129: They Started It: Children and Language Evolution (with Madeleine Beekman)

Daniel Midgley, Ben Ainslie, and Hedvig Skirgård

26 Juli 20233h 1min

For decades, forensic linguists have been pushing back on harmful language ideologies, and fighting for better representation for linguistic minorities in the legal domain. We're talking to three legendary linguists who have written the definitive record of how the discipline has developed in Australia. Also: why do male characters get more dialogue in video games? And how can this situation improve? The authors of a pioneering new study share their insights.

29 Juni 20232h 39min

How do we make the discipline of linguistics — and our world — a more just, diverse, and equitable place? Why does our personal history and personal perspective matter when doing science? How do we build community? And what happens if we do nothing? This episode is really kind of a mini-conference. We found some new work from linguists we admire, so we put out the word to our patrons and piled into a room! We're hearing work from Dr Aris Clemons, Dr Caitlin Green, and Dr Rikker Dockum on this episode.

15 Juni 20231h 50min

Why does everyone say OOO! when they see someone fall down? Why do we say YUM when we feed a baby? And what's the deal with fillers like UM? For this episode we're talking about non-lexical vocalisations with Dr Eleonora Beier and Dr Emily Hofstetter.  Also: linguists are diving into Grambank, a database with detailed information about grammatical features in over 2,500 languages. With its release, we're talking to project leaders Dr Russell Gray and our own Dr Hedvig Skirgård. Also, Hedvig gives us our yearly Eurovision language update. Ben's not here, so he won't complain.

27 Maj 20232h 26min

How can you tell if a news story is intended to deceive? In one well-known case of journalistic deception, there were tells that required machine learning to trace. We're talking to author and computational linguist Jack Grieve about his new book, The Language of Fake News.

15 Maj 20231h 44min

We're going deep into our Mailbag, and we're going to answer all your questions. Why do we say "here you go" when we give something to someone? Why can we reduce something to /sʌmʔ/? The thing is is, there are two IS there. Why? Some contractions seem to've appeared, and they look strange in writing. What other ones're out there?

25 Apr 20231h 8min

When language was innovated, what happened next? How did it change our abilities — and our responsibilities — to each other? Dr Nick Enfield shares ideas from his new book, Consequences of Language. Plus: Have large language models (like GPT) disproven a key tenet of the innateness of language? Dr Morten Christiansen takes us through the implications for nativism and language learning.

3 Apr 20232h 12min

Here's an entire show, curated by one of our most prolific contributors — newly minted speechie PharaohKatt! She's got news. She's got words. She tries to stump us on Related or Not. She even teaches us how to roll our R's. Wow. But best of all, she answers all our questions about speech and language pathology.

25 Mars 20231h 37min