56: Not NOT a negation episode

Lingthusiasm - A podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics

Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne

Science

4.8 • 743 Ratings

🗓️ 20 May 2021

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

“I don’t have a pet dinosaur.” This sentence is, we assume, true for everyone listening to this episode (if it isn’t, uh, tell us your ways?). And yet it has a different feel to it than a more ordinary sentence like “I don’t have a cat”, the type of negated sentence that’s true for some people and not others. In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about negation! We talk about how languages make sentences negative, how negation fits into the social side of conversation, and two ways you can make things super extra negative: negative concord (aka “French toast negation”) and negative polarity items (aka “Mean Girls negation”). Plus, a few sneak peeks from the upcoming book Highly Irregular by Arika Okrent, which is coming out on July 1, 2021 and which we are delighted to recommend. Announcements: This month’s bonus episode is a recording of our live show! When someone else is telling a story, you might encourage them to keep talking or to elaborate on a particular point by making various words, sounds, phrases, or gestures, such as "oh really?" and "mhm-hm" and nodding. This linguistic behaviour is known as backchannelling. Join us on Patreon to learn more, and to get access to 50 other bonus episodes. You’ll also get access to our Discord server to chat with other lingthusiasts! www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm For links to everything mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/651742548840398848/lingthusiasm-episode-56-not-not-a-negation

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Lingthesism, a podcast that's enthusiastic about linguistics.
0:21.3	I'm Gretchen McCallick.
0:22.8	And I'm Lauren Gorn, and today we're getting enthusiastic about negation.
0:26.9	Or we're not getting unenthusiastic about negation, if you will.
0:31.8	We're not not getting enthusiastic about negation.
0:36.1	But first, we just want to say thanks to everyone who became
0:40.6	a patron or was a patron and came to our April live show that was part of Lingfest.
0:45.5	It was really fun to get to see and hear from you all in the chat and on social media.
0:51.6	And this show has been edited and put up on our Patreon bonus feed if you
0:56.6	want to listen to it in audio only like a normal podcast. So you can listen to it on Patreon if you
1:02.4	didn't catch it live. We'd also like to thank everybody who came to Lingfest in general.
1:07.3	All of the great events that people put on were really fun. It was really great to
1:11.2	see all of the community around that. And Lingfest came on the back of Lingcom 21, which was our
1:16.7	conference for people doing Lingcom, which was also a lovely experience. So thanks to everyone
1:22.1	who participated in one or both of those events.
1:39.7	There is nothing to be suspicious about here.
1:45.5	That's good because I absolutely did not eat the whole secret stash of chocolate while you weren't looking.
1:49.1	And I definitely didn't spill water everywhere.
1:52.5	I totally have not adopted a pet dinosaur.
2:00.2	And the moon is absolutely in its usual position and no one has blown it up, especially not me.
2:06.0	I am quite dubious and I'm just going to wait until I can definitely check that by looking at the moon.
2:07.2	I am also a little bit worried about the status of your dinosaur or dinosaur-free lifestyle.
	...

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