This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 35: Putting sounds into syllables is like putting toppings on a burger. 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 35 show notes page.

[Music]

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

Lauren: And I’m Lauren Gawne. Today, we’re getting enthusiastic about syllables! But first, Gretchen’s book is out now. If you haven’t bought it yet, you should buy a copy!

Gretchen: Yes! It’s very exciting to finally have other people being able to read the book and talk to me about memes, and emoji, and punctuation, and all of the internet linguistics things that I’ve been thinking about for three years. We are doing a very special Q&A episode for the book. This episode goes up on August 15th. You have until August 15, so you have some number of hours until it is no longer August 15th in any time zone. You can check ahead to Hawaii and maybe gain a few hours that way to send in your questions about things to do with internet linguistics, the book-writing process – and then we’ll do a very special behind-the-scenes bonus episode about that.

Lauren: I’m looking forward to everyone else’s questions. I have a bunch of questions about how the book-writing process went. I’m looking forward to that Patreon bonus episode. Also on the Patreon we have a new $15+ tier. Several people have been asking for a way to support us even more than the $5 a month for bonus episodes. At our $15 Ling-phabet tier you will receive your very own symbol of the International Phonetic Alphabet, which you can get through either a super scientific quiz or just merely saying that you have a favourite.

Gretchen: Then, we will add your name and symbol of choice to our Lingthusiasm Supporter Wall of Fame on our website. We’re happy to put your name or any other name within reason. If you want to give this as a gift to somebody, that’s also a thing you can do. And if you join this new level before August 15th – this is the same time zone thing that you’re running into right now – you can also get a signed book plate, which is a custom Because Internet sticker that you can stick into your copy of Because Internet, which I will sign for you and I’ll put your name or whatever name you want. You can stick it inside your book and then you have a signed copy of Because Internet. If you join that very soon, you can get that as well.

Lauren: Of course, even if you don’t listen to this episode within the first 24 hours of it going up, you can still buy Gretchen’s book from all good and bad booksellers – preferably good ones. You can also support us on the Patreon.

Gretchen: Yes. There are some other ways to get an actual, physical copy of the book signed, but this is probably the easiest one. Hopefully, you have a chance to do that.

[Music]

Lauren: Gretchen, I am going to test you. Everyone can play along. I’m gonna give you some pairs of words and I want you to tell me whether they sound like English words.

Gretchen: Okay. Sounds good.

Lauren: They’re made up – some of them. The first one is “blick” and “bnick.”

Gretchen: “Blick” sounds like a pretty reasonable English word. I don’t know what it means yet, but it could mean something. “Bnick” – I’m not so sure.

Lauren: I actually even have trouble saying it. I feel like I’m saying “buh-nick” – “buh” … “nick” all at once.

Gretchen: /bnɪk/ – B-N-I-C-K. Not something I’d expect English to turn into a word – no.

Lauren: No. The B and the N together don’t really work that well. What about the word “copter” versus the word “pter”?

Gretchen: Yeah, “copter,” I mean, is an existing English word – could continue to be an existing English word. Seems legit to me. “Pter” – yeah, the P-T thing, again, not really doing it for me.

Lauren: Because that’s the – like when you say “pterodactyl,” I know that it’s P-T, but I can never say that P.

Gretchen: Or like the Greek “Ptolemy” is just /taləmi/. It’s not /ptaləmi/ even though that’s how they said it back in the day.

Lauren: In fact, “helicopter” is from Greek “heliko-pter” – “spinning” and “flying” are the two roots there.

Gretchen: It really seems like it should be from “heli” and “copter,” but it’s “heliko-pter.”

Lauren: Which is not how my English brain can divide that word up.

Gretchen: No. No. It really isn’t. But the Greeks are really happy to have /pt/.

Keep reading

Lingthusiasm Episode 35: Putting sounds into syllables is like putting toppings on a burger 

Sometimes a syllable is jam-packed with sounds, like the single-syllable word “strengths”. Other times, a syllable is as simple as a single vowel or consonant+vowel, like the two syllables in “a-ha!” It’s kind of like a burger: you might pack your burger with tons of toppings, or go as simple as a patty by itself on a plate, but certain combinations are more likely than others. For example, an open-face burger, with only the bottom half of the bun, is less weird than a burger with only the top half. 

In this episode of Lingthusiasm, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about syllables. Why aren’t there any English words that begin with “ng”, even though Vietnamese is perfectly happy to have them? Why do Spanish speakers pronounce the English word “Sprite” more like “Esprite”? Why did English speakers re-analyze Greek helico-pter into heli-copter? Plus more about how different languages prefer different things in their syllable-burgers and what happens when these preferences collide. 

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 metaphors! Support Lingthusiasm on Patreon to gain access to the metaphors episode and 29 previous bonus episodes. 

Today is the final day for two things related to Because Internet, Gretchen’s book about internet linguistics (which is out now and you can get it!). 
1. Send us your questions about Because Internet, internet language, or the process of writing a book for a special bonus behind the scenes Q&A episode about the book! 
2. Join our new “ling-phabet” tier on Patreon by August 15th in any timezone (you may get a few hours into August 16th if you’re lucky!) and get a signed Because Internet bookplate sticker with your name on it in the mail! 

Here are the links mentioned in this episode:

• Syllable (Wikipedia)
  
• Syllable initial velar nasal (ng) (Superlinguo)
  
• Why Spanish speakers say ‘esprite‘ or ‘escuela‘ (All Things Linguistic)
  
• Language: Speed vs Density (The Rosetta Project)
  
• Mele Kalikimaka! (Language Log)
• Helicopter etymology (Etymonline)
• Scheveningen (Wikipedia)
• Video intro to syllables (via All Things Linguistic)

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.

To receive an email whenever a new episode drops, sign up for the Lingthusiasm mailing list.

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 editorial manager is Emily Gref, 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).

Lingthusiasm Episode 29: The verb is the coat rack that the rest of the sentence hangs on 

Some sentences have a lot of words all relating to each other, while other sentences only have a few. The verb is the thing that makes the biggest difference: it’s what makes “I gave you the book” sound fine but “I rained you the book” sound weird. Or on the flip side, “it’s raining” is a perfectly reasonable description of a general raining event, but “it’s giving” doesn’t work so well as some sort of general giving event. How can we look for patterns in the ways that verbs influence the rest of the sentence? 

In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about a new metaphor for how verbs relate to the other words in a sentence – a verb is like a coat rack and the nouns that it supports are like the coats that hang on it. Admittedly, it creates some slightly odd-looking coat racks that you might not actually want in your home, but as a metaphor it works quite well. (We’ll stick to linguistics rather than becoming furniture designers.) 

We also take you through a brief tour of other metaphors for verbs and sentences, including going across (aka transitivity) and molecular bonds (aka valency).  

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 a recording from our liveshow in Melbourne, Australia, where we talk about how the internet is making English better with real audience laughter occasionally in the background! Feel like you’re in a cosy room of friendly linguistics enthusiasts by supporting Lingthusiasm on Patreon to gain access to this and 23 previous bonus episodes. 

Internet language is also the topic of Gretchen’s book, Because Internet, which is now officially available for preorder! You can show the publisher that people are interested in fun linguistics books and have a delightful treat waiting for you on July 23, 2019 by preordering it here!

Here are the links mentioned in this episode:

• Episode 9: The bridge between words and sentences - Constituency
  
• The basics of arguments (Superlinguo)
• Word order (Superlinguo)
• Dummy pronouns (Wikipedia)
  
• Novel verbs: to internet (All Things Linguistic)
• To verb (All Things Linguistic)
  
• Transitivity (Wikipedia)
  
• Valency changing (Wikipedia)
• Causative (Wikipedia)
• Benefactive (Wikipedia)
• Passive (Wikipedia)
  
• Spray/load alternation (All Things Linguistic)
  

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.

To receive an email whenever a new episode drops, sign up for the Lingthusiasm mailing list.

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 editorial manager is Emily Gref, our editorial producers are A.E. Prévost and Sarah Dopierala, 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).

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 9: The bridge between words and sentences - Constituency. 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 9 shownotes page.

[Music]

Lauren: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics. I’m Lauren Gawne.

Gretchen: and I’m Gretchen McCulloch and today we’re talking about how small pieces of language combine into larger pieces, AKA constituency. But first Lauren, what have you been up to lately?

Lauren: I have been moving jobs which also involves moving countries, so it’s been a pretty busy month!

Gretchen: It literally involves moving around the world.

Lauren: Yes, so I have been migrating slowly westward for the last few years, working in Singapore and more recently in London and after two fabulous years of living in London we are now on the move back to Melbourne, Australia. I will be a David Myers Research Fellow at Latrobe University for the next three years, which I’m really excited about. It’s an opportunity to bring together all of the different languages of Nepal and the Tibetan work that I’ve been doing across phonetics and across grammar and across gesture, all into one big project.

Gretchen: That’s really cool!

Lauren: I’m really excited about that, really excited to be back in Melbourne and lots of exciting research planned. What about you, what have you been up to?

Gretchen: I’ve been doing a lot of writing on the book (what else is new?) and I’m headed to the LSA Summer Institute, AKA “Lingstitute”, where I’m going to be teaching a class on linguistics outreach, so that’s exciting, and, in less momentous but still very important news, I was recently in an NPR article about the linguistics of ‘doggo’.

Lauren: I just love it when internet language memes make it into the new cycle and a whole new audience who’ve never experienced the meme get it translated for them.

Gretchen: Yeah, and they’re like ‘wow this is so cool but also what is this?’ If you haven’t encountered the doggo meme it’s based around a couple of Facebook groups and a Twitter account and it’s just a general zeitgeist about a slightly different cute way of talking to and about your dogs. And I had a lot of fun with the reporter, we actually talked for like an hour and a half, so we’ll link to the article in the show notes. But there’s even more of that story that didn’t make it in and so we’ve actually made a Patreon bonus this month which is a further deep-dive into the linguistics of doggo, even more historical origins, even more context, Lauren is contributing Australia.

Lauren: Even more Australian intuitions about where doggo might come from, so that’s on our Patreon.

Gretchen: It is thanks to Lauren that I was able to identify the word “doggo” as probably coming from Australia, so thanks Lauren.

Lauren: Everyone should have an Australian on their consultant list.

Gretchen: I think so.

Lauren: We also have previous Patreon bonus episodes which include how to teach yourself even more linguistics, which also includes our top recommendations for books videos and further resources for self-study, and also how to sell your awesome linguistic skills to employers so if you are thinking of doing a linguistics degree, you’re currently doing one and thinking about your next job or you’re looking for a career change, that has got you covered.

Gretchen: All sides of the linguistic spectrum! and if you have ideas of things you’d like to hear from us on the podcast or on the bonus episodes you can also do that at Patreon. And speaking of this we reached our sustainability goal on Patreon last month, which means that we officially have the funds to keep paying our producer and our transcriber, who are often the same person, and our audio hosting fees, which is not the same person. And I thiiiink by the time we record the next month’s episode, we may have reached our next goal, based on current trends, which is Operation Get Gretchen A Better Microphone.

Lauren: I am so excited about this goal, this is definitely one of those ones where our Patreon supporters help everybody win.

Gretchen: Yeah everybody wins, you all get to hear me on a better microphone, I win, I’m tired of this too, so this might be the last episode where I sound kind of scratchy, hopefully!

Lauren: So that is www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm, or you can find the link at lingthusiasm.com, oh gosh please, yes please, help Gretchen get a better mic.

Gretchen: Stay tuned to the next episode where you find out if this was successful.

Lauren: It’s going to be a great reveal as soon as you say a single line.

Gretchen: Yeah, I think I do the intro next time too!

[Music]

Lauren: Constituency is the fancy way of saying that stuff is made up of other stuff, and so that’s how fancy word for this very basic fact that is the main force of today’s episode.

Gretchen: So far on the podcast we’ve been approaching language from two ends, we’ve had this tiny granular end - we’ve talked about sounds, like the IPA episode, and we’re definitely not stopping talking about sounds. And we’ve talked about words a lot, we’re definitely not stopping talking about words either. And we’ve also been approaching language from the big macro society end, talking about language and world peace, or kids’ role in language change, but we haven’t talked about the part in between, about how the little bits become a capital L ‘Language’. How does that transition happen? And this is a bigger question for one episode, but we’re going to start with that.

Lauren: And so I think it’s important, even though we talk about sound a lot and we talk about words a lot, but languages aren’t just lists of words, so you need something more than words here.

Keep reading

Lingthusiasm Episode 9: The bridge between words and sentences - Constituency 

How do we get from knowing words to making brand-new sentences out of them? In episode 9 of Lingthusiasm, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne talk about how words form groups with other words: constituency. 

Once you start looking for it, constituency is everywhere: in ambiguous sentences like “time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana”, in remixed films like “Of Oz The Wizard”, and even internet dog memes.

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

Announcements:

This month’s Patreon bonus was the backstory about the linguistics of the doggo meme and its connection to Australian slang, which grew out of this NPR article about doggo. You can get access to it and previous bonuses about swearing, teaching yourself linguistics, and explaining linguistics to employers by supporting Lingthusiasm on Patreon. 

Here are the links mentioned in this episode:

• Alphabetizing Every Word in Star Wars
• Alphabetizing Every Word in The Wizard of Oz
• Illustration of Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
  
• A course on understanding people in Ipswitch
• Etymology of constituent
  
• Lingvids: Structural ambiguity, is language more like a bracelet or a mobile?
• How to draw syntax trees (whole series is useful, but particularly past 7 & 8)
• A concise video (for people familiar with constituency tests)
  
• A longer introduction to parts of speech
  
• Linguistic constituent (Wikipedia)
• Dog Feelings (Twitter)
  
• Prosody and grammar (Wikipedia)
• Constituency and natural language processing
• Time flies poem
  
• Time flies clock

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.

To receive an email whenever a new episode drops, sign up for the Lingthusiasm mailing list.

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 producer is Claire Gawne, 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).