June 2022: modals and a cool linguistics paper

Hello!

This month I attended a local literary speculative fiction con, Scintillation, where I was on panels about swearing in science fiction and fantasy and the delightful Steerswoman books, as well as doing a dramatic reading from Ryan North's Romeo and/or Juliet book.

Some linguists got very excited this month about a very cool linguistics paper by the late Anne Cutler, which I won't spoil (because it really does have spoilers, but trust me you don't need any particular linguistics background to get why it's cool) and as a result we also managed to track down Anne Cutler's Christmas Letter, which is mentioned in the paper. (The full twitter thread, linked to from below, is also worth reading afterwards.)

Gretchen McCulloch @GretchenAMcC

This is quite possibly the most brilliant linguistics paper I've ever read.

Dan Kleinman @dankleinman

In honor of Anne Cutler's passing, here is a 3-page paper of hers that literally made my jaw drop when I read it. It is concise and very witty, and it makes its point convincingly. If you haven't seen it before, it's worth five minutes of your time. https://t.co/6RbJ5Iutkn

The main episode of Lingthusiasm this month was What we can, must, and should say about modals. The bonus episode was There’s like, so much to like about “like”.

I did a thread about how we approach a topic like modals which traditionally has a lot of associated terminology for a Lingthusiasm episode:

Gretchen McCulloch @GretchenAMcC

I want to do a meta thread about how we approached the topic of this episode of @lingthusiasm

Lingthusiasm @lingthusiasm

I can learn about modals We might learn about modals Would you learn about modals? We shall learn about modals! In this ep, we get enthusiastic about modals: https://t.co/14x45eOiMo

I also spent the entire month in the Indo-European section of the #103papers reading project. (And then some - 39 Indo-European languages in this sample.) Here's a paper about Italian with very charming examples:

Gretchen McCulloch @GretchenAMcC

Italian children w caregivers were secretly recorded in the toy section. 4 yos mostly expressed desire (Look! I want it!) whereas 6 yos started bargaining (aren't these lovely?) and 8 yos negotiated (mine is too small, how much is it) Axia 1996 journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01… #103papers

Selected tweets:

• So You Learned French

• Cackling Like

• Big & small

• Free Open Access Linguistic Textbook

• Subgetwoten

• Because Internet and Boomer Ellipses

• Cognate Objects

• Study Descriptions

Written Chinese "Biang"

Selected blog posts:

• Linguistics Jobs: Interview with a Hawaiian and Tahitian language Instructor, Translator & Radio Host

• Twitter Account of Awkward, Amusing Writing

• Scripting a Language that can't be written

• Lingthusiasm HQ: Frown Thing!

This month's picture is Because Internet hanging out at the staff picks section with some book friends at my local independent bookstore, Argo Bookshop! Argo's owners were linguists in a previous life and it's well worth a visit if you're in Montreal.

Thanks for coming along,

Gretchen