, they'll probably think I've gone crazy lol
@@Salsmachev linguist, or vampire on the down-low? who knows?
@BMoreCory I took a phonetics class that was part of a short lived attempt on my part to get into SLP. But nonetheless there's a lot about that class that has stayed with me over the years. Even these days, I consider the way that I am pronouncing words.
There's nothing wrong with going in too deep in the esoteric end! I love how humble and responsive you are. Thank you for taking the time to reflect and keep the conversation going.
Fancy seeing you here!
@@AncientAmericasHaha, yea,! Always nice to bump into a fellow anthro-archaeo-geo-linguistic nerd in my favourite aisle on CZcams. It's been a while!
^; esoteric doesn't mean incomprehensible. with the right tutor and the right spirit, anything known well enough to document - and even many things that can't - can be understood
Hi, I loved the "let's take you by the hand" format. Although I was familiar with the concept of 0 in linguistics (and so, wasn't lost by your first video), I still value your humility and integrity in attempting to simplify and 'go slow'. I look forward to Part 2, just as I look forward to all your uploads. As a French native speaker, I find your French accent really accurate - an impressive feat, you really sound native to me. And your voice is really soothing + your animations just beautiful! Continue being poetic!!! You are a joy to follow and an inspiration.
😊Thank youuu! 😊
I can't speak to the French part (being an English speaker), but I second all the rest of this comment.
I already grabbed the meaning of zero-marking last time, but thought that "default" form is more often the one with a zero marker. But the example with Paleoslavic (I think Saussure meant Proto-Slavic) it broadened my understanding of zero-marking
I think in the default form we have much less case for introducing the zero being there while if something is missing as compared to the default state then it is much more of a thing, I am not sure if it is my learning process doing this to me but it could be the native speaker sense thingy too that I feel "slova" is for the most part unmarked thingy, but "slov" feels there is information added to the core concept, you use nominative when you tell ppl what the new concept or word is, not genitive, that is it's form in a special context, not the core meaning alone
I don't think Saussure meant proto-Slavic, since he is using attested forms
or rather, before Czech and Polish we would have proto-Slavic, but Saussure uses Palaeo-Slavic (attested from Sts. Cyril and Method) as a stand-in for it
I think default might mean the form with the most general meaning. The form you use when you don't what what to use.
I'm pretty sure Old Church Slavic's attested. Could he have meant that?
@@frankharr9466 Old Slavic is not exclusively Old Church Slavic. It is also the administrational language of Rus' and of Ukrainean and Bielorus' parts of the Lithuanian Grand Duchy.
As I said, while Czech (and Polish) do not come from Old Slavic, it can be seen as a useful standin for Proto-Slavic, which also had the vowel that got lost everywhere except in Bulgarian / Macedonian.
You are not “pretentious”, I hate it when this word is used to make smart people feel bad. Also: “complex”, “subtle”, “meditative” and the like are not negative descriptions as far as I’m concerned - and I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling so. Please keep on as you have been.
Oh, I totally agree! I've actually been _shamed_ for mentioning that I have a PhD in physics when I'm explaining my career change after graduating.
I find myself being called, "condescending," or, "arrogant," for simply assuming that someone either already knows the subject I'm talking about, or for going in the other direction and assuming that they don't. Like, I'm supposed to be a mindreader and know what to explain and what not to, or whether even asking, "do you know about ," is going to insult you and make you feel bad because you in fact don't know it.
Sorry, no, smart people _do _*_not_* go around feeling superior to everyone else. We go around feeling _confused_ as to why we're so different from everyone else.
@@John_Weiss
"I find myself being called, "condescending," or, "arrogant," for simply assuming that someone either already knows the subject I'm talking about"
This has always confused me. If I'm assuming that someone knows what I'm talking about, doesn't that imply that I believe we're on equal footing? How is that supposed to indicate that I feel I'm superior to someone?
@@John_Weiss thats why peer-review is better cuz youre around your colleague/classmates/researchers, for dozent/teachers the approaches are diff.
@@codekillerz5392 *_EXACTLY!_*
It's a problem I've found occurs in *_ALL_* very intelligent people: they don't want to think of themselves a "superior" or "better" … or even "different" from anyone else.
So, we just assume that everyone else knows what we do and can do what we can.
And I think what happens next is that everyone else is trained to think the statement, "I don't know," is something bad, that it means, "I am inferior," or means, "I am stupid."
Huh, I just remembered something. When I was doing my Junior Semester Abroad in Germany, I remember a discussion I was in about quantum mechanics. And the people _listened_ to the person talking and explaining. And when they didn't know something, _they just asked questions._ But what was even more interesting: when I stated that I was studying physics, the guy who was doing the explaning _stopped_ and started _asking me_ the questions. It was like, they discovered someone else had greater expertise, and _so deferred to the person with more knowledge._
I don't know if it's still that way among Germans, but maybe that, "I don't know something, therefore it's _your fault_ for assuming that I do, thereby making me realize it," reaction is something peculiar to American culture?
@@codekillerz5392 Oh, and this is even worse when you're dealing with PhDs.
Not only do you have the, "Not wanting to act like I'm anything special," thing in play, but you have the natural training and tendencies of PhDs: (1) We *_loooooove_* sharing and exchanging knowledge, especially about the topics we're interested in; (2) We have the ego beaten out of us from the start of grad school - there's always someone who's better at something than you; there's always someone who knows more than you; get over yourself; (3) We are trained, from day 1 of grad school, that the answer, "I Don't Know," is not only a valid answer to any question, but *_a valuable and noble answer._*
Contrast to how everyone else is taught to think. And yeah, we can see the problem.
I love this channel because you clearly want to help people to learn things that are not always easy to understand and taking the extra time to aid us is a humble and kind gesture that is much appreciated. Can't wait to see where you'll take us next!
oh nice, two of my favourite youtubers watch each other
As a native Russian speaker I'm aware of the zero ending, and I remember it being mentioned it during the Russian language lessons in school. It's basically the same thing as in the Czech example you've shown: odna žena - mnogo žën (one wife - many wives), odno slovo - mnogo slov (one word - many words). I just accepted that it's a thing: removing a part of some word to add some other meaning to it makes perfect sense to me, especially as a part of case system.
All balto slavic langauges have it. Lets conjugate my name:
kas? nominatīvs = Gunār-s
kā? ģenitīvs = Gunār-a
kam? datīvs = Gunār-am
ko? akuzatīvs = Gunār-u
ar ko? instrumentālis = Gunār-u
kur? lokatīvs = Gunār-ā
- vokatīvs = Gunār-
You can clearly see that the proper way to adress me is to use the word stem/root with no ending.
Eddit: wait, what of modern bulgarian... theyre weird.
I agree, it makes total sense. It just seems like a grammatical category that's best explained and understood through an etymological context. I'm not sure I understood in the last video what that all has to do with colonialism and eurocentrism since other cultures are also looking at foreign languages from their [insert region]-centric perspective. And no one is talking about or reflecting on that for some (eurocentrist?) reason. Acknowledging the cultural background of linguists is totally fine and important in some contexts. Pointing out this cultural background as something to be criticized and looked down on is not. Especially in an academic field.
@@IruskaCape Oh, it would be like a Czech linguist saying "no no, English has a case system, just like German with three cases in the case of English, just for most words nominative and objective case has a zero ending" kind of thing. Which is what you actually get in some very old Czech textbooks of English. You guys are the weird ones so we impose our standards on you kind of thing. And that can lead to a clunky or mistaken analysis.
@@TheoEvian I don't think that's weird, it's just a different approach to understanding a foreign language from a non-native speaker's own unique linguistic perspective. If that's something that goes beyond textbook instructions then that might be debated (as it was and is) but this has nothing to do with Eurocentrism. That's what I didn't get in his original video. Europe is extremely diverse linguistically in it's own right, as your example shows. Many non-Europeans seem to forget that (some Europeans forget or are ignorant about that, too). Different perspectives are not only fine they are necessary. Especially when trying to get an understanding of a fundamental function of some languages, like in the case of zero endings. The more perspectives you have on a certain linguistic problem the quicker you get an understanding and agreement. I'm pretty sure we are way past Edward Said's views and understanding of Orientalism, at least in the relevant academic fields. So that's why I'm not really sure how colonialism and Eurocentrism is important to this particular linguistic question from an academic perspective as no one in these fields has openly colonialist views or thinks all European cultures and languages are somehow the same or are "possessed" by the same evil cultural and social norms. If a theory is proven wrong by whomever, that's just that. It's the scientific method. A Westerner who got a theory wrong is not a "colonizer" just because he happens to be born in there. And non-Westerners are not always correct simply by virtue of being non-Western or indigenous. That's not how science works. No need to call names just because one linguist who happened to have a Western name and be born and brought up in "Europe" got a linguistic theory wrong. It seems very far-fetched, unscientific, and besides the point to me. (He talks about this at length in the original video starting from 7:38).
@@TheoEvian think in recent times, linguists has become a lot more careful with this.for example In syntax, the only constant is really merge and recursion.
(that I think is at least sensible in some way, since predicate like verbs like hit must logically require a theme so it must merge with at least something, anyway this is my rather rationalist take)
Ok, I think I get it now. Example, in Icelandic Hestur means horse with the stem being Hest. But if I see the word Hest with no ending, I know it's in a accusative case because the word is declined Hestur, Hest, Hesti, Hests. So lack of an ending tells me something about how the word is being used.
Yeah, that's what I always assumed he meant in the first video. Didn't think it was more complicated than that.
I think in Russian plural genitive is the "short" one
I never heared about those zero signs until I got a book on Sumerian grammar. In the transliteration of sentences there were zero signs which puzzled me at first until I read that the zero signs indicate the absolutive case. I thought "wow, what a neat trick, it is amazing how much easier it is go grasp the grammatical structure of a sentence".
And that was all I ever thought of it.
as a czech who did by accident some saussurean linguistics at uni while nobody seems to care much about saussurean stuff, I am once again shook like why are there czech examples in his text, pfff - so I dunno what to say, you did pretty good job with the pronunciation, you deserve headpats, I can give ya minor insight into pronunciation if you wanna - o's being too *tense* - they are more open and less rounded (like mine are almost unrounded/sometimes fully unrounded but that can be just my idiolect) and maybe bit centralized, coda /v/ fully devoices to /f/ but my ears are super not used to lack of final devoicing so I cannot clearly tell if you did or did not do that, and ž's being too (sub)apical ("retroflex") sounding to me, they are not like rz/ż in polish or pinyin r, they are more like vanilla palatoalveolar - oh and I did not find your previous vid confusing
Much appreciated; I'll keep your tips for the next time I encounter your native tongue! Oh yes I definitely missed that final devoiced /f/.
It kind of goes against the very topic Saussure (and these videos) wanted to illustrate, but it is fairly fascinating how from a contemporary (synchronic) perspective, the mark for genitive plural in „slovo“ is not only a 'zero suffix' but rather a 'zero suffix' AND a change in the stem should it end on voiced obstruent.
On the other hand, it might well be more reasonable to claim that the expression of the genitive plural is indeed a zero with no other effects as phonemically the result is still /slov/ (which is then _realized_ as [slof] due to a phonetic rule).
@@taimunozhan final devoicing is very common in most slavic languages (names of russian origins ending in -off used to be -ov like Stroganoff) and at the same time languages around czechia all have it except for hungarian langauge so all the slavic ones and german varieties have it but also many more langauges have it like turkish even for their /r/'s and icelandic for their /n/'s and classical nahuatl for /l/'s and /w/'s - it was a major revelation for me it is a thing as I used to think in my teens (already learning english) that coda voiced obstruents do not exist in langauges bc they are either hard or even impossible to produce and/or percieve, like many I have hard time noticing them in other langauges and it may show in spelling mistakes as well like mixing think and thing, and yes, many czechs pronounce king as kink xd (but we can pronounce voiceless stops + breathy voiced fricative clusters without an issue xdd and no, these clusters are not part of the langauge)
I was taught that r with a caret is pronounced rzh, like Dvorak (dvor-zhak).
@@ferretyluv Ř ř is a fricative trill or tap, dvor-zhak is a possible approximation I guess tho "natively" it is one phone and generally ppl who cannot pronounce it (bc rhotacism for example) use one phone too (ʒ or ʐ (apical) for example) rather than a cluster I guess?
Thank you for mentioning my comment at 2:44.☺️
Your videos are ALWAYS beautifully done and I TRULY thank you for going back to grab those of us who didn’t quite “get it”🥰 and providing links and source. You’re a true teacher to those who desire to learn.♥️
Spanish has a word with, in some forms, a zero root: 0-ir, 0-iendo (written "yendo" for orthographic reasons), 0-ido, 0-ir-é. It's suppletive; other forms have the roots v- or fu-.
As someone with a BA in linguistics, I loved you last video. Maybe it's because I already have groundwork, but I LOVE when you dive deep. I always assumed this channel was for fans of linguistics (thus those already with basics).
Please also don't change your delivery. It's wonderful as is. Your "poetic style" is so much nicer, more fun, (honestly less boring) then others.
DON'T CHANGE ANYTHING! :D
I'm so used to the mystical poetic storytelling presentation style that this channel has meticulously sculpted over the years that listening to a video being *direct* felt almost unreal
I absolutely loved the style of your first zero's video even though I didn't understand the concept that was being explained. I am super grateful that you took the time to give examples and break down the concept of linguistic zeros in a more intuitive way! Now I have a better understanding and am able to appreciate your first video more. Your music is amazing in this video again!
You are and continue to be my favourite CZcamsr especially because of the fact that you dare to venture into places that most people don't even know of. Naturally, I am glad you took the feedback of your community, but I hope above all that you aren't dissuaded now to keep doing your videos in the poetic, well produced, researched and entertaining style you've always done- pretentious as they might seem-. And most importantly I hope you are not dissuaded from venturing into more in-depth topics like the one from last video.
Can't wait for your next one!
Always a pleasure to see your videos pop up on my notifications 😁
I love this video! I know that the academic in you wants to put out unique contributions, whether it be summarizing a concept for us in a new way or presenting your own take on something. However, I love these slow discussions, focused more like a literature review.
Keep up whatever it is you want to do, and I'll watch it in glee.
As for your videos being cryptic... Yours has never been a channel for beginners in linguistics. I am a trained linguist and yet there were videos that challenged me, especially those about languages I don't know.
There's nothing wrong with it.
Videos for the layman are nice and good but it is also good to have videos for people who already have more than a basic knowledge.
Love your furry friend.
To be honest, I had knowledge about zero grade and, of course, linguistics, previously yet, I haven't kept up with that video. Sometimes it is not about being a layman, but telling something very indirectly and complex than needed.
I really can't begin to appreciate the tremendous amount of work you do to dissect and make languages and language learning easier.Yout channel has been one of the major guides that I have had on my foreign language journey.Keep up the good work and many thanks.I really hope that you can continue making more content like these in the future.
Jumping into the deep end of linguistics and following rabbit holes to better understand it all is what brought me to your channel in the first place. You work very hard to explain these bigger topics in a calm and patient manner which has only improved over time. I look forward to learning more with you in the future
This is why I'm here in the first place, to learn about linguistics and its history as much as possible. I loved your video, those that challenge you and have you learn something new are my favorites. I'm really looking forward to the next video. :)
I guess there are still questions about who your audience is on CZcams, and more generally, who edu-tubers are catering for with "explainer" style videos. Of course, your videos are a little more niche than, say, Vox, but I guess the feedback you got suggests that it's not just linguistics nerds watching your videos. There's a balance to be found between catering to a bystanders who would love videos like this one, and the nerds (like you) out there who don't necessarily want to sit through the basics of Czech grammar...
I think what you manage to do beautifully across all your videos, including this one, is communicate complex knowledge primarily dispersed through academic text-based publications through a visual format. As a goal for edu-tubers, I see that as being quite important, rather than simplifying ideas so drastically as to be reductive. It has the benefit of expanding reach beyond the insular communities of academic journal readers. You demonstrate that the medium of video can be used for communicating such ideas as complex as the null/zero marker, and I think the free CZcams world should be a space where that can happen, as one step away from intellectual gatekeeping.
Glad to see a new upload, NativLang.
I thought I understood the other video pretty well, but this did clear up some things such as "what counts as a zero". Amazing animation as always!
All comments aside, how does one adopt a daily glyph writing practice.... i need this in my life
For Nāhua (Aztec) glyphs: Gordon Whittaker's book, something to write/draw with and on, slow progress 15-30 minutes a day. Months of quiet fun await. Go for it!
I missed your videos ! Glad you're uploading it made my day ! Great video as always
Great follow-up video! This cleared up a lot of confusion I had with the original.
This was a very humble thing for you to do, to spend all of that time preparing to better connect your audience to your ideas and make them successful. Well done. I very much appreciate it. The original video was fascinating but edged toward the deeply abstract for me.
Great video. It usually takes us a semester or two just to get through Saussurre. This pocket-class was an even more ambitious undertaking than the previous video, and your courage and drive to do it have scored a couple more points with me. :)
Loved this video!! I enjoyed greatly the previous one although I can understand why it needed more context. I love following your learning journey
I get so excited when I see a new video!
Glad to see another upload, Christmas came early I guess 🙌
Thank you so much for this subsequent video!
I went back and checked whether I had seen the video this one is a follow-up to. (I guess you can see what I did there, but is what I did actually an example of what I wonder it is an example of?) I saw I'd liked the video and re-watched the start and a little bit towards the end. Yes, I've obviously seen it, I thought. And I had no issue with it. I felt it described something quite normal.
But once I actually watch this video, I will maybe see what I could have had a problem comprehending. And whether I did or did not actually have a problem comprehending it without realising it.
To be fair, he was French by language, Swiss by nationality.
The Suisse Romande has a very strong linguistic identity of course - sometimes closer to Latin -- septante vs soixante-dix ...
@@victoradam8485 the viginti 20 base of counting exist in Gaulish iirc, score is the word that remains for twenty in English more from numberphile channel.
No one can be french by language, he was a francophone, a french speaker. But not french :)
Congrats on 1 million!
Your previous video was beautiful, Joshua! The poetic presentation was perfect, and as I am not a linguist, the story-telling and style suggested the concepts to me a little better than a very straightforward message would have. (I recognize de Saussure's name from a moment in my past when I decided to try to figure out semiotics; I was prepared yet again not to understand anything he was talking about!)
This makes me want to read Saussure in the original French. I had only read a few bits here and there before (usually in English or Spanish) but I hadn't noticed how elegantly written (though still accessibly simply) the original was.
I definitely fall on the camp of those who did enjoy the more flowery language in the other video, but I already had some prior knowledge and knew (to some extent) what to expect; I can see how it could have been a bit challenging for those not that deep into the precious bottomless pit of linguistics.
this was great !!! as an amateur language nerd , i've dabbled in this area before , but your explanation really helped me understand it and solidify the concept ! your videos are always wonderfully-done , and are always a treat to watch . thank you for taking time to further explain !!!!
From linguist to linguist, let me tell you this: I appreciate your content and the effort you put into it.
You are one of my favorite video makers for all things linguistics. I have learned so much from your videos over the years. I LOVED linguistics when I was in college a million years ago but was dissuaded from pursuing it in grad school. (“There are no jobs in linguistics,” a professor told me. It was the early 90s.) So, decades later to have these videos is such a gift. Thank you for making them!
Being someone who loves what you do - and with the channel's subscriber count I am most certainly not alone in this - just carry on doing what you want to do. It'll be appreciated, *_whatever_* it is.
You do not owe us an apology. Thank you so much for your thoughtfullness, and going back to explain more :)))
As a Chinese user I want to ask: so for the Indo-European languages they use affixes to variate words and to mark grammatical meanings; but in Chinese we don't to this, we use auxiliary words like "之乎者也着了过" to express them. For (a lousy) example, "爱人者" (lit. "love people -er") means "one who loves people", but for "one who beloved by people", you gotta say "人所爱者" instead of "人爱者". Here "所" indicates that "人" is the subject of this love. So in our language, does anybody know if there's any "nothings"? It's hard to find them in my everyday language I mean...
My personal opinion in that zero is only a valid concept for inflected languages and it cannot be applied to languages like Chinese which have no inflection at all.
Would that be valid for any signified with no signifier? I assume, without knowing Chinese or other similar language that it's conceivable to get something like that by accident that has no direct correlation to Indo-European inflection but still be a similar concept? For example, some affixes or auxiliary words could theoretically miss when otherwise they are required and that absence could signify something?
@@idraote my lang uses more affixes (conjugations also uses affixes) and reduplications with assimilations and almost zeroes declined lexemes besides loanwords from sanskrit: -a(pramugara)(siswa), -wan(karyawan), vs siswi -i, karyawati, pramugari, etc. Indonesian is the language, currently learning Japanese so I haven't fully grasped all the -emes terms but I know pleremic and cneme(-ic) in the contexts of graph in some languages.
czcams.com/video/kWWPEyv7RKs/video.html
This is the video that NativLang mentioned.
In cantonese we have a null phoneme bcuz we stopped pronouncing /ng/ at syllable initial position
For example 我 is supposed to be /ngo/ but now it's usually pronounced /o/
That's the only null I've seen so far
But cantonese is a pro drop language so perhaps in syntax there are simply so many nulls no one pays them attention anymore. I dunno I'm still trying to figure out cantonese syntax
I appreciate the follow up explanation . Thank you for being considerate for us laymen who appreciate all the work you’ve done in the past . The null video simply took me by surprise as it was the first of your videos that I could not follow along with . I don’t think understanding it is a question of intelligence , just a question of familiarity and perhaps my incorrect assumption that your content was meant for a general audience rather than a familiar one .
In the field of computational linguistics, we have certain things called context-free grammars that have production rules (how certain grammar symbols are created from other symbols). Of these, the empty string, usually represented by an epsilon in textbooks, is the equivalent of a signe 0 in the video. It helps make parsing easier as you don’t need to make a whole new production rule for that one case.
Could you maybe once make a video about the Minoan language and Linear A?😌😊
I am not studied nor expert, but as a child of 11, I read a dictionary for fun. I have always loved figuring out the roots and sources of words; how and why our languages came to be as they are. From there my mind only wanted more information to feed my curiosity. My high school offered Latin one year, which I jumped at. Then in college I added a second eye to my view of the world of language by learning Japanese. My understanding of the thought behind grammars became richer and deeper.
Thank you for creating this channel and these videos sir. I discovered them just an hour ago from your Zeros video. I immediately subscribed and look forward with excitement to all the new content I get to enjoy!!
Just yesterday I was talking to my Arabic teacher who explained to me how there's several letters that actually represent consonants already in the script, but coach pronunciation of the attached vowel sounds, wether to pronounce the vowel in the front or back of your mouth essentially, and part of me sees that as a kind of 'null', a grammatical cue which doesn't convey a sound itself, but rather a cue for how to pronounce other sounds.
Honestly you could probably do a whole video just on how silent letters are used in written languages.
I like your esoteric style, it's beautiful, poetic. Keep it up
A very good follow up. It's always difficult to be sure you understood something. Sometimes you think you did and it turns out you were wrong, and other times you think you didn't but you did actually understand. The video on zeros left me a bit unsure if I had understood it correctly, only having some linguistic understanding from reading wikis and what not, but I feel more confident now that I did understand it reasonably well.
A meaningful zero makes a lot of sense in some cases, I see them looking at my own native language. A zero ending in verbs is an imperative, a zero ending in neuter nouns is a plural; the absence gives information. Very fascinating really, like making something out of nothing almost.
Lingustics is such an interesting subject, well subject of subjects really since there is so much that makes up lingustics, I enjoy it a lot and your videos definitely give me new insights.
Thank you for including my comment at 2:08. I'm glad you appreciated it in the spirit I intended.
Admittedly, I have studied linguistics and de Saussure too, so I knew about the concept of a zero marker. Still, it’s been many years since and I think you did a great job trying to explain it. I also enjoyed the musical touch. Keep up the great work!
Merry Christmas and best wishes for the new year, @NativLang crew.
Don't let the trolls ruin your channel! :)
i am currently learning japanese and the person i learned from the most (Cure Dolly sensei) used the 0 pronoun to express a LOT of what was happening and it made the entire structure click much easier then forcing japanese to make sense through a english way of linguistics. Sadly my analysis stops here for i have no credentials beyond this but i'm sure there is a reason for this.
Not really related, but similar experience of me trying to understand why English has to have "it" for just 'simple things' like "It's raining". I have a 'shortcut' now that English really hates ambiguity in grammar, at least compared to my language where gender, plurality, even tense are not expressed grammatically. Put them in 'just because', and if you don't know what to put in, use "it". By the way, my language's way of saying that phrase would be "Rain." Yep, no subject, no verb, or predicate, just "Rain."
@@halagavi Are you speaking about Mandarin? Or some other form of Chinese? Or Indonesian even? Can’t really tell.
@@foulmercy8095 I am Indonesian! Thanks for guessing 😉
@@halagavi While you're correct about English not liking ambiguous grammar, in this case there's a little more to it. Just saying "Rain" in English is meaningful... The problem is that the meaning is an imperative verb: You are commanding who/whatever you're speaking to to perform the act of raining.
Well, you can also say 'Rain' by itself and have it be a noun if you are asking a question (I think the question would have to be 'what is X?' or 'what is the word for X?', though), because questions are weird and the constrution of answers to questions are weirder.
Basically, zero-marking the subject has an actual meaning (or several), so when you don't want to use that meaning you need to mark the subject. Especially as sentences with no Verb are also possible, and English can turn a noun into a verb (among other things) just by moving where it is in the sentence without otherwise marking it in any way.
I loved your previous video and completely understood it. Granted, I'm a linguist, but still. And I loved to learn about the history of -ø in this video, too. In Dutch, there's a similar case: 1st person singular forms of verbs have no suffix, whereas all other forms do. From what I remember, Middle Dutch used to have a suffix for 1st person singular verbs, but it disappeared (became a -ø) over time.
I personally really liked the poetic nature of the first video, but having a follow-up that explains in a more clear and hand-holdy manner is also quite nice!
You previous video was very clear and thoughtful; Nevertheless, I admire your work to reach out to the minority of viewers who wanted further clarifications.
Rhyme? Poetry? Wait, I had not even noticed those in the original video! I had to go back and watch again. (Still didn't really catch it, as I was too focused on following the story. Though I'll admit that in general, your videos are, let's say, "lyrical".) A couple other comments though...
For me, what was difficult from the first video was not the basic idea of "What is a zero?" (which you've clearly explained here); I think I was able to get that. But rather, it was the subtleties and significance of the _dispute_ about the zeros, that were a bit tough. The second watching helped, though!
A small thing: I had not remembered this from the earlier video, but this time, much appreciated it, and it made me laugh out loud: describing the question of the validity of zero, as asking whether the zero is "pizza without a topping, or just bread". 😄 (My two cents: perhaps it is focaccia. A dish about which I have often asked the same question!)
I have been following your channel long enough. Grammar and its epistemology ain't a problem... Zeros are everywhere... They make sense in a logical way... Thanks for your beautiful content.
thank you for the follow up video, and surprise dog at the end!!
Linguistic's student here. In my opinion, you explained it very well in the first video. I already knew about the zero-marking- so no surprises there. Your videos are generally great: creative, well explained, and great animations. Keep up the great work. 😀
Just hearing that the last video to this confused people made me even more interested in it. Have to watch that first now.
(Also, I don't get notified about new videos from you which really sucks...)
“I get really into complex things I feel are on the verge of overwhelming but I am just beginning to understand.”
I feel so seen.
I just SUBSCRIBEDat 999k on this video just wanted to say your videos are awesome and very informational keep up the good work and keep digging and thanks for taking on the burden of listening to us!😂❤❤❤
Someone will probably correct me on a lot of things on this post but hey I’m researching language because I’m illiterate so good for me 😛
I just took the last video as you assuming we knew more than you anticipated, as if you expected us, as an audience, to have a higher base understanding of linguistics which I take as believing us to be smart and knowledgeable. I’ll take it! Both videos are good though, I think
Thanks for the reference to the podcast Lingthusiasm. I am listening to Ep. 23 now.
this was an excellent illumination. i found the last one just about understandable at times but too esoteric. this was great
This was quite helpful. I have the feeling this equips beginners with an interest in linguistics, but without years of study under their belt, much better to understand the concept of zeros.
I love this channel
This is one of the channels that I miss when it's gone for a while.
Hey, actually, I'm a big fan of yours since I started to develop my interest into linguistics and conlanging, about five years ago.
Your last video reminded me about my calculus classes, back at highschool (not long ago to be honest) and the principle of indetermination.
I'm not quite good at math, but there is a handful of terms that cannot be expressed in a way that convey simular structures coded into the same language, and thus, different sorts of nothing emerge into existence.
That's the way I think of it, but I might as well be wrong. Thanks for reading.
Y perdón por los posibles errores de sintaxis, no soy un hablante nativo. Saludos desde México.
"... to further complicate those concepts you thought you understood." This was a great video, and it makes the last one more sensible, even if it's less comprehensible.
Thank you for being attentive to your audience.
Would schwa deletion also correspond to null? Wonderful video as always!
Sweet new upload
NativLang, can you make a video about diacritic marks (accents)? I'd like to know why are the functions of marks like umlauts, tilde, accent acute & grave, Caron; their origins and why are they used in most latin languages, including vietnamese and greek? no one has talked about uses of accents until now. Thanks!
Linguistic nothings is a concept never introduced to me until I saw your first video on this. I found it easy to know what you were speaking of and I don't know why. I'm a fairly uneducated boomer who spent a life as a retail clerk. When you opened my eyes to a way we have of communicating by the unspoken part of our speech, well...
The comment that said "[clearly omitted but relevant superlative]" was a great example for me (non linguist) to grasp the concept
As I /know/ that format and what it means so I kinda grasped the concept
Mr nativlang, I don't know if you'll ever read this but I just wanted to let you know that you are such an amazing person. I too am a huge nerd about languages and it is incredible how you took your passion and started to make videos about it. I'm 19 and you are truly an inspiration for me to persue linguistics. Keep making amazing videos, 😎💯♥️
Holy shit you uploaded again, I thought for sure you got kidnapped by the taliban
I’m still proud of this
Your videos are great. Keep it up
I understand the difficulty in explaining linguistics to laymen. After studying ling for too long, I just assume something is commonsense but it turns out to be a linguist-exclusive insight. This is most often where communication breaks down and extra explanations involving more insider knowledge are required. Thank you Nativlang for persevering on this painful journey and producing such amazing contents.
First time I saw your real face. 😊 Very well done the animations.
You did them? Music too? 😳😳
Wow 🥳🤩
I both understand the enthusiasm and appreciate the revisit
Hey NativLang, love the vid, especially as I'm about to read Saussure myself in preparation for my university entrance exam. Anyways, I thought that you might like some feedback from a native on your Czech pronounciation:
- The word 'slovo' and it's inflections sounded pretty good, with barely any accent whatsoever.
- The word 'žena' and it's inflections were a little more off. It was probably most noticable to me in the word 'ženy', especially the /ɪ/ vowel. The way you pronounced was a little bit too back, it's usually more front for us.
- The stress accent is also not as distinguished as you made it, it's usually quite subtle.
With that, I must say that I'm honestly quite impressed by your pronounciation, one can definetely tell you know a lot about phonetics. Keep on the good work, man!
This channel has been hovering at just under 1M subs for years.
Very enjoyable video.
I see that you used my invented t'a syllable at 2:17. I'm glad that is been used. 😊
Some people will always be looking for "Short-comings" in their mind - It's how they fuel themselves throughout their day. You are obviously talented to be able to Investigate, Narrate & Illustrate these videos. Ignore Haters, period. The poison that they cultivate in their own Body, Soul & Mind is only hurting them. Good day Sir😉
i should have expressed my appreciation with your last video! i really enjoyed the artistic way you presented what you were saying. i dont think linguistics needs to entirely exist in the form of teaching and video essays. its okay to bust into the esoteric and the artistic to express how poetic and beautiful the evolution of language can be often
Lire ce texte était effectivement extrêmement éclairant !
Thank you for your efforts!
I was left behind in the original video and was hopeful when I realised this was a response. Alas, despite living in a country where French is one of our two official languages and having studied and excelled at French for five years in high school, you lost me flipping between pages in Saussure's French language edition. I have no intention to insult but I actually fell asleep and just woke up when another video began. Thank you for considering those among us who aren't as au fait with the esoteric as you are yourself. I give up though. 🤷 De trop. .
I really enjoyed the last video though I would rate it as one of the more esoteric ones you have done. But I'm a maths guy used to adding structures everyday things and seeing where those abstractions lead.
Merry Christmas in advance
I must be in the wrong place, because this video was even more opaque to me than the last one. I am no closer to understanding what any of this is about. Oh well.
Is that book you had during your glyph practice Gordon Whittaker's Deciphering Aztec Hieroglyphs? Is it any good? I've been thinking about buying it but I dont know since not everyone is on board with some of his previous ideas like the nahuatl writing system becoming more phonetic only after the introduction of the latin alphabet by the spaniards, not saying he's a bad epigraphist by no means but I would like to know if he brings up new ideas, anyway love your videos, keep it up
By the way, What Classic Maya sounded like when???
is that not just a 'bare stem', as opposed to stem+inflection, so the zero-mark can just go away?
That's kind of the question at the heart of this. What's the best mental model to express and explain this interesting situation?
The main issue with the bare stem description (in the Czech example) is that we work on the assumption that the stem just conveys the lexical meaning (e.g. \-slov- means word), and the ending conveys the grammatical meaning (e.g. the -o in slovo marks the nominative singular).
If we assume the stem is present and the ending is completely missing, this sounds like the case and number information id also missing. So, for example, slov and žen can mean *any* number or *any* case, its unspecified! But that's not what we find - the number and case is specified as *just* genitive plural. So, what part of the word carries this meaning?
So a model where the ending exists and just happens to be zero turns out to be the most useful.
@@kala_asi ?
@@MyMy-tv7fd welp i tried
@@MyMy-tv7fd It is the difference between a bare stem, where that bareness is meaningless (leaving things unstated or unclear), and a bare stem, where that bareness is meaningful (the lack of modifiers is itself a modifier, essentailly). Zero marking is the latter.
Mind you, English can do zero marking as well: cat, The cat, A cat, The Cats, cats, Cat.
The first one is a bare stem.
The second has a marked definite article, and a zero marked singular number.
The third has a marked indeifnite article and a zero marked singular number.
The fourth has a marked definite article and a marked plural number
The fifth has a zero marked indefinite article and a marked plural number
The sixth is a proper noun, having a zero marked definite article and a zero marked singular number. (it also has nothing to do with cats, being a diminutive of Cathrin (or many other variations on that name).
Note that the 'cat' in 'the cat' and 'a cat' is not, gramatically speaking, a bare stem, despite having no afixes. English only really uses the bare stem of nouns as a reference form.
The important part is that a bare stem is making no distinction between various possible options (it doesn't mark number or definiteness, in the case of 'cat'), while a zero marked term Does make a distinction, and one (or more) of the options is (or are) indicated by saying or writing something, while the other is indicated by the fact that you did not.
It's basically the difference between starting counting from 0 vs starting counting from 1. Humans tend to naturally do the second, but because of how many things in computing work, almost all computer related things start at 0 instead.
so rather than having a number list like:
1: rabbit
2: duck
3: badger
Computer code will usually read like this:
0: rabbit
1: duck
2: badger
Zero marking is a similar concept.