#comparative illusion

Optical illusions are pretty well-known, like a rabbit that looks like a duck (or vice versa?) or figures that appear to move or change colour when you look at black and white patterns. But there are also many fun kinds of linguistics illusions!

In this episode, Lauren and Gretchen get enthusiastic about some of our favourite bits of language that can be two things at the same time. We talk about the where the Yanny/Laurel illusion that became popular on social media a while back came from, the McGurk (and hypothetical future McGawne?) Effect, using the Stroop Test to find spies, hallucinating words from musical instruments, the Comparative Illusion (aka "More people have been to Russia than I have"), and making our own speech to song illusion to infect you with (sorry) (no but seriously) (please read the content advisory and proceed to the separate audio file at your own risk of earworm infection).

* the Stay Lingthusiastic speech to song effect audio link here.

How do some sentences trick us into thinking they're good, when really they're not? And what can that tell us about how we process language? In this week's video, we take a look at the comparative illusion, a tricky kind of sentence that seems meaningful, but falls apart when we consider it further. And then we look at what exactly it is about them that confuses our minds.