March 2021: LingComm21 preparations and two video talks

Hello!

This month was largely occupied in continued preparations for a pair of events in April:

• LingComm21, the first International Conference on Linguistics Communication, including calls for participation and creating the program schedule.

• LingFest, a fringe-festival-style coordination of independently organized public linguistics events, announcing the first list of events including a Lingthusiasm liveshow (our first online liveshow!) about backchannelling.

The main episode of Lingthusiasm was about how linguists figure out the grammar of a language (transcript) and the bonus was about reduplication and a classic linguistics paper affectionately known as the salad-salad paper.

I did two video talks: at Planet Word, the new language museum in Washington DC, about internet language and Because Internet, and for Slate’s Future Tense about the meaning of emoji with Jennifer Daniel.

I collaborated on another video with Tom Scott, this one about the rhythms of poetry in different languages or Why Shakespeare Could Never Have Been French:

Selected tweets:

• PUZZLE SPOILERS: A quote from Because Internet in the New York Times acrostic

• Suez meme: ordinary conversation topics vs noticing something about the language

• Not Haunted: new favourite example of implicature

• Vaccinated every 8 seconds: new favourite example of quantifier scope ambiguity

• A bagel with cream cheese: new favourite example of structural ambiguity

• Convaxulations

Selected blog posts:

• Linguistics Games online

• “Indeed, old man” in Middle Egyptian

• LingComm and LingFest announcement posts

This month’s photo, since I yet again didn’t go anywhere, is a throwback photo from ReadeBook, a bookshop in Adelaide, from when I was in Australia in 2018.

Thanks for coming along,

Gretchen