139: Magpie Syntax (with Stephanie Mason)

139: Magpie Syntax (with Stephanie Mason)

Australian magpies are even cleverer birds than we thought. New research from Dr Stephanie Mason shows that they do two language-like things we used to think only humans could do: learn their calls socially, and combine their calls in a way that looks a lot like syntax. So are we calling this language? If so, how are the linguists taking it? Stephanie joins us to talk about magpies, media, and the territoriality of linguists.

Timestamps

00:00 Start
00:54 Intros: Your favourite bird
07:10 What's coming up: Magpies
09:34 Join us! Patreon spruikery
11:32 News: Jamaican MP shut down for speaking Jamaican in Parliament
19:35 News: Whale phonology
31:46 News: Unicode to include new genderless pronoun for Mandarin
36:37 News: China and the Rubio Workaround
38:16 Related or Not: New theme from Hugh!
40:05 Related or Not 1: SLAP, SMACK, and SWAT
45:45 Related or Not 2: SOUND
56:13 Related or Not 3: SPECK, SPECKLE, SPECTRE, and SPECTRUM
01:00:36 Talking about magpies with Stephanie Mason
01:03:38 About Australian magpies
01:06:17 The problem of anthropomorphism
01:15:21 What's the semantic content?
01:22:52 Linguists can be territorial about language
01:34:48 Social complexity drives new behaviours
01:45:19 Magpies learn their calls socially
01:49:42 Magpies combine their calls
01:58:44 Magpies learn calls across the lifespan
02:05:36 Finding those birds
02:08:10 Doing public engagement: Are metaphors actually helping?
02:17:26 Words of the Week: mog
02:24:54 Word of the Week: pied-à-terre
02:27:48 Word of the Week: dummymander
02:33:03 Word of the Week: Sooooo-ee!
02:39:22 Etymology of Guacamole
02:39:35 Comment: guacamole = testicle sauce?
02:41:28 The reads
02:46:28 Outtake

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138: Pop-Up Gaeltacht (live with Laura Pakenham and friends)

138: Pop-Up Gaeltacht (live with Laura Pakenham and friends)

Wherever Irish speakers in the world get together, you can have a "pop-up Gaeltacht"! And we're having one on this episode. We've got author and TG4 presenter Laura Pakenham taking us through the hist...

12 Touko 1h 32min

137: Are Trees Real? (with Yngwie Nielsen and Morten Christiansen)

137: Are Trees Real? (with Yngwie Nielsen and Morten Christiansen)

What goes on in our minds when we construct an utterance? Linguists often use syntax trees to represent the structure of sentences, but are they psychologically real? Yngwie Nielsen and Dr Morten Chri...

1 Touko 1h 1min

136: These Languages Are Anchors (with Mary Walworth)

136: These Languages Are Anchors (with Mary Walworth)

What will happen to the languages of climate refugees? Dr Mary Walworth has been working with the small island community of Nusi in Papua New Guinea, which was recently featured in an episode of Pole ...

25 Huhti 2h 10min

135: Linguistic Illusions (with Dan Parker)

135: Linguistic Illusions (with Dan Parker)

"More people have listened to this episode than you have." Why does this sentence look so right, but feel so wrong? When your grammar says one thing, but your brain says another, you may have found a ...

3 Huhti 2h 8min

134: True Colour (with Kory Stamper)

134: True Colour (with Kory Stamper)

How do you define what blue is? What even IS colour? Turns out, the quest to define colours was happening along with a standardisation crisis and a dictionary crisis at the venerable Merriam-Webster. ...

13 Maalis 2h 21min

133: Why We Talk Funny (with Valerie Fridland)

133: Why We Talk Funny (with Valerie Fridland)

We all have an accent — or several! And we use them to communicate things about us, and highlight aspects of our identity. So what's going on with the accents we hear? Are we losing some accents, or a...

26 Helmi 2h 27min

132: WotY 2025, the Final Word (with Kelly Wright)

132: WotY 2025, the Final Word (with Kelly Wright)

We're talking to Dr Kelly Wright, friend of the show and data czar for the American Dialect Society. They run the biggest and most prestigious Word of the Year event, and she was there when the 2025 W...

17 Helmi 1h 29min

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