81: The verbs had been being helped by auxiliaries
In the sentence \u201cthe horse has eaten an apple\u201d, what is the word \u201chas\u201d doing? It\u2019s not expressing ownership of something, like in \u201cthe horse has an apple\u201d. (After all, the horse could have very sneakily eaten the apple.) Rather, it\u2019s helping out the main verb, eat. Many languages use some of their verbs to help other verbs express grammatical information, and the technical name for these helping verbs is auxiliary verbs. \n\nIn this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about auxiliaries! We talk about what we can learn about auxiliaries across 2000+ languages using a new linguistic mapping website called GramBank, why auxiliaries get pronounced subtly differently from the words they\u2019re derived from, and how \u201cbe\u201d and \u201chave\u201d are the major players of the auxiliary world (but there are other options too, like \u201cdo\u201d, \u201clet\u201d, and \u201cgo\u201d). We also put a whole bunch of farm animals in our example sentences this episode just so we have an excuse to make a very good wordplay at the end of the episode.\n\nRead the transcript here: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/720244703378964480/transcript-episode-81-the-verbs-had-been-being\n\nAnnouncements: \nAre there linguistics things you want advice about? Both serious or somewhat silly? We\u2019re going to doing a linguistics advice bonus episode for our 7th anniversary in November 2023, where we\u2019ll answer your linguistics questions! Go here (https://forms.gle/s6MeeVAGWD3oaDoM6) to ask us your questions by September 1st 2023, and join us on Patreon to hear the answers! \n\nIn this month\u2019s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about the jobs that people go on to do after a linguistics degree! We talk about Lauren's new academic article in a fancy linguistics journal about a blog post series she's been running for 8 years, interviewing 80 people who studied linguistics, from a minor to a doctorate level, and their experience and advice for non-academic jobs.\n\nJoin us on Patreon now to get access to this and 70+ other bonus episodes, including our upcoming linguistics advice episode where we answer your questions! You\u2019ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds.\nwww.patreon.com/lingthusiasm\n\nFor links to things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/720244621612138496/lingthusiasm-81-the-verbs-had-been-being-helped