ONLINE LINKS AND RESOURCES FOR LINGUISTICS TOPICS
Animal Communication / design features
Einstein the talking parrot: Used to provoke discussion on “Can animals talk?” (illustrates
lack of productivity in animals)
http://media.animal.discovery.com/fansites/petstar/videogallery/season3/ep309_winner.html
Alex the African Gray (click on ‘Entertaining parrots’):
http://www.pbs.org/saf/1201/video/watchonline.htm
http://www.alexfoundation.org/alextheparrot.mov
Vervet monkey alarm calls: Used to illustrate the design feature of Arbitrariness in animal
comm. (different alarm calls for different predators)
http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~mnkylab/media/vervetcalls.html
Honeybee dances: Used to illustrate lack of arbitrariness (physical parts of dance are directly
related to what they are meant to indicate)
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/bees/dances.html
Transcript of AOL Chat with Koko the Gorilla: Indicates qualitative gap between the ability
of ‘talking’ gorillas and the ability of young human children
http://www.gorilla.org/world/talk_aol.html
Video of Koko signing (click links): http://edcommunity.apple.com/ali/story.php?itemID=545
Phonetics/Phonology links
Interactive IPA chart: Click on a symbol to hear its pronunciation before/after a vowel
http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/course/chapter1/c
hapter1.html
X-ray movie of speech: To see how the parts of the mouth (such as velum and tongue) move
during speech
http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/course/chapter1.1
/chapter1.1.htm
Duck call vowels – resonance: Different shaped duck calls produce different vowel sounds
based on their shape; used to indicate resonance of the vocal tract
http://www.exploratorium.edu/exhibits/vocal_vowels/vocal_vowels.html
Video of woman w/ Foreign Accent Syndrome: Woman’s ‘accent’ or her phonological
system is the only aspect of her speech affected after suffering from a stroke; may indicate
modularity of the different components of language
http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/video/39522000/rm/_39522150_accent05_twigg_vi.ram
http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=1814284
McGurk effect: Instruct students to view video and guess what syllable is being said (usually
they say ‘da-da’); Next, instruct students to listen to video w/ eyes closed and identify
2
syllable (now they clearly hear ‘ba-ba’); Demonstrates how visual information is used in
addition to auditory information when perceiving speech
Demo: http://www.media.uio.no/personer/arntm/McGurk_large.mov
Explanation: http://epsych.msstate.edu/descriptive/Hearing/mcgurk/mcgurk_desc.html
.gif of vibrating vocal folds
http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/vowels/chapter2/
vibrating%20cords/vibrating.html
Sign Language links
Sign language dictionary: Click on glossary of words to see clip of ASL signs
http://faculty.washington.edu/lauramcg/courses/ling200/www.lifeprint.com
Video: Birth of a sign language – Nicaragua: Creation of sign language creole from pidgin
within one generation
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/07/2/l_072_04.html
“Sound and Fury” companion website – Cochlear implants: Companion website for
documentary on family’s struggle about giving their deaf child a cochlear implant; includes
demo on how CIs work, debate for and against implanting deaf children with CIs
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/soundandfury/index.html
Psycholinguistics
Stages of acquisition – sound files of babbling (click on ‘learn about and listen’): Audio clips
of the different babbling stages
http://www.vocaldevelopment.com/
Video of babies’ babbling as linguistic vs. biological (click on Movie S1, S2; must connect
through UW library): Argues/demonstrates that babbling can be viewed as linguistic and not
purely biological (mouth opens wider on right side of mouth when babbling vs. nonbabbling)
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/297/5586/1515/DC1
Video clip of Christopher, autistic savant – speaks 20 languages (click on Excerpts from
'Fragments of Genius'): Used to make argument that language and intelligence are
dissociated and separate
http://www.uga.edu/lsava/Smith/Smith.html
Streaming video of children with Williams syndrome (click on link 'Watch Growing up
Different'): Used to make argument that language and intelligence are dissociated and
separate; the video is 30 min., but a pull-down menu allows you to jump to particular parts
http://www.wsf.org/multimedia/friendlygenes.htm
Transcript of “The Man with Two Brains” – Split-Brain patient: Used to show brain
lateralization (a copy of the video clip is currently not online, but is available from Laura,
Alicia, Sharon, or others)
3
http://www.pbs.org/saf/transcripts/transcript703.htm
UW article on Whistling language (click on links at bottom of page to hear examples): Used
to show that language is abstract and independent of the modality in which it is expressed
http://admin.urel.washington.edu/uweek/archives/issue/uweek_story_small.asp?id=2373
Non-counting Pirahã tribe of Brazil (Sapir-Whorf hypothesis) -- (click on links for 'Movie
S1' and 'Movie S2'): Can be used to support strong version of Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that
language (or lack thereof) determines the way we think (lack of counting words means they
are unable to count or do simple math)
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/1094492/DC1
Sociolinguistics
“Do You Speak American?” companion website: (contains many streaming clips about a
number of topics taken from the series on American regional/social dialects)
http://www.pbs.org/speak/
International Dialects of English (click to hear different English dialects by region)
http://www.ku.edu/~idea/
Speech Accent Archive (click to hear the same passage spoken by different English dialect
speakers by region; accompanied in many cases by a narrow phonetic transcription of the
utterance)
http://accent.gmu.edu/
Use of Ebonics as a teaching tool in CA classroom (click on "Jeopardy! with a twist")
http://www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/standardamerican/
Speech synthesis / language and computers
Speech synthesis – a history: (w/ sound clips)
http://www.cs.indiana.edu/rhythmsp/ASA/Contents.html
Pattern playback machine:
http://www.haskins.yale.edu/Haskins/MISC/PP/SENTENCES/chicken.html
Text-to-speech synthesis demos:
Real Speak http://www.nuance.com/realspeak/demo/
Tru Voice http://www.edict.com.hk/TextToSpeech/TTStest.htm
AT&T Natural Voice http://www.research.att.com/projects/tts/demo.html
DECtalk http://www.cs.indiana.edu/rhythmsp/ASA/partD.html
(Right click on any link and select ‘Open hyperlink’ to open in a web browser, or copy and paste
links into open web browser)