s PAGE TWO THE MICHIGAN UA IIV C'TTlkTTIAV 01 TA'AtTTA10'%F Iri,-+ CPa. .TWO1TaaaM aahi2A1aT 1111K :SU1NDAY. 3 1 JAINUARY*X1965 LANGUAGE RESEARCH: Minnesota The Week To Come: a Campus Calendar i New Linguistic Center o Open U II AIE11IJ1U 1 By MICHAEL JULIAR "I wish I had $100 for every student that has switched from the literary college to the school of engineering or business admin- istration to get away from the foreign language requirement. I could support this whole center with that money." !The speaker is Prof. Harlan L Lae,, a young associate professor In the psychology department, and h =is referring to the new Center for"Research on Language and Lanuage Behavior. The new center officially begins its- work tomorrow. But it is al- ready' hummig with electric type- writers, computers and voice spec- togram machines which record on paper the characteristic frequen- cies ofa spoken word. Any Sound One fascinating machine, which Lan hopes, to whittle down to the size of an average tape-recorder but whilch now occupies half a room in the basement of a Hill St. building, teaches a person how to pronounce correctly any sound the Instructor wants. First, the student learns how to hit the right pitch of the for- eign word or phrase.: A zero-cen- tered dial hooked up to a com- puter that. constantly compares what the student says to what he should be saying tells the student whether his pitch is too high or too low., After several errors and the correct response, the computer 'witcIhes to comparing spoken and o&rrect intensity. 'The" 'zero-centered dial again tels th~e student how accurate he has been. The computer itself does not make an instantaneous comparison, but the time lag is so slight that the student does not notice the lag. Tempo, Pronounciation Lastly, the tempo of the foreign phrase and the student's pro- nounciation is compared. Only aft- er three perfect or near perfect pronounciations a c c o r d i n g to pitch, intensity and tempo does the computer then go on to the next lesson. This equipment and other de- vices are being used by Lane and other University personnel in its concentrated study of language learning under Title Six of the National Defense Education Act of 1958. Sometimes dubbed the Sputnik Act, this law calls for centers of language research to study ways language can be taught. The cen- ter here is working with a $500,000 a year grant from the United States Office of Education. The grant, according to a ver- bal agreement, is to run for four years. But if the center is success- ful, it will probably continue to tget the grant for as long as it is i'ieeded. 'Underestimate' "The half-a-million dollars a year is probably an underestimate for the time when the program :once gets rolling," Lane says. Active in the center will be 'seven faculty members - Lane, Prof. John C. Catford of the lin- guistics department and head of the English Language Institute; Prof. Frank M. Koen of the psy- chology department and research assistant= at the Center for Re- search in Learning and Teaching; 'Prf. Herbert H. Paper of the Near Eastern language department and chairman 'of the linguistics 'department; Prof. Kenneth L. Pike of -the linguistics department; Prof. Melvyn I. Sommer of the education school; Prof. Donald E. P. Smith of the education school, and chief of the Reading Improve- ment Service, Bureau of Psycho- logical Services, and Prof. Ronald S. Tikofsky of the speech depart- ment. There will also be about 20 grad- uate students and technical and research personnel. The Behav- ior Analysis Laboratory, which Lane has been directing, will be absorbed by the center. Significant Effect From the research could come findings that may have a signifi- cant effect, perhaps in ways unex- pected, on our knowledge about language learning and a wide range of practical uses not only in big language classes but in do-it-yourself language learning PROF. HARLAN LANE at home and in treating language- impaired persons. To illustrate the scope and com- plexity of the center's research activities, here in brief are r* few of the study topics beig perused by the center scientists: -- Machine - taught fluency. Without mastering prosodic fea- tures (pitch, loudness and rhy- thim), no one can speak a foreign language with "native-like fluen- cy." Yet prosodic features have received scant attention in lan- guage classrooms. Already Lane and his associates have developed a computer-based teaching machine for teaching the prosodic features. Thanks to SAID (Speech Auto-Instructional De- vice) the center researchers will be able to process utterances from any language and quickly take "pictures" of prosodic features. Al- so, by comparing prosodic pic- tures of the student's native and second languages, the center sci- entists may predict which kinds of utterances will be difficult and which will be easy to learn. --Baby's talk. Unlike foreign- language learning, native-lan- guage learning takes place in a haphazard manner. Still, what the child learns from birth to pre- school years forms the seed-bed for later language learning in th classroom. Center scientists have already begun to compile complete tape- recording of infants' vocal utter- ances. normal and abnormal, in the first months of life. Recording begins with delivery at the hospi- tal and follows the infant to hospital nurseries and to the crib at home. The purpose is to analyze and understand, by scientific means, the normal and abnormal lan- guage development by discover- ing how the infants' utterances become differentiated and struc- tured as a function of matura- tional and environmental factors. - Meanings without words. Meanings are conveyed by certain phonetic features, by gesture, fa- cial expression and so on. These "paralinguistic" behaviors, how- ever, are not entirely universal. An investigation of paralinguistic norms for various cultures will suggest which of these paralinguis- tic features should be systemat- ically taught in a foreign language course. -Discrimination. How the lan- guage learners discriminate sounds is an important question that still needs much study., For instance, the center researchers have al- ready proved that anyone who has learned one language need not worry about learning anothei "from scratch." To speak a language the speaker must first learn to discriminate among the sounds of that Xn- guage. This is what babies do when they learn to talk - they must begin from scratch and do it gradually. But not so with adults. They simply transfer what they have already learned in auditory discrimination and apply it to foreign language. They do it so fasti and matter-of-factly that they hardly notice it.E -To compare or not to com- pare grammars. Most everybodyI knows that interference from na- tive-language grammar is a major cause of difficulty in foreign-lan- guage learning. Research is need- ed on the possible use of compara- tive grammar in the classroom. In general, Western language teachers do not favor making ex- plicit statements of similarities end differences between native and foreign languages. In the So- viet Union, explicit comparison in the classroom has been advocated. -Shaping and maintenance of vocal responding in foreign lan- guage. The duration, or pitch, of a given foreign sound is a case in point. Most laymen may think of pro- nunciation learning as mere listen- ing and imitating. To the experts, it involves many factors, includ- ing the knowledge of the proper duration of a given foreign sound. Much work, such as with the machine described earlier, has al- ready been done by the center re- searchers. Desired Length In one previous experiment the researchers asked students to 'say "u' each time a light was flashed and tried to make the students say a little longer (or shorter) "u" by rewarding them with pennies for only those of desired length. Al- though most students did not know their vocal behavior was be- ing changed, they soon produced t t t i t E t C t f t c f k i f E t C t 1 f S E t E ,. t t Ij l 1 t i i4 i T the desired length of pronuncia- tion. But more important, the re- Collegiate Press service searchers have found that if the MINNEAPOLIS - Students at step between the student's current the University of Minnesota re- responses and the target response cently ran a nursery school-for is too big, he will fail to reach college students. the target. If too small, he will Students-college students, that eventually succeed, but that is not is-attending the school, which altogether efficient. But if he is met in the university's student un- taught in a progression of mdi- ion, busily played with building vidually adjusted steps, he will blocks, modeling clay, crayons, learn efficiently and faster. board games, and jigsaw puzzles. The center's basic purpose is Crayon drawings lined the wall "to enable people of all ages and behind them. capabilities to learn languages The school was presided over by more effectively," Lane says. Betsy Luck, a sophomore educa- Two-Fold Need tion major, and was promptly "The problem facing the cen- named "Mother Luck's Nursery ter may be viewed as meeting a School." two-fold need: first, to coordinate Mother Luck's charges were not the efforts of scientists and edu- going through a second childhood cators concerned with several brought on by the pressures of facets of language development final examinations-as the casual by providing funds, facilities, and observer might have deduced-but byproviding clinatewithin ond were actually staging a protest iunectal cimatdecwithindodemonstration against a decision functional uni; ad second,n tby the student union's board of governors to band card playing in closely integrated research, devel- the building's grill area. opment, and dissemination activi- The board decided that card ties that will lead to material playing cannot be controlled there improvement in language instruc- and could spread into gambling. tion." "We hope the center will Card games are permitted in the sound like the tower of Babel," union's gameroom, but the stu- Lane says. dents say that the room is too "We hope for real fallout from small to accommodate everyone our research at the center," Lane who wants to play. emphasizes. He especially wishes So Mother L u c k 's Nursery that the center will have some im- School was born as a "spontane- nact here in Ann Arbor in "clean- ous group action" to protest the ing up our own backyard," as he situation. One enrolee said most calls it. of the students involved in the Also, he expresses a desire that protest preferred to "work through the residential college not make channels." But, he added, "we in- the same mistakes that have been tend to push this thing all the made in the past. way." Follows Progress Another student sat quietly The Defense Department will puffing on his pipe and building a follow closely the progress of the tower with little red blocks which center because of its involvement he explained were called "notch- in teaching foreign languages to ies." Many students drew with its soldiers going overseas. But crayons, and several exerted a the department is not yet directly joint effort to solve a Flintstone involved with the program. Jigsaw puzzle. Like the Institute of Science At one point, Mother Luck or- and Technology, the Institute for ganized a "milk march" in which Social Research and the Phoenix the students marched by twos to Project, the language center will a vending machine to purchase report to Vice-President for Re- their milk. search A. Geoffrey.Norman. The school attracted a good deal One problem-dissemination ofof attention in the grill, as stu- general knowledge on language dents flocked around to inquire and linguistics-exists today be- what it was all about. A number cause of "lack of coordination," of them signed a petition protest- ing the ban, which had been Bantu Sibilants thoughtfully provided by Mother BantuSibiantsLuck "Where does a man go if h'' Student union officials declined wants to find out about the sibi- to comment on the situation until' lants in Bantu? Only if he has a they have a chance to talk it over friend who has a friend who at their next meeting, but in the knows about the subject is he meantime, they requested the stu- likely ever to get the information dents to remove their crayon he wants." drawings until such time as they The government recently wanted obtained authorization for them. such a library set uno in Seattle. "But we argued that such a co- (tudy ordination center could not be set 17 Hosts Study up in isolation. It must be in the / middle of resear~ch and able to be OfT* used by researchers, such as will now live here," Lane says. The annual Linguistic Institute will return to the University this summer and the National Science Foundation has made available 40 study grants to students of ments: Recital Hal, School of Music linguistics. 8:30 p.m Co-sponsored by the Linguistic Society of America and the host Independent socialist Club Lecture: university, the institute is essen- David Komatsu, writer for "New Por tially an educational "common tics," "President Johnson's war on Poverty," Sun., Jan. 31, 7:30 p.m. market" dealing with studies of 3516 SAB. linguistics. Established in 1928, it brings to- General Notices gether leading scholars and stu- dents each summer in greater con- I 4 p.m.-Michael Athans of the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- nology electrical engineering de- partment will speak on "The Opti- mum Control of Norm-Invariant Systems" in Rm. 1504, East Eng. Bldg. 8:30 p.m. - Professors Gustave Rosseels, violinist, and Wallace Berry, pianist, will perform in a music school Sonata Recital in Rackham Lecture Hall. Symposium on Poverty Set For February' "In the Midst of Plenty," a symposium on American poverty, will be held at the University Feb. 16 through Mar. 2. During the two week period, distinguished speakers will discuss various aspects of the topic. The schedule of speakers will be the following: -Feb. 16-Kenote Program: Symposium Introduction by Presi- dent Harlan Hatcher: Keynote Address by Michael Harrington, Jr., "In the Midst of Plenty," Rackham Lecture Hall. -Feb. 17-Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago, "The Blight of Our Cities," League Ballroom. -Feb. 22-Prof. Charles Kil- lingsworth of the economics de- partment of Michigan State Uni- versity, "Automation and Unem- ployment," Rackham. -Feb. 23-Irving Bluestone, ad- ministrative assistant to Walter Reuther, "The Political Voice of the Poor," Rackham. -Feb. 25-Vernon Alden, presi- dent of Ohio University, "The, War on Poverty," Rackham. -Feb. 26, Wilbur Cohen, as- sistant secretary of health, edu- cation and welfare, "Young and Unskilled, Old and Ignored," Un- ion Ballroom. -March 1-Russell Kirk, "Jus- tice and Poverty: A Conservative View," Rackham. -March 2-Whitney Young, Jr., executive director of the National Urban League, "Minorities Ruled: The Problem of the Non-White Citizen," Rackham. All programs, start at 8 p.m. cal Bldg. II'4JA1 JtI clBd.1will speak on "Coming Changes 7:30 p.m.-Brice Carnahan of in World Affairs" in the Michigan the engineering college will give League Ballroom. His talk is co- the Ford computer lecture in the sponsored by Assembly and Pan- Natural Science Aud. hellenic Associations. 8 p.m.-Rabbi Sherwin Wine of 8:30 p.m. - John Farrer will the Birmingham Temple, whose conduct and Michael Robbins will "athiest" position and remarks on ttoire du Soldt" Stravin kys religion and theology have at- man Ceterd331 T sa t tracted considerable attention re- man Center, 331 Thompson St. cently, will speak on "Humanism in the Synagogue" at the Hillel ! od Adds Foundation. j1E GO A G THURSDAY, FEB. 4 3 p.m.-A seminar on "Hospital ace Supply Decisions - Stuidies fromr~r Hospital Systems Research Group, Georgia Institute of Technology" The University of Colorado will will be held in Rm. 69, Business offer a course in peace and tech- Administration Bldg. niques of achieving it during the 4 p.m.-Donald N. Michael of coming semester. the Institute for Policy Studies The course, entitled Problems will speak on "Cybernation and and Prospects for Peace, will ex- Social Planning for the Use of plore the sources of human con- New Knowledge" in the East Con- flict from economic, historical, ference Rm., Rackham Bldg. philosophic, political, psychologi- 4:10 p.m. - Talcott Parsons of cal, sociological, and technological Harvard University will give the points of view, and will examine Charles Horton Cooley Lecture in some of the problems which must the Rackham Amphitheater. He be solved if further world wars will speak on "Cooley's Contribu- are to be prevented. tion to Internalization of Culture The course, for which two hours and Social Elements in the Per- of academic credit are being given, sonality." will meet once a week. """"""""""----"---"---------------------mm LAST TIMES TONIGHT at7and 9 Fyodor Dostoevsky's, U THE IDIOT * U * Directed by George Lampin and starring deli- cate-featured, limpid-eyed Gerard Philippe in e his first major role. 1 ' 1 i a1 * i I N TH E A RCH ITE CTUR E AUDITOR IUM I IU ADMISSION:I=TY CENTSI The Third Ann Arbor Film Festival is coming in March. I t E a * TIE C ilifi GUIrrrrsrrrrrrrrrrrrr SUNDAY, JAN. 31 TUESDAY, FEB. 2 4:15 p.m. - Eric Berne, chair- 4:30 p.m. - Leslie Breidenthal, 4:15 p.m.-Prof. Robin Williams man of the San Francisco Social bass baritone, will perform at the of the Cornell University sociology Psychiatry Seminars, will speak Recital Hall, School of Music Bldg. department will speak on "Social on "Marital Games and Con- 7 and 9 p.m.-Cinema Guild will Science and Social Policy in Race tracts" in Aud. C. present Dostoyevsky's "The Idiot" Relations" in Aud. D. 7 and 9 p.m. - The Cinema in the Architecture Aud. WEDNESDAY, FEB. 3 Guild will present Alec Guinness and Peter Sellers in "The Lady- 8 p.m.-Earl Robinson, nation- 3 p.m. - Clark R. Mollenhoff, i llersitect e ud ally known composer-balladeer,Wahntncrspdet wl killers" in Architecture Aud. aly non omoerbalaeeWashington correspondent, will~ 8 p.m.-The Crest Travel Club will present a concert at the First speak on the "Washington Cover- wil s .--TheiCrinAuT.a Unitarian Church. Up" in the Rackham Ampithe- ill show a film in Aud. A. 8:30 p.m.-School of Music Kap- ater, Rackham Bldg. SATURDAY, FEB. 6 pa Kappa Psi recital will fea- 4 p.m.-Prof. A. Rees Midgley 7 and 9 p.m. - The Cinema ture wind and percussion instru- of the pathology department will Guild will show Jean Costeau's ments at the Recital Hall, School speak on "Human Gonadotropins: Orpheus in the Architecture of Music Bldg. S o m e Recent Immunobiological Aud. MONDAY, FEB. 1 Studies" in Rm. 2501, East Medi- 8 p.m.--Arthur Schlessinger, Jr., . e, 4' t ti I f l 1 f { c t r 1 I 1 I I 'DAILY OFFICI, "HOLDS THE VIEWER BREATHLESS AND LEAVES HIM LIMP! -Bosley Crowther, N.Y. Times The Daily Official Bulletin is an official publication of The Univer- sity of Michigan, for which The Michigan Daily assumes no editor- ial responsibility. Notices should be sent in TYPEWRITTEN form to Room 3654 Administration Bldg. be- fore 2 p.m. of the day preceding publication, and by 2 p.m. Friday for Saturday and Sunday. General Notices may be published a maxi- mum of two times on request; Day Calendar items appear once only. Student organization notices are not accepted for publication. SUNDAY, JANUARY 30 Day Calendar First of a New Television Series- Some Heroical Spirits - George Kish, geography department, host, "Great Voyages of Discovery from Classical to Modern Times": WWJ-TV Detroit, channel 4, 12 m. School of Music Degree Recital-Leslie Breidenthal, bass baritone: Recital Hall, School of Music, 4:30 p.m. Cinema Guild - Dostoevski's "The Idiot": Architecture Aud., 7 and 9 p.m. School of Music Kappa Kappa Psi Recital-Wind and Percussion Instru- r. 8 I t E 3 JOSH HITE I IFC PRESENTS D~ept. of iEnglishi Language and it- t't~ hn spsiVa n erature Lecture: Prof. Ralph Mills, U- centration than is possible at any (Continued on Page 5) one institution during the year. "See just how exciting and compelling a motion picture can be."-Hugh Holland, Mich. Daily KIM STANLEY and RICHARD ATTENBOROUGH "THE PERFECT PSYCHOLOGICAL SUSPENSE THRILLER .. A FLAWLESS FILM'!" -N.Y. Herald Tribune SEAN4CE GV4A WET AFTERNvOONJ Dial 662-6264 .... I G==) 2nd Week WALT DISNEY'S ACHIEVEMENT! FEB. 5 HILL AUD. I A DramaticPortrait of the Poet by Donald Hal with A DISTINGUISHED CAST TICKETS ON SALE FEB. 1-5 I 7 4 , V R I I I I