82: Frogs, pears, and more staples from linguistics example sentences
b'Linguists are often interested in comparing several languages or dialects. To make this easier, it\\u2019s useful to have data that\\u2019s relatively similar across varieties, so that the differences really pop out. But what exactly needs to be similar or different varies depending on what we\\u2019re investigating. For example, to compare varieties of English, we might have everyone read the same passage that contains all of the sounds of English, whereas to compare the way people gesture when telling a story, we might have them all watch the same silent film and re-tell it back. \\n\\nIn this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about linguistics examples that have been re-used in lots of studies to get large groups of people to produce comparable language data. These sentences are supposed to be pretty unremarkable so we can focus on doing linguistics on them, but they end up having a sort of charmingly banal vibe that makes them much beloved by people who have spent tons of time poring over recorded files. We talk about The North Wind and the Sun, the Stella passage, the Rainbow passage, the Harvard Sentences, the Frog story, the Pear story, and the Tweety Bird video. We also talk about what goes into creating different genres of reusable example sentences, from phonetic balancing to what makes a concept culturally specific, as well as our experience learning about and coming up with various examples. \\n\\nHave a favourite recurring example that we didn\\u2019t have space for here? Let us know!\\n\\nRead the transcript here: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/723543648527122432/transcript-episode-82-frogs-pears-and-more\\n\\nAnnouncements: \\nIn this month\\u2019s bonus episode we present: LingthusiASMR, a very special bonus episode, in which your hosts Gretchen and Lauren get enthusiastic about linguistics in a very relaxed manner by reading one very large classic set of charmingly banal linguistics example sentences. Several people have told us that this has helped put them to sleep, which isn\\u2019t usually our goal but it sure is for this episode! \\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, which you can ask here: https://forms.gle/s6MeeVAGWD3oaDoM6 (until September 1st 2023). You\\u2019ll also get access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds. www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm\\n\\nFor links to things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/723422789301829632/episode-82-frogs-pears-and-more-staples-from'