66: Word order, we love
b'Let\\u2019s say we have the set of words \\u201cLauren\\u201d, \\u201cGretchen\\u201d, and \\u201cvisits\\u201d and we want to make them into a sentence. The way that we combine these words is going to have a big effect on who\\u2019s packing their bags and who\\u2019s sitting at home with the kettle on. In English, our two sentences look like \\u201cGretchen visits Lauren\\u201d and \\u201cLauren visits Gretchen\\u201d -- but that\\u2019s not the only word order that\\u2019s possible. In theory, we could also use other orders, like \\u201cLauren Gretchen visits\\u201d or \\u201cVisits Gretchen Lauren\\u201d, and in fact, many languages do. The only thing that really matters is that for any given language, we all agree on which order means what. \\n\\nIn this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about how languages put words in a particular order. There are many possibilities, but a few of them show up a lot more than others: \\u201cI <3 linguistics\\u201d (as in English and Indonesian) and \\u201cI linguistics <3\\u2033 (as in Turkish and Japanese) are the most common word orders for conveying who did what to who. Another common strategy is using some other way of marking the actor and the acted-upon, which frees up word order for other functions, like indicating the topic of the sentence first (and what you want to comment about it afterwards) -- in English, this might be akin to \\u201cLinguistics, I <3 it\\u201d. We also look at how Yoda maintains his unique approach to word order across a variety of languages, including Hungarian, Japanese, Romanian, and Czech.\\n\\nAnnouncements:\\nWe\\u2019re doing another online Lingthusiasm liveshow on April 9th (Canada) slash 10th (Australia)! (What time is that for me?) It will be a live Q&A for patrons about a fan fave topic: swearing! We\\u2019ll be hosting this session on the Lingthusiasm patron Discord server. Become a patron before the event to live-react in the text chat, and it will also be available as an edited-for-legibility recording in your usual Patreon live feed if you prefer to listen at a later date. In the meantime: tell us about your favourite examples of swearing in various languages and we might include them in the show! https://www.patreon.com/posts/62707367\\n\\nLingComm Grants are back in 2022! These are small grants to help kickstart new projects to communicate linguistics to broader audiences. There will be a $500 Project Grant, and ten Startup Grants of $100 each. Apply here by March 31, 2022 or forward this page to anyone you think might be interested, and if you\\u2019d like to help us offer more grants, you can support Lingthusiasm on Patreon or contribute directly. We started these grants because a small amount of seed money would have made a huge difference to us when we were starting out, and we want to help there be more interesting linguistics communication in the world. https://lingcomm.org/grants/\\n\\nIf you want to help keep our ongoing lingthusiastic activities going, from the LingComm Grants to regular episodes to fun things like liveshows and Q&As, join us on Patreon! As a reward, you will get over 50 bonus episodes to listen to and access to our Discord server to chat with other linguistics nerds. In this month\\u2019s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about how linguistic research topics come together! We talk about where our own research came from, figuring out spaces for new questions in the existing literature, and bridging gaps between multiple subject areas and communities. Listen here! https://www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm\\n\\nFor links to things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/679022541013155840/episode-66-word-order-we-love-lets-say-we-have'