What goes on in our minds when we construct an utterance? Linguists often use syntax trees to represent the structure of sentences, but are they psychologically real? Yngwie Nielsen and Dr Morten Christiansen have found evidence for something else: we can recognise patterns in strings of words, even when they don't form coherent "treelets". They're giving us a walkthrough of their latest work.

Timestamps

00:00 Start 00:31 Introductions: Yngwie and Morten 05:19 Insights into linguistics communication 07:45 What are syntax trees? 09:13 Why linguists love syntax trees 14:15 Treelets vs chunks: Looking beyond hierarchical structure 17:46 Wanna and gonna: Words that cross treelet boundaries 22:43 How to prime someone 28:18 Priming in this experiment: People do recognise chunks 32:26 Are people just filling in the treelet blanks? 35:23 Were they accidentally smuggling in treelets? 38:47 Do we process both treelets and chunks? 42:23 DensiTrees: A way of representing fuzzy networks 44:01 What are we doing mentally when we make an utterance? 47:20 What is language for? 49:29 Grammatical glue: How do we connect chunks? 53:23 Being able to language is bonkers 56:30 Should we be studying language differently? 01:01:09 Wrap-up and goodbyes

What will happen to the languages of climate refugees? Dr Mary Walworth has been working with the small island community of Nusi in Papua New Guinea, which was recently featured in an episode of Pole to Pole with Will Smith. What's it like doing media for a large audience, and more importantly, how do we help speakers hold onto their language? Dr Walworth joins us for this episode.

Timestamps

00:00 Start 00:45 Intros 04:00 What's coming up on this episode 06:58 New patron shoutout and spruik 09:05 News: Air Canada CEO resigns over English communication 14:34 News: Banning foreign language election information in the UK 23:54 News: Can LLMs pass the Wug Test? 34:03 News: Does closing your eyes help you hear better? 39:48 Related or Not: Theme 40:23 Related or Not: GORGE, ENGORGE, and GORGEOUS 48:09 Related or Not: ANY and MANY 51:54 Related or Not: GUAVA, GUACAMOLE, GUARANÍ, GUARANÁ 01:00:20 Interview with Mary Walworth 01:45:52 Word of the Week: bimbofication 01:54:00 Word of the Week: glottophobia 01:55:50 Word of the Week: liveness check 01:57:54 Comment from Colin: CLAN and PLANTA 01:59:03 Comment from Lauren: crash blossoms 02:02:49 The Reads 02:08:09 Outtake

"More people have listened to this episode than you have." Why does this sentence look so right, but feel so wrong? When your grammar says one thing, but your brain says another, you may have found a linguistic illusion. We're talking to Dr Dan Parker, author of Linguistic Illusions: A Case Study on Agreement Attraction.

Video for this episode: https://youtu.be/_9BcmMZrH7s

Timestamps

• Start: 0:00
• Intros: 0:27
• News: 6:30
• Related or Not: 34:22
• Interview with Dan Parker: 49:53
• Words of the Week: 1:38:00
• Comment: 1:54:16
• The Reads: 1:58:19
• Outtakes: 2:05:39

How do you define what blue is? What even IS colour? Turns out, the quest to define colours was happening along with a standardisation crisis and a dictionary crisis at the venerable Merriam-Webster. Lexicographer and author Kory Stamper tells us all about it, and about her new book True Color.

Timestamps

• Start: 0:00
• Intros: 1:17
• News: 12:40
• Related or Not: 33:34
• Chat with Kory Stamper, author of True Color: 50:43
• Words of the Week: 1:41:58
• Comment from Lauretta: 2:04:57
• The Reads: 2:08:14
• Outtakes: 2:16:48

We all have an accent — or several! And we use them to communicate things about us, and highlight aspects of our identity. So what's going on with the accents we hear? Are we losing some accents, or are they just changing? Dr Valerie Fridland is the author of Why We Talk Funny, and she joins us for this episode.

Timestamps

• Start: 0:00
• Intros: 0:30
• News: 6:25
• Related or Not: 17:59
• Interview with Valerie Fridland: 36:53
• Words of the Week: 1:50:34
• The Reads: 2:21:21
• Outtakes: 2:26:14

We're talking to Dr Kelly Wright, friend of the show and data czar for the American Dialect Society. They run the biggest and most prestigious Word of the Year event, and she was there when the 2025 WotY votes came in. She's talking us through all the words we missed. Plus we get to some listener feedback.

Timestamps

• Start: 0:00
• Intros: 0:41
• The ADS WotYs for 2025: 7:12
• Related or Not: 1:00:51
• Listener comments: 1:09:53
• The Reads: 1:20:28
• Outtakes: 1:27:01

Video version of this episode:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXpfrXdWEW8

Video for this episode: https://youtu.be/Mqf05kN-TaI

It's Word of the Year season, and we're counting down our Words of the Week of the Year! In the time-honoured tradition, we gathered them all up from our 2025 shows, and let everyone vote. And we're going to give a mention to everyone else's words as well. We're joined by our friends and patrons, so come see them in chat!

Timestamps

• Start: 0:00
• Intros: 1:31
• Everyone else's words: 5:57
• Related or Not: 34:34
• Our Words of the Week of the Year: 51:35
• Comments: 1:22:04
• The Reads: 1:26:36
• Outtakes: 1:30:50

You know the story. The language you speak doesn't determine your savings. If your language has a future tense, there's no impact on the way you see or describe the future. Language and perception are separate.

Well, maybe it's time to revisit this. Séan Roberts and Cole Robertson are finding a cognitive connection, not with how our language makes us talk about the future, but with how our language lets us express uncertainty.

Also, Annemarie Verkerk and Hedvig Skirgård team up to test out language universals. Which ones are getting knocked over?

Timestamps

• Start: 0:00
• Intros: 0:36
• News: 6:08
• Chat with Annemarie Verkerk and Hedvig Skirgård: 23:06
• Related or Not: 49:22
• Interview with Séan Roberts and Cole Robertson: 1:10:38
• Words of the Week: 2:18:09
• Comments: 2:37:20
• The Reads: 2:42:37
• Outtakes: 2:50:05

We've asked linguists about how language began, but what would an evolutionary biologist tell you? Prof Madeleine Beekman says it's part of a complex web of body, brain, and community, and at the heart of it is (perhaps surprisingly) childcare. Madeleine is the author of The Origin of Language: How We Learned to Speak and Why.

Timestamps

• Cold open: 0:00
• Intros: 0:42
• News: 9:07
• Related or Not: 30:02
• Interview with Madeleine Beekman: 49:43
• Words of the Week: 1:40:49
• Comments: 2:01:30
• The Reads: 2:08:07
• Outtakes: 2:17:38

Among so many great word games, crosswords still reign supreme. How have they survived — and even expanded — in our digital age? What goes into a good puzzle, and will computer techniques take over? Daniel chats with author Natan Last about his book Across the Universe: The Past, Present, and Future of the Crossword Puzzle.

Timestamps

• Intros: 0:35
• News: 4:42
• Related or Not: 22:13
• Interview with Natan Last: 37:56
• Words of the Week: 1:24:52
• Comment: 1:53:37
• The Reads: 1:55:31
• Outtakes: 2:02:50