Domo arigato, Dr. Roboto: Researchers prove rats can't understand Japanese backwards. Can you?

[Wilson Gray]

Well, the rats may very well have been bilingual in Catalan and
Castillian. Not that this, even if true, vitiates your point. :-)

-Wilson

On 10/6/07, Dennis Baron <debaron at uiuc.edu> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Dennis Baron <debaron at UIUC.EDU>
> Subject:      Domo arigato, Dr. Roboto: Researchers prove rats can't understand
>               Japanese backwards.  Can you?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> There's a new post on
> the Web of Language:
>
> Domo arigato, Dr. Roboto: Researchers prove rats can't understand =20
> Japanese backwards.  Can you?
>
> The 2007 Ig Nobel prize in linguistics has been awarded to three =20
> researchers who successfully demonstrated that rats can=92t distinguish =20=
>
> between Japanese and Dutch sentences played backwards.
>
> The Ig Nobel prizes, co-sponsored by the Annals of Improbable =20
> Research, are awarded each year for real research shortly before the =20
> actual Nobel Prize winners are announced.  While this is the first =20
> time that a prize has been awarded in linguistics, two earlier prizes =20=
>
> in literature have been given for language-related research.  John =20
> Richards, founder of the Apostrophe Protection Society, won in 2001 =20
> for his efforts to protect, promote, and defend the differences =20
> between the plural and the possessive.  And Daniel Oppenheimer, of =20
> Princeton, won in 2006 for his report, =93Consequences of Erudite =20
> Vernacular Utilized Irrespective of Necessity: Problems with Using =20
> Long Words Needlessly.=94
>
> A write-up of this year=92s winning research on rat foreign language =20
> backwards sentence recognition appeared in 2005 in the Journal of =20
> Experimental Psychology.  Drs. J. M. Toro, J. B. Trobalon, and N. =20
> Sebastian-Galles, cognitive neuroscientists at the Parc Cientific de =20
> Barcelona, trained a group of 64 Long-Evans rats to press a lever and =20=
>
> receive food when they heard Dutch and Japanese sentences that they =20
> had never heard before (remember, these were Spanish-speaking rats).  =20=
>
> Researchers then played the sentences backwards to see how that =20
> affected the rats=92 comprehension. They concluded that sixty rats had =20=
>
> no idea what was going on (P < .05), while four rats =93failed to =20
> finish the experiment because of low lever-pressing rates.=94
>
> Read the rest of this post about cutting-edge linguistic research at
>
>   the Web of Language
>
> www.uiuc.edu/goto/weboflanguage
>
> Dennis Baron
> Professor of English and Linguistics
> Department of English
> University of Illinois
> 608 S. Wright St.
> Urbana, IL 61801
>
> office: 217-244-0568
> fax: 217-333-4321
>
> www.uiuc.edu/goto/debaron
>
> read the Web of Language:
> www.uiuc.edu/goto/weboflanguage
>
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