Today’s 3 links are for Zero (or Null) Morphemes:
Lingthusiasm Episode 23: When nothing means something
Podcast episode
Oftentimes, the most important parts of sentences are the things we don’t say at all. Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch discuss how the empty bits of language (pauses, glottal stops, zero morphemes, and tracing) can convey meaning. 35m25s. Zero morphs covered 19:09-28:19. Transcript and show notes available.
Zero Morphs and Deletion in AAE
YouTube video
The grammar of African American English is distinguished by its rich use of zero morphemes and deletion. Dr. Julie Washington of Georgia State University introduces some defining features of AAE in a brief (5m33s) excerpt from her full webinar on the educational achievement gap and the effects of poverty in the classroom, sponsored by the Consortium on Reaching Excellence in Education (CORE). Downloadable handout available. Auto-generated English captions.
Japanese and the trouble with pluralizing emoji
Article
Robinson Meyer of The Atlantic posts his conversation with one of his readers--a Japanese linguist--regarding the puzzle of the plural “emoji.” Beyond this one example, the reader discusses how borrowed words, such as “sushi,” “koi,” and “emoji,” are at different points of anglicization. These examples show how English applies its own rules of morphology at various levels of word-borrowing. Published 2016. 864 words.
Extra-Curricular:
Linguists love some good symbols. You can get IPA and Esoteric symbol scarves, notebooks, mugs and now masks:
Via Lingthusiasm
News update:
See you next week for 3 Links about Internet Linguistics.
Lauren, Gretchen and Joel
About Mutual Intelligibility
Mutual Intelligibility is a project to connect linguistics instructors with online resources, especially as so much teaching is shifting quickly online due to current events. It's produced by Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch, with the support of our patrons on Lingthusiasm. This post was written by Joel Broberg.
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