pauraque_bk | interview questions from darkkitten1

1. Explain any one concept in linguistics you think is very cool, in terms a complete layman (like me!) can understand.

Okay, here's one for you: Regularity of sound change.

Languages change over time. That's why we don't speak Old English, and why the Italians don't speak Classical Latin. How does it happen? One of the primary ways is sound change.

There's a certain amount of randomness involved in which sounds change, though some are easy to understand. For example, the Latin word for tree is "arbor". It's easy to imagine accidentally saying "arbol", which is exactly what the early Spaniards started doing. The mispronunciation became so common that "arbol" is now the standard Spanish word for tree.

The thing that's cool is that sound change from the parent language (say, Latin) to the daughter language (say, Spanish) is *regular*. That is, if one sound changes to another in a certain "sound environment" (that is, what other sounds are around it), then it will change in that environment no matter what word it's in. If Latin also had the words "erbor" and "irbor", they would have become "erbol" and "irbol" in Spanish, the same way "arbor" became "arbol". It doesn't matter what "erbor" and "irbor" might mean -- the meaning of the word has nothing to do with it. If the right sound is present in the right environment, the change will happen.

Here's an example in English. The words with "silent E" (make, take, bake) originally had all their letters pronounced. You can approximate this by trying to say them as if they're Japanese words (mah-kay, tah-kay, bah-kay). Then English underwent two sound changes affecting these words. The first changed the "ah" in those words to the "long A" sound. The second change dropped the Es from the end. (Dropping final sounds is a very common sound change.) So now, instead of mah-kay, tah-kay, bah-kay, we say them like mayk, tayk, bayk -- the modern pronunciation.

The rule of regularity of sound change is why all the words like that changed, not just some. You can't have a sound change that only applies sometimes, so that we'd end up with some of the "-ake" words not rhyming (mah-kay vs. bayk, say). Once one of them changes, they ALL change. So, while the modern spellings of those words may not be phonetic, they are *predictable*.

When a few sound changes happen, we call it a dialect. When enough happen that the speakers of the original language can no longer understand, we call it a new language. So that's where languages come from. In case you were curious. :)

(I found myself starting to go on about how sound change affects grammar, but you said *one* concept!)

2. What's your favorite candy or dessert?

A slice of good apple pie with a scoop of ice cream. My favorite to make and to eat.

3. If you could do anything in the world for a living, what would it be?

If I could make money writing fanfic, I'd be one happy camper. :)

But if you mean a real job, I want to work with animals. I used to care for ill, quarantined, and pregnant animals at a pet shop, which I found very fulfilling. I hardly ever went home.

4. Tell me something surprising about your Krycek.

My *Krycek*. Curveball!

I don't know how surprising this will be, but Krycek was never the same after the oil. He doesn't *miss* it, but he feels its absence all the time. A day doesn't go by that he doesn't think about it. He goes over his (hazy) memories of it again and again, almost compulsively.

5. What dragon is that in your icon, and why did you choose it?

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/01/28/1075088090949.html?from=top5

It appealed to me because I've always felt a connection with dragons, and I really got a kick out of the reactions to that discovery. The dragon image is deeply rooted in the human psyche, so when people seem something like this, they *want* to believe it's real; the idea that dragons don't exist is fundamentally disappointing. And hey, the biopsy results haven't come back yet -- maybe it is real!

Good questions,

darkkitten1. I'll have some for you soon.