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Posts tagged "evidentiality"

“Gretchen: My favourite theory of evidentiality – which I don’t know if I actually believe this, but I’d like to believe it a lot – is that we’re developing a system of evidentiality using acronyms on the internet.
Lauren: Oh, okay! Share your theory with me.
Gretchen: I’m not committed to this theory, but I like the idea of it. And maybe someday it’ll be true. I think the example that I’m gonna use – because it’s a theory that I talked about on Tumblr five years ago and I still think it has some potential. The Tumblr-appropriate example that I had was “They’d make a terrible couple” because people talk about shipping a lot on Tumblr. I think you can say this with varying degrees of certainty or belief or emotion or knowledge or something. I don’t know if they quite qualify as evidentials because none of them mean, “I heard that…” or “I saw that…” but you can say something like “Tbh, they’d make a terrible couple” or “Imo, they’d make a terrible couple” or “Iirc, they’d make a terrible couple” or “Omg, they’d make a terrible couple.” This at least adds something – “To be honest” or “In my opinion” or “If I recall correctly” or “Oh my god.” This at least adds some sort of flavor to this. Again, this is very hypothetical theory and I’m not sure if it’s a real…
Lauren: Well, they’re definitely adding epistemics, so that’s more about the certainty stuff we were talking about. But certainty could be a gateway to evidence if we continue to use them.
Gretchen: Okay. So, we’re like the toddler version of evidentials where we’re putting certainty on?
Lauren: Potentially. This is potentially a gateway to evidence.
Gretchen: I like this.
Lauren: We just need to create a bunch of acronyms that are like “Isy” – “I saw yesterday.”
Gretchen: “Iht” – “I hear that.”
Lauren: Yeah. That’s a good one.
Gretchen: I don’t know if these are gonna catch on – “Ist” – “I see that.”
Lauren: “Itt” – “I think that.”
Gretchen: “Iit” – “I infer that”?
Lauren: Oh, yeah.
Gretchen: I mean, there’s “Til,” “Today I learned,” but that doesn’t commit to the source of the information.
Lauren: No.
Gretchen: Hmm. Okay. We’ve got some ways to go before internet acronyms become evidentials.”

—

Excerpt from Episode 32 of Lingthusiasm: You heard about it but I was there - Evidentiality

Listen to the episode, read the full transcript, or check out more links about syntax, semantics, language and society, and words.

Lingthusiasm Episode 59: Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Theory of Mind

Let’s say I show you and our friend Gavagai a box of chocolates, and then Gav leaves the room, and I show you that the box actually contains coloured pencils. (Big letdown, sorry.) When Gav comes back in the room a minute later, and we’ve closed the box again, what are they going to think is in the box?

In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about Theory of Mind – our ability to keep track of what other people are thinking, even when it’s different from what we know ourselves. We talk about the highly important role of gossip in the development of language, reframing how we introduce people to something they haven’t heard of yet, and ways of synchronizing mental states across groups of people, from conferences to movie voiceovers.

Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice or read the transcript here

Announcements:

This month’s bonus episode is about some of the linguistically interesting fiction we’ve been reading lately! We talk about the challenges of communicating with sentient plants (from the plant’s perspective) in Semiosis by Sue Burke, communicating with aliens by putting babies in pods (look, it was the 1980s) in Suzette Haden Elgin’s classic Native Tongue, communicating with humans on a sailing ship using a sorta 19th century proto-internet in Courtney Milan’s The Devil Comes Courting, and taking advantage of the difficulty of translation in communicating poetry across cultures in A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine.

Join us on Patreon to listen to this and 53 other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can discuss your favourite linguistically interesting fiction with other language nerds!

Here are links mentioned in this episode:

You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening.

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You can help keep Lingthusiasm ad-free, get access to bonus content, and more perks by supporting us on Patreon.

Lingthusiasm is on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Tumblr. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com

Gretchen is on Twitter as @GretchenAMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic.

Lauren is on Twitter as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.

Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production manager is Liz McCullough, and our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.

This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).

Transcript Episode 32: You heard about it but I was there - Evidentiality

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 32: You heard about it but I was there - Evidentiality. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the Episode 32 show notes page.

[Music]

Gretchen: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Gretchen McCulloch.

Lauren: I’m Lauren Gawne. And today, we’re getting enthusiastic about indicating how we know things, which is “evidentiality.” But first, we want to take this opportunity to remind you that we currently have 27 bonus episodes on our Patreon with new bonuses coming every month.

Gretchen: Yes! You can go there and listen to new bonus episodes like animal communication, how the internet is making English better (a recording from our live show in Melbourne), and do you adjust the way you talk to match other people, and more – all help keeping the show going, keeping the show ad-free, and giving you almost twice as much Lingthusiasm to listen to.

Lauren: We also have brand-new merch for you to adorn yourself with, or to adorn your office with, or adorn your classes with.

Gretchen: We have made a scarf and a few other objects with some of our favourite weird and esoteric symbols from editing symbols, math symbols, music symbols, punctuation marks, and more. It’s like the International Phonetic Alphabet scarf but with other weird symbols that you may enjoy.

Lauren: We’ve also made a baby onesie that says, “little longitudinal language acquisition project” for all of you who are embarking on or have family members and friends embarking on their own long-term little longitudinal language acquisition projects.

Gretchen: You can check out the photos on our website at lingthusiasm.com/merch or link in the show notes to see photos of those items and where you can get them.

[Music]

Gretchen: So, if I say something like, “Oh, my god! Harry got a new broomstick!”

Lauren: This is obviously the world in which we are both associate professors at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Gretchen: They’ve introduced a linguistics course, what can I say? They brought us in to teach it.

Lauren: I’m so excited. That is definitely news. Harry has a new broomstick. Did you see the new broomstick? Is that how you know? Is why that why you’re telling…

Gretchen: Definitely one thing I could say would be, “Yes! Yes, I saw it! It’s great. It’s a Nimbus 2000.” But another thing I can also say was, “No. But I heard him flying on it, and it sounds fancier than his old one.”

Lauren: Right. In that case, you haven’t seen it, but you’ve heard it. So, you know that there’s a new one.

Gretchen: Yeah. I know it’s a new one. Broomsticks have a distinctive sound – who knew? They definitely do. Or I could say, “No. But Hermione told me.”

Keep reading

Lingthusiasm Episode 32: You heard about it but I was there - Evidentiality

Sometimes, you know something for sure. You were there. You witnessed it. And you want to make sure that anyone who hears about it from you knows that you’re a direct source. Other times, you weren’t there, but you still have news. Maybe you found it out from someone else, or you pieced together a couple pieces of indirect evidence. In that case, you don’t want to overcommit yourself. When you pass the information on, you want to qualify it with how you found out, in case it turns out not to be accurate.

In this episode of Lingthusiasm, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about how we come to know things, and how different languages let us talk about this. Some languages, like English, give us the option of adding extra adverbs and clauses, like “I’m sure that” or “I was told that” or “maybe” or “apparently”. In other languages, like Syuba, indicating how you’ve come to know something is baked right into the grammar. We also talk about what this means for how kids learn languages and how English might evolve more evidentials.

Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice or read the transcript here

Announcements:

This month’s bonus episode is about talking to animals! Making animals learn human language has not generally worked out as well as people have hoped, but the attempts are still very interesting! Support Lingthusiasm on Patreon to gain access to the animals episode and 26 previous bonus episodes.

Merch update!

Have you ever browsed the “Insert Symbol” menu just for fun? Do you stay up late reading Wikipedia articles about obscure characters? Or do you just…somehow…know a little bit too much about Unicode?

Introducing the new ESOTERIC SYMBOLS scarves!

We’ve hand-picked and arranged in a pleasing array our favourite symbols from the editing, logic, music, game piece, punctuation, mathematics, currency, shapes, planets, arrows, and Just Plain Looks Cool sections of Unicode!

Including fan favourites like: the interrobang ‽ multiocular o ꙮ the old school b&w snowman, the pilcrow ¶ the one-em, two-em AND three-em dashes And yes, the classic Unicode error diamond with question mark itself �

We’re also very excited to announce that all our scarf designs (IPA, trees, and esoteric symbols) are now available on mugs and notebooks, for those who prefer to show off their nerdery in household object rather than apparel form.

By popular demand, we’ve made LITTLE LONGITUDINAL LANGUAGE ACQUISITION PROJECT onesies and kiddy tshirts available for everyone! Available in Mum’s, Dad’s, Mom’s, and without possessor marking (because it turns out that there are a LOT of kinship terms).

Here are the links mentioned in this episode:

Evidentiality (Wikipedia)
Lamjung Yolmo copulas in use (Lauren’s PhD thesis)
Batman should learn how to speak an evidential language (Lauren on School of Batman podcast)
World Atlas of Linguistic Structures chapters on evidentiality (77, 78)
Internet abbreviations as discourse particles
Evidential acquisition in Turkish and Tibetan
Fantastic Features We Don’t Have in the English Language (Tom Scott video)
Gretchen’s live-tweet of Ann Leckie’s The Raven