22: This, that and the other thing - Determiners
When linguists think about complicated words, we don’t think about rare, two-dollar words like “defenestration”. Instead, we think about the kinds of words that you use all the time without even think...
19 Juli 201836min
21: What words sound spiky across languages? Interview with Suzy Styles
Most of the time, a word is an arbitrary label: there’s no particular reason why a cat has to be associated with the particular string of sounds in the word “cat”, and indeed other languages have diff...
22 Juni 201837min
20: Speaking Canadian and Australian English in a British-American binary
Australian and Canadian English don’t sound much alike, but they have one big similarity: they’re both national varieties that tend to get overshadowed by their more famous siblings. In this episode...
17 Maj 201838min
19: Sentences with baggage - Presuppositions
What’s so weird if I say, “the present King of France is bald” or “I need to pick up my pet unicorn from the vet”? It seems like those sentences should be false: at least, they certainly can’t be true...
19 Apr 201836min
18: Translating the untranslatable
Lists of ‘untranslatable’ words always come with... translations. So what do people really mean when they say a word is untranslatable? In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch...
15 Mars 201838min
17: Vowel Gymnastics
Say, “aaaaaahhhh…..” Now try going smoothly from one vowel to another, without pausing: “aaaaaaaeeeeeeeiiiiiii”. Feel how your tongue moves in relation to the back of the roof of your mouth as you mov...
15 Feb 201839min
16: Learning parts of words - Morphemes and the wug test
Here’s a strange little blue animal you’ve never seen before. It’s called a wug. Now here’s another one. There are two of them. There are two ___? You probably thought “wugs” – and even kids as youn...
19 Jan 201833min
15: Talking and thinking about time
When we talk about things that languages have in common, we often talk about the physical side, the fact that languages are produced by human bodies, using the same brain and hands and vocal tract. Bu...
21 Dec 201732min
