Alex Does Science!

Charles Darwin and the Phylogeny of State Flowers and State Trees

This is a guest post by Rachel Rodman. Photos by Daniel Murphy.

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Every U.S. state has its own set of symbols: an official flower, an official tree, and an official bird. Collectively, these organisms form the stuff of trivia and are traditionally presented in the form of a list.

But, lists…well. As charming as lists can sometimes be, lists are rarely very satisfying.

So I decided to try…

GOFUNDME: SAVE OUR NAVAJO LANGUAGE

“I never learned my Navajo language and I was never inspired to learn it.  As I got older, I realized how valuable our language is to the livelihood of our Navajo Nation. ” -Dr. Shawna L. Begay

Our Navajo or Diné language is in danger of becoming extinct.  Help us create and develop the first Navajo-English educational media TV puppet show, “Diné Bí Ná’álkid Time” which means ‘The Navajo Movie Time.’  It will inspire and teach our youth basic language skills using media as a technology tool. Parents, grandparents, children and grandkids can learn to speak Navajo  fluently together within their own homes. Long-time friends and educators, Dr. Shawna L. Begay and Charmaine Jackson have teamed up to create this new TV pilot for an all-ages audience or for anyone who wants to learn the Navajo language.   With your support, it’ll be the first educational Navajo and English puppet show that will teach and preserve the Navajo language and culture through digital media.

After several years of extensive research on the Navajo Nation, Dr. Begay recently completed her PhD from the University of Nevada-Las Vegas with her doctorate thesis, ‘Developing A Navajo Media Guide: A Community Perspective.’ As project director, she quickly realized she was a pioneer on the topic.

Lined Leaf Tailed Gecko

Of all of the species in the genus Uroplatus, U. lineatus is by far one of the most unique of the group. They’re one of the largest Uroplatus, reaching a total length of 10-11". U. lineatus primarily inhabits the tropical and bamboo forests in eastern Madagascar. 

The Australian Bureau of Meterology (known affectionately as The BOM), has an Indigenous Weather Knowledge portal. This portal shows the different ways of thinking about the seasons in the different areas of Australia. In a country so large, and with so many different climates, traditional European concepts likes ‘Summer’ and ‘Winter’ are often not relevant.  

Here is the weather cycle from Tiwi, in the north of Australia, with its three major seasons and thirteen minor seasons:

And these are the seasons of Gariwerd country, in my home state of Victoria in the south. Gariwerd is home to Djapwurrong and Jardwadjali speakers, and has six major seasons associated with different flora and fauna.

Thanks to the Ngaralk Instagram, which is where I originally saw this. You can see other knowledge systems from different parts of Australia on the BOM’s Indigenous Weather Knowledge portal.

How to crochet your own wug 

“RELEASE THE KRAKEN!!!”

Just had to share a design I recently finished up! I’ve actually had this design on the backburner for years, but got the drive to come back to finally finish it.   It’s referencing the amazing youtube channel The Brain Scoop and a discussion on conservation efforts being spent towards marketable animals like pandas vs more environmentally necessary animals like unionid bivalves.

HOLD ON

This is my angry murder noodle, Garnet. She wishes to inflict bodily harm upon you and everyone you ever loved, but don’t worry she feels that way about everyone. It’s an Amazon thing.

So why is there a difference between a “hkelsxpxa” and a “jkfsdkas” or an “asdfs”?

Because language evolves! It’s actually really exciting to think about, but there’s a reason why slang is continually changing and why Old People are usually characterized by not knowing the slang variants that are being used by The Youth - it’s because the way we use words changes over time, especially in response to technological or environmental changes.

And text-based communication - texting someone on your phone, or chatting with friends on Skype or Discord - is actually really new, this is something which started in my lifetime. And grammatical rules have been evolving and settling into place around that form of communication.

For instance, linguistic researchers have noticed that anyone who’s grown up with texting being a normal thing will usually not end their texts or IMs with a period unless they’re angry or annoyed. This is because it’s a lot harder to do a run-on sentence in those mediums; you can just hit ‘enter’ and go to a new line. A period, then, becomes an indicator of emphasis, instead of an indicator of “there is nothing missing from this sentence” - and it’s an indicator of negative emphasis (rather than the positive emphasis that an exclaimation mark can give).

So, the keysmash has its own grammatical rule. And it’s one that makes sense, considering that it’s entirely possible for a keysmash to be caused accidentally - by something falling onto the keyboard, or a cat walking across it. The rule, then, is that a deliberate keysmash and an accidental one need to be distinguishable.

So a deliberate keysmash will nearly always use keys only in the home row, and usually in a particular order that isn’t likely to have happened purely accidentally.

Lingthusiasm Episode 16:  Learning parts of words -  Morphemes and the wug test

Here’s a strange little blue animal you’ve never seen before. It’s called a wug. Now here’s another one. There are two of them. There are two ___? 

You probably thought “wugs” – and even kids as young as 3 years old would agree with you. But how did you know this, if you’ve never heard the word “wug” before? What is it that you know, exactly, when you know how to add that -s?  

Now try saying two cat__ 🐈🐈, two dog__ 🐕🐕 and two horse__ 🐎🐎. Why did you end up with catssss but dogzzzz, and have to add a whole extra syllable to horse? 

In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne bring you into the realm of language between words and sounds, the realm of morphemes like “wug” and “cat” and “-s” and “pre-” and “episode”.  What do you know subconsciously about how morphemes fit together? How do kids learn them from such an early age? How do linguists test what kids know about words? 

Wugs, in fact, are no longer often used for the wug test, because their cute, birdlike shape has become so famous as an unofficial mascot of linguistics that we can’t assume people haven’t seen the word anymore! People have made wug cookies, crochet wugs, wug memes, and more fun wug items, and you can check out some of our favourite wuggish links below. 

This month’s Patreon bonus episode is an interview with Daniel Midgley of Talk the Talk about communicating linguistics, and how we are all linguistic geniuses. We also have a new Patreon goal: at $1,200 we’re going to commission a linguist-artist to illustrate a memorable bit from the show! Everyone will get to see the art, which we’ll also make available on merch, and patrons will also get a high-resolution download and behind-the-scenes concept sketches. 

Here are the links mentioned in this episode:

Take the full wug test (or try it with a child in your life!) 

The original wug test paper (Berko Gleason 1958)

wugs, blicks, and kazhes

IOLing 2003 Adyghe morphology problem

“I cooked the wrong meat for them again“ in Mayali

-spiration

Teaching yourself morphology

Morphology meme

Today’s morphology is yesterday’s syntax

Here is a list of wug stuff mentioned in this episode:

Wug cookies (1) (2) (3)

Jumping wug

The wugs are breeding

More wugs

Noots

Arrival wugs

Renaming ponytails hairwugs

Wugs on mugs

A knitted wug

One wug, two wug, red wug, blue wug

Wuge

wugalicious mock battle

A wug poem

Jean Berko Gleason, creator of the wug test, with a very large wug

You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, iTunes, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening, and stay tuned for a transcript of this episode on lingthusiasm.com.

You can help keep Lingthusiasm advertising-free by supporting our Patreon. Being a patron gives you access to bonus content and lets you help decide on Lingthusiasm topics.

Lingthusiasm is on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com

Gretchen is on Twitter as @GretchenAMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic. Lauren is on Twitter as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.