 Hi, welcome to another question of the month video. This time I will deal with the questions that were asked by our YouTube channel community in April 2013 and as usual the answers will be presented using the active board behind me whose content you can download via the e-lecture library on the Virtual Linguistics Campus. Here is the first problem which consists of two parts. The first is about regressive assimilation and the second about assimilation in general. Well, the first question is relatively simple. It is true that in 10 coins and in in case we have the same phenomenon, regressive assimilation, where an alveolar nasal is influenced by the consonant that follows, in this case a velanasal and under the influence of this phoneme it is assimilated to a velanasal. So in both cases we have the same phenomenon. Well at the second question, which is about phonemic transcription, my advice is be careful. In an exercise where you have to convert orthographical text into phonemes, my advice is pretty clear. Don't transcribe assimilation effects. They are optional and only constitute sources for additional transcription errors. Assimilation is optional, so you don't have to use it in transcription. However, if you have to transcribe what you hear, that is audio data, and if you clearly hear that someone says 10 coins and not 10 coins, then you have to transcribe what you hear as long as you use a legitimate phoneme of the language. By the way, in this comment you do not have to feel sorry or you don't have to apologize when you want a problem to be solved. No, you are welcome. All questions will be answered as well as possible. Here is another problem. His teutonic vowel sounds betrayed him. Also the subject from Detroit really did not have a pronounced northern city shift. Well, this question, which was asked or this comment, which was made in the context of English in North America. Well, I don't think that we were betrayed. Our speaker, Dan, uses many features of the northern city shift. And since Michigan is really a big state with roughly these borders here, it is likely that there are different cases as compared with Dan, who comes from Detroit down in the south. So we would be more than glad to investigate the dialect spoken in northern Michigan. If you know of any Yupa who would be willing to provide audio recordings of their dialect, please refer them to us. Here is a morphological phenomenon. Salu, merci pour les leçons. Are you sure that about about Bukku Bukku? Well, here the similarity between Bukku Bukku and French Bukku is only accidental. Indonesian Bukku, which is clearly a long word from present-day English book, can be traced back to proto-Germanic Buk. It has no connection or relationship to French Bukku, which was derived from old French Biakko, literally beautiful hit. So the relationship about which this user speculated is entirely accidental. Well, another user still can't get the difference between sense and reference. In our videos, we tried our best to explain these differences. Well, if it's not clear, maybe this explanation helps. We can think of reference as a lexemes relationship to real-world things and of sense as a relationship of a lexeme with other lexemes. Well, and this may be may be different across languages. For example, two lexemes may refer to the same real-world object or concept, or the sense of one lexeme may combine two real-world references. One example of this may be found when we compare the English and French words for sheep and mutton. While English uses two different lexemes to describe the animal and its meat in the culinary sense, French uses one lexeme to refer to them both, mutton. Here we can see the difference between reference and sense, as well as an example of how languages divide up the real world in different ways. By the way, further details can be found in our e-lecture Words Semantics, where both reference and sense are compared. In the historical video, the old English period, we didn't mention Manx as another Celtic language. So why didn't we do that? Well, we know that Manx is, in fact, a Celtic language. If you want details, it's in the Gaudelic branch of the Celtic languages alongside Scottish Gaelic. And as our user correctly pointed out, it is spoken on the Isle of Man. But the last native speaker died in the 1970s, so the language is officially considered extinct. This is why we did not list it among the living Celtic languages. Today, and many people know that, a small percentage of the population on the Isle of Man, however, does speak the language fluently. And considerable effort has been made to revive the language. An interesting comment was posted in conjunction with the e-lecture linguistics in the 21st century. Well, here the user mentions Postigio's net linguistics publication. In such a case, we can only say thank you for bringing new ideas up. In this case, Santiago Postigio's work. And we can only say it was not used in the development of the content, but we will take it into consideration for future productions involving this topic. In fact, this may happen more than once. Our viewers might think, why did they not include the work of, well, here are three big guns. Do you know? Lamp's stratificational theory. Have you come across Fillmore's early treatment of deep case resulting in case grammar or Lakoff's neural theory of language? Well, these three well-known linguists should indicate that we cannot include all possible approaches in our e-lectures. We have to simplify for deductic reasons. Well, and if you study with us, we still have the virtual sessions on the virtual linguistics campus. And last but not least, we have our in-class meetings and there such additional topics will be treated. Let's now turn our attention to some general phenomena. Well, the first concerns our MOOC application. Most of you know that we have applied for a massive open online course production competition with our proposal, teaching English as a foreign language part one pronunciation. Whether we receive financial support or not, I would like to express my gratitude to all of you. The way you have been supporting us by means of positive clicks and wonderful comments is fantastic. Here are two out of several dozens of wonderful comments. This user says it's really a great idea. People are wasting their time watching the Gangnam style while you guys are trying to educate people. Well, thank you. We are really trying very hard. And the second comment, excellent stuff, the material produced by the virtual linguistics campuses of a very high standard and MOOCs are wonderful. Put the two together and you have a winning formula. Well, whether we win or not, meanwhile, the MOOC application video teaching English as a foreign language has become the video with the highest percentage of approvals in our channel. Even though it looks unlikely that we will be chosen for financial support, I would like to thank you for your motivating and encouraging comments. Well, here is another interesting comment or question. Some of you have asked for literature references in our videos. Our policy here is quite straightforward. We do not list references in a video. You would have to pause. You would have to identify the reference and then eventually go to the library and copy everything. On the virtual linguistics campus, however, literature references are provided and in fact, we do it in three ways. On the one hand, we have specific references in the virtual sessions. Then we provide a list of class related references. And last but not least, we have the VLC library. So let's look at all of them. Here is the virtual session generative grammar and on its start side, you see the basic references that were used in the production of the content of this virtual session. For example, we took chapter one of the book by Andrew Carney. Well, and as you can see here, it's a book about syntax, a generative introduction and further details can be found in this pop-up window. The second possibility can be found on each class start side where you have a link bibliography and a click on this link gives you a list of all those books and articles that were used in the creation of the content of this particular class. Well, at last but not least, we have the library on the virtual linguistics campus, where the main and most fundamental books for the main branches of theoretical linguistics and of some branches of applied linguistics are listed and can be accessed via mouse click. And again, you find all the references in a special window. So unlike in a video where once recorded, the references are permanent, in all the cases on the virtual linguistics campus, we can easily update the references when necessary. So become a member of the virtual linguistics campus community, and then you have all the references you need. Let me now become a little bit more official. Within one year, we have had more than 500 comments. The vast majority of these comments are wonderful suggestions, well argued criticisms and highly motivating comments. Yet a very small minority of comments were either written in languages other than English, and that's not accessible to the majority of our viewers. Or they were offensive in one way or another. We at the virtual linguistics campus make a strong effort to read each and every comment and respond to those which we feel require an answer or explanation like I'm doing right now. We appreciate all praise, suggestions and constructive criticism. If possible, however, present any comments or questions in English. We would like to maintain as professional and academic and environment as possible, and therefore ask users to avoid inappropriate language. So inappropriate and disrespectful comments may be ignored and in some cases even deleted. Well, and finally, one user wants to know all the details about my personal accent. Well, as far as my German is concerned, I come from Hanover, where I spent the first 30 years of my life. So I have been using a phonologically relatively neutral dialect. But it became influenced by the fact that I stayed in North Rhine Westphalia for seven years. And now, having been in Marburg for the past 20 years. Well, I still use this relatively neutral German accent with some Rhineland features, but it is relatively neutral with no Hessian influences. My English is more or less British in character and was influenced by two local dialects. The first one is Southern. It is, well, if you want to call it some sort of Barkshire influence, where I spent two years at the University of Reading. And the second influence comes from the North, from Leeds, where I spent one year at the University of Leeds. So it's to some extent some sort of mixture. And you can hear some vowels are a little bit northern in quality. Okay, does that solve your problems? I hope so. Hence, as usual, in our questions of the month videos, let me finally thank all our subscribers and users. We are overwhelmed with comments like these, which are especially motivating. Where can I press the like it button at least 100 times? A great video and a great explanation you have solved all my doubts. Thanks again. So see you again in the next questions of the month video or in any of our e-lectures. We will continue trying hard to produce top class linguistic videos. So again, thanks to all of you.