The Science of Language
Examine the invisible operating system that powers human speech. Learn how sounds and sentences obey rigorous mental rules, how historical sound shifts reshape vocabularies, and why a single ancestral tongue splinters into thousands.
Like Duolingo, but for The Science of Language. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.
A short one: 11 levels across 2 sections, about 22 minutes end to end, roughly 4 days at five minutes a day. It moves through Decoding the Universal Mechanics and How Tongues Mutate and Multiply. It assumes you already know the basics.
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Key ideas in The Science of Language
- Voicing specifies whether the vocal folds vibrate during sound production.
- Place identifies the physical point of contact in the vocal tract.
- Manner describes how the airstream is shaped or constricted during speech.
- Voiceless stops aspirate with a puff of air at the start of stressed syllables.
- After an initial /s/, voiceless stops become unaspirated without a puff of air.
- Between vowels or before syllabic consonants, /t/ shifts to a tap or glottal stop.
- Phonotactic constraints define permissible sound sequences in a given language.
- Languages insert vowels (epenthesis) to break up illegal consonant clusters.
- Borrowing forces foreign words to systematically reshape into native syllable molds.
- Place assimilation shifts a sound's contact point toward an adjacent consonant.
- Anticipatory assimilation prepares articulators early to conserve muscular effort.
- The alveolar nasal /n/ shifts to the bilabial nasal [m] before bilabial stops [p] and [b].
- Words group into hierarchical branches called constituents rather than simple bead-like strings
- Prepositional phrase attachment to a verb modifies the action, while attaching to a noun modifies the person
- Structural ambiguity occurs when identical word strings can form two distinct valid syntactic trees
- Substitution replaces an entire suspected constituent with an equivalent pro-form like a pronoun
You've tried the other tabs
Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.
You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.
One answer, then back to scrolling.
Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.
Tomo gives The Science of Language the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.
Here's what playing it feels like
A real question from this course. Take your best guess.
In phonetics, what does the 'place' of a consonant describe?
Get it right to open this lesson and 10 more in the app.
Where The Science of Language takes you
- 1
Decoding the Universal Mechanics
- Reverse-Engineering Phonological Rules
- Mapping Syntactic Hierarchies and Parameters
- 2
How Tongues Mutate and Multiply
- Tracking Systematic Sound Shifts Across Eras
- Diagnosing Why Languages Diverge
2 sections · 4 units · 11 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.
Tomo is in ChatGPT
Tomo is also a ChatGPT plugin: the same playable courses, built and played inside your chat.
Add Tomo to ChatGPT- What to ask
- “Make me a Tomo course on black holes.” “Turn this chat into a Tomo course.”
- What you get
- Quick questions with instant feedback, hearts and stars, ready to play in about a minute.
- Where it goes
- No sign-up to start. Connect your Tomo account and your streak carries on in the app.
You pick the voice
The Science of Language is taught in the Professor style: clear, structured, thorough. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.
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Start The Science of Language today.
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