
97: OooOooh~~ our possession episode oOooOOoohh 👻
Eye of newt and toe of frog, Wool of bat and tongue of dog... In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic and ~spooky~ about possession! We talk about how the hau...
17 Okt 202444min

96: Welcome back aboard the metaphor train!
We're taking you on a journey to new linguistic destinations, so come along for the ride and don't forget to hold on! In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic...
20 Sep 202435min

95: Lo! An undetached collection of meaning-parts!
Imagine you're in a field with someone whose language you don't speak. A rabbit scurries by. The other person says "Gavagai!" You probably assumed they meant "rabbit" but they could have meant somethi...
15 Aug 202443min

94: The perfectly imperfect aspect episode
When we're talking about an activity -- say, throwing teacups in a lake -- we often want to know not just when the action takes place, but also what shape that action looks like. Is this a one-time t...
19 Juli 202439min

93: How nonbinary and binary people talk - Interview with Jacq Jones
There are many ways that people perform gender, from clothing and hairstyle to how we talk or carry ourselves. When doing linguistic analysis of one aspect, such as someone's voice, it's useful to als...
21 Juni 202445min

92: Brunch, gonna, and fozzle - The smooshing episode
Sometimes two words are smooshed together in a single act of creativity to fill a lexical gap, like making "brunch" from breakfast+lunch. Other times, words are smooshed together gradually, over a lon...
17 Maj 202449min

91: Scoping out the scope of scope
When you order a kebab and they ask you if you want everything on it, you might say yes. But you'd probably still be surprised if it came with say, chocolate, let alone a bicycle...even though chocola...
18 Apr 202430min

90: What visualizing our vowels tells us about who we are
On Lingthusiasm, we've sometimes compared the human vocal tract to a giant meat clarinet, like the vocal folds are the reed and the rest of the throat and mouth is the body of the instrument that shap...
21 Mars 202447min


















