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Linguitect

Linguitect

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Welcome to Linguitect, where we explain linguistic topics and talk about how to build them into your conlang! Logo designed by Matt. You can e-mail us any questions at [email protected]
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Top 10 Linguitect Episodes

Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Linguitect episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Linguitect for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Linguitect episode by adding your comments to the episode page.

Linguitect - Episode 3: Verb Morphology Beyond TAM
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10/24/18 • 37 min

Rowan, Matt, and Liam discuss what you can do with verb morphology outside of person agreement and TAM (tense/aspect/mood).

Resources from this episode:

https://wals.info/chapter/22

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Linguitect - Episode 2: Problems with the IPA
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09/11/18 • 37 min

In this episode, Matt and Rowan (but mostly Matt) talk about issues with the International Phonetic Alphabet, and why it's not a one-size-fits-all for every language.

Resources mentioned or relevant to this issue:

https://phoible.org/

http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~saphon/en/phonemes.php

https://magurevitch.github.io/clickable-ipa/

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Linguitect - Episode 1: Honorifics
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07/29/18 • 30 min

In this episode, we talk about honorific systems in different languages, and how to work them into your conlang!

This episode is just Rowan and Matt, and Matt's introduction is of the multiple honorific systems in Korean.

Wikipedia pages on Korean honorifics:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_honorifics

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_speech_levels

Victor Mair's post on royal language in English and Nepali:

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=21466

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Linguitect - Episode 12: Ergativity
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03/15/20 • 60 min

In this episode, Matt and Rowan talk about all sorts of ergative phenomena, and how to use them for conlanging. We will cite our sources by section they are first relevant towards, and also length.

0:14 Intro Ergativity by R. M. W. Dixon - a book compiling the data and theories of the man who made Ergativity popular in modern linguistics - long Linguitect 'Accusativity' episode - http://linguitect.libsyn.com/episode-6-accusativity 'Ergativity Handbook' by Amy Rose Deal - http://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~ardeal/papers/Deal-ergativity-handbook.pdf - of the many things in here, one is about how the "ergative" property is not the same as the "absolutive" property - medium length 'Ergativity and Depth of Analysis' by Martin Haspelmath - https://www.academia.edu/41122863/Ergativity_and_depth_of_analysis - defends "ergativity" as a single category as being useful for cross-linguistic comparison - short

4:02 My Problems with the naïve definition 'Blue Bird of Ergavity' by Scott Delancey - http://celia.cnrs.fr/FichExt/Documents%20de%20travail/Ergativite/3dDelancey.htm - an overview of why the unitary definition of "ergativity" does not explain linguistic data - short Linguitect 'Non-Default Cases' episode - http://linguitect.libsyn.com/episode-8-non-default-case-marking 'Ergativity as Transitive Unaccusativity' by José-Luis Mendívil-Giro- https://www.academia.edu/905847/Ergativity_as_Transitive_Unaccusativity - medium length 'Split Ergativity is not about Ergativity' by Jessica Coon & Omer Preminger - http://ling.umd.edu/assets/publications/Coon-Preminger-17-SplitErgativity.pdf - medium length

21:01 - History and Context Google N-Gram search showing how recently linguists started talking about "ergativity" - https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=ergative%2Cergativity%2Cabsolutive&case_insensitive=on&year_start=1800&year_end=2008&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t4%3B%2Cergative%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bergative%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BErgative%3B%2Cc0%3B.t4%3B%2Cergativity%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Bergativity%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BErgativity%3B%2Cc0%3B.t4%3B%2Cabsolutive%3B%2Cc0%3B%2Cs0%3B%3Babsolutive%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BAbsolutive%3B%2Cc0%3B%3BABSOLUTIVE%3B%2Cc0

23:54 - What langauges do Ergativity https://linguisticmaps.tumblr.com/image/141437592433 'Manifestations of Ergativity in Amazonia' by Francesc Queixalós and Spike Gildea - https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/6b70/b7024341e6f051cefe87bd3ccc377ee272d0.pdf - medium length

26:31 - marginally ergative phenomena

36:38 - Ways to be Ergative Valpal - http://valpal.info/ WALS chart that could help you make European non-Basque Ergativity - https://wals.info/chapter/62 Ergativity in Amazonia edited by Francesc Queixalós and Spike Gildea - https://amerindias.github.io/curso2015/referencias/gilque10ergativityamazonia.pdf - long 'A Movement Theory of Ergativity' by Mark Campana - https://research.uni-leipzig.de/lomo/ergativity/Campana1992.pdf - explains raising ergativity in depth, including giving examples of the extraction asymmetry I talked about - long 'The rise of ergativity in Hindi' by Saartje Verbeke & Ludovic De Cuypere - https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/55760161.pdf - ergativity arising in Hindi - short

55:07 - Ideas for how to implement ergativity

A few example sentences used in this episode: Warlpiri [ngatyu] ka -(rna) purlami [I (abs)] tense - (1sg.nom) shout I shout [ngatyu-lurlu] ka -(rna)-ngku nyuntu nyanyi [I (erg)] tense -(1sg.nom) -2sg.acc you(abs) see I see you Samoan perfective na va’ai-a [A e le tama] [P le i'a] pst look.at-prfv [ERG the boy] [the fish] ‘The boy spotted the fish.’ imperfective na va’ai [A le tama] [P i le i'a] pst look.at [A the boy] [P OBL the fish] ‘The boy looked at the fish.’ Bhojpuri agentive ham phuul mahaknii I-NOM flower-ACC smell-1S-PST ‘I smelled the flowers’ non-agentive hamraa gais mahakal I-DAT gas-NOM smell-3S-PST ‘I smelled gas’

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Linguitect - Episode 10: Standard Average European
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01/01/20 • 35 min

Join Rowan and Matt as they discuss the Standard Average European sprachbund (SAE). This is a language area that is centered mostly on Western European Romance and Germanic languages (think, French and German), but some features of it extend much farther into the Caucasus Mountains, etc.

Haspelmath's formulation of the sprachbund can be found in this paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/247869081_The_European_linguistic_area_Standard_Average_European

A summary of that paper, intended for conlangers: http://www.joerg-rhiemeier.de/Conlang/sae.html

Wikipedia for the overlapping (or subset, depending on definition) Balkan Sprachbund: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balkan_sprachbund

WALS chapter on Haspelmath's feature 12, intensive vs. reflexive pronouns: https://wals.info/chapter/47

WALS chapter on comparative constructions: https://wals.info/chapter/121

Paper on equative constructions: https://zenodo.org/record/814964/files/EquativeConstructions_2016b.pdf?download=1

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Linguitect - Episode 9: Sandhi School
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10/30/19 • 35 min

Today, Matt and Rowan talk about every sort of flavor in the ice cream Sandhi bar (ow! Rowan! that hurts!)

Sandhi is an umbrella term for phonological processes that occur at boundaries - between words (external sandhi, like in Sanskrit vowel blending) or within a word between morphemes (internal sandhi, like in Latin assimilation)

It can occur between two vowels (Sanskrit vowel blending, Latin elision, English intrusive R), between two consonants (Latin assimilation), between vowels and consonants together (French and Korean liaison, English linking R), between two tones (Mandarin tone sandhi), a weird mix of tones and syllable boundaries (Soyaltepec Mazatec tone sandhi), or even between two tones depending on consonants in between (Taiwanese Hokkien tone sandhi)

References:

Beal, Heather D. "The segments and tones of Soyaltepec Mazatec." (2012).

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Linguitect - Episode 8: Non-Default Case Marking
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07/30/19 • 42 min

This episode has Matt and Rowan talking about case marking, a way to indicate what each noun is doing in the sentence. Specifically, what Matt refers to as "non-default case marking" - parts of languages where cases behave in ways that don't fit with their canonical uses in the rest of the language.

Paper mentioned: https://mitcho.com/subjex/aldridge.pdf

Many of the examples are from Ergativity by R.M.W. Dixon

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Linguitect - Episode 7: Pitch Accent
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05/31/19 • 30 min

In this episode, Rowan and Matt talk about pitch accent! We cover controversies in the definition of pitch accent and the wide variety of systems that have been called "pitch accent."

References from this episode:

  • Hulst, Harry van der, and Norval Smith. 2010. Autosegmental Studies on Pitch Accent. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110874266.
  • Hyman, Larry M. "How (not) to do phonological typology: the case of pitch-accent." Language Sciences 31, no. 2-3 (2009): 213-238.
  • Evans, Jonathan P. "Is there a Himalayan tone typology?." Senri Ethnological Studies (2009).
  • Ding, Picus Sizhi. "The pitch accent system of Niuwozi Prinmi." Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area 24, no. 2 (2001): 57-83.
  • Ding, Picus Sizhi. "A typological study of tonal systems of Japanese and Prinmi: Towards a definition of pitch-accent languages." Journal of Universal Language 7, no. 2 (2006): 1-35.
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FAQ

How many episodes does Linguitect have?

Linguitect currently has 13 episodes available.

What topics does Linguitect cover?

The podcast is about Language, Linguistics, Podcasts, Social Sciences and Science.

What is the most popular episode on Linguitect?

The episode title 'Episode 13: Consonant Harmony' is the most popular.

What is the average episode length on Linguitect?

The average episode length on Linguitect is 35 minutes.

How often are episodes of Linguitect released?

Episodes of Linguitect are typically released every 53 days, 7 hours.

When was the first episode of Linguitect?

The first episode of Linguitect was released on Jul 29, 2018.

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