 In the following I will deal with the questions that are connected with my e-lectures. Each question will be discussed using a separate screen produced on the active board behind me with the title of the e-lecture where the question was raised on the right over here. As usual, the board content can be obtained in the e-lecture library on the Virtual Linguistics Campus. Here is the first of the questions that were asked by our YouTube channel community by the end of January 2013. Doesn't Homo archaicus depict a subspecies of Homo sapiens and not a standalone species? Maybe we should refer to it as Homo antisesa. Well, that is correct. Homo sapiens can be divided into these three subspecies. It is important to note, however, that there is some dispute about this division into subspecies and Homo sapiens neanderthalensis is sometimes included in the subspecies Homo sapiens archaicus. Another question from the same e-lecture. Shouldn't the role of the auditory cortex be mentioned in the context of language evolution? Well, it should, but the focus of my e-lecture is language production. And even though the development of the auditory cortex is essential to the processing of sounds, we chose to concentrate on those areas of the brain most directly related to speech production. Another question, still the same e-lecture. Weren't Paul Brokaw and Karl Wernicke anatomists and physicians rather than physiologists? Well, the simple answer is yes. Karl Wernicke and Paul Brokaw are always referred to as anatomists. In fact, they are mostly just credited with the identification of the two areas. Here are the areas that are associated with them and their functions. So perhaps, if they were still alive, you would certainly associate physiology with them too. But in their time, they were anatomists. A completely different question comes from the e-lecture language contact. Is Bislama a pigeon or a creole? Well, in the handbook of the varieties of English, we find that Bislama is a contact language spoken in Vanuatu in the southwest Pacific. And it initially developed as a distinct variety of English over about half a century between the mid and the end of the 19th century. Soon after the establishment of the British colony of New South Wales in 1788, a pigeon developed, which was used between settlers and aboriginal peoples along the ever expanding frontier. Features of this pigeon made their way into what has often been referred to as South Sea's jargon, which was spoken by ships, crews and individuals on shore in a wide variety of locations around the Pacific islands in the early 19th century. Today, as the language is used in Vanuatu, it has to be classified as a creole rather than as a pigeon. Here is a question that is connected with my e-lecture, basic segments of speech consonant. Is the uvula an active or a passive articulator? Well, there is disagreement in the literature about the role of the uvula. Bill Hart Castle, one of the world's articulatory phonetics experts write in his book, The Physiology of Speech Production, the uvula's role is probably not so important in speech production, except perhaps as an active articulator in the trilled uvula R, this one, versus being a passive articulator during post-vila consonants such as the voiceless uvula fricative H. So in other words, it is both active and passive. And I decided to opt for the trill interpretation, last but not least because Bill Hart Castle was among my teachers when I was at the University of Reading in the 1980s. Here is a question about distinctive features. Well, in fact, we received several questions about distinctive features. For example, whether or not phonemes that are associated with the feature minus coronal can still be plus anterior. I do not want to argue about fine adjustments of the theory of distinctive features here. Rather, I'd like to mention the central reference that we use on the virtual linguistics compass in this context. It is the book by Iggy Rocha and Wynn Johnson and their set of features summarized on page 110, where you can clearly see we have plus coronal, plus anterior sounds and plus coronal minus anterior sounds. Here is a question about two phonemes in RP. In conservative RP, e and u are real vowels, not diphthongs, aren't they? Well, first of all, both monophones and diphthongs are real vowels. And e and u are, of course, not two diphthongs. That's absolutely right. But they are simple vowels with a slight off glide in each case. Let's listen. C, 2. So, C and 2. In North American English, they're even transcribed as e and u, for example, in Labov's Atlas of North American English. I suggest to draw a distinction between them on the alophonic level only. E with its alophonic variant C and u with its alophonic variant 2. The next question concerns the sound system of German and German speakers who want to speak proper English. If the German o is lower than the RP o and higher than the RP o, wouldn't that result in a cot-court merger by German speakers? Well, I don't think it would, for one reason. The cot-court merger requires that the vowels involved are equal in length, which they are in North American English. In RP, by contrast, the difference in quality between o in cot and o in court is normally accompanied by a difference in quantity. So this one is clearly short and this one is clearly long. Since Germans are used to length differences, they don't seem to have problems with these two RP phonemes and make them different in terms of length. Here is a question about the intrusive R associated with the electric sound system of RP. What about inserting R between morphemes as in drawing? Is that RP? Well, it's an option. And that's why I took care in saying that the R can be inserted between vowels, even though the normal case is between words. Our penultimate question. What is the difference between an ablaut and an umlaut? Two terms that were not mentioned in the e-lectro-morphological operations. Well, an ablaut is a simple vocalic change where one vowel changes into another one. Here are two examples from English, ZZ and the German equivalent, Zitzen-Sass. An umlaut, by contrast, needs two vowels. For example, E and U. And these two vowels somehow result in a third. They merge. So in this case, and that's just an ideal representation, E and U merge to Ü. Again, here are two examples from English first. Forty. Old English fit. Back vowel O, front vowel E, became fit in Middle English and later, due to the effects of the great vowel shifts, it became fit. Well, in German there's a nice name associated with a town where Duisburg is not pronounced Ui, but Ü, Duisburg. So a case similar to the abstract one I presented earlier on. Here is the last question for the time being. One of our subscribers mentioned that Yoda, the famous Jedi Knight of the Star Wars saga, uses the object-subject word order. Well, before we discuss this, let us look at some examples. Here is the first impression. Prentice, you have Emperor? Or should I call you Darth Sidious? If anything, just say about it. Okay. That'll do. Now let's look at what Yoda said. I hear a new apprentice you have, Emperor. Clearly a subject verb object structure, where I is the subject, here is the verb, and a new apprentice you have, Emperor, is an object clause, SVO. Now if you inspect the object clause itself, you find that the object in it, a new apprentice precedes the subject you, and the verb have. So here we clearly have OSV. And the second sentence, not if anything to say about it I have, again is OSV, but not so straightforwardly because here we have a split object and a split verb. Here are some further examples from the first episode of the Star Wars saga. Hard to see the dark side is. Well, the verb again is split and the subject is in the middle, Master Qui-Gon. More to say have you, more is the object to say have the verb and you the subject. So here we have OVS. And finally again this split verb situation revealed your opinion is with the subject in the middle. Well, and what about a pattern? Well, there's no consistent one. Perhaps one thing can be said. If a verb is periphrastic, that is it consists of several elements, the auxiliary always follows the main verb. So that's it for now. I'd like to thank all our subscribers and users. Here are those that ask the questions that I tried to answer. Their questions and comments contribute to the quality of our channel and they are helpful for all of us. And comments like this one here are especially motivating. I don't know how to thank you says Karima Guya. Being a beginner in linguistics, I've learned many new things while watching your videos and it's undeniable that it was much more profitable than spending hours and hours on reading big books on linguistics. Well, this is exactly what we want to achieve with our videos. However, you should still continue reading the relevant linguistics literature though. So thank you very much for your questions which are important contributions to the quality of our site and which I hope to have answered sufficiently. But sometimes even the most carefully researched answers may still be unsatisfactory. The reasons might be quite simple. Either we still do not understand many of the principles that govern language and linguistics or to quote one of my former teachers, Frank Palmer, formerly at the University of Reading, language is a terrible mess. Thanks for your attention.