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23: When Nothing Means Something
🕑 Added 2018-08-17 00:11:49 +0000 UTC When we think about language, we generally think about things that are visible or audible: letters, sounds, signs, words, symbols, sentences. We don’t often think about the lack of anything. But little bits of silence or invisibility are found surprisingly often throughout our linguistic system, from the micro level of an individual sound or bit of meaning to the macro level of sentences and conversations.In this episode of the podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about four different kinds of linguistic nothings: silence in between turns, silence in between sounds, invisible units of meaning, and invisible words. (Officially known as turntaking, glottal stops, zero morphemes, and traces.)
We also announced to everyone else who isn't a patron some details about our upcoming liveshow! Our last liveshow was in Montreal where Gretchen lives, so it’s only fair that our next official show is in Lauren’s hometown of Melbourne! It’ll be sometime in November. Stay tuned for the exact date and venue - Patrons will get free tickets to the best seats in the house and a chance to meet up with Gretchen and Lauren at the show.
Gretchen will also be around for the Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language Summer School in Canberra and the annual Australian Linguistics Society conference in Adelaide. If anyone else in Australia wants to invite her to anything in November or early December 2018, now’s your chance!
For more ado about nothing, and all the links mentioned in this episode: http://lingthusiasm.com/post/177070997956/lingthusiasm-episode-23-when-nothing-means
Comments
Lingthusiasm
That's true! There's some interesting cross-linguistic variation with prepositions, might be a good topic to file away for a future episode!
I wasn’t thinking about the example given by Lauren about a “...cat on the wall.” And I imagined, like Gretchen a frightened cat clung to a wall vertically. And I was thinking, if the sentence were in German that ambiguity wouldn’t have been there. In German there are two words for “on”: one for vertical surfaces “auf”, and one for horizontal surfaces “an”.
