Language is a lot like love. You can enjoyably lose yourself in both. They can both be dangerous. And they both entail a responsibility to keep each other safe. A new book Linguaphile: A Life of Language Love is both a language book and a memoir, connecting the strands of language learning, language love, and language loss. Daniel speaks with author Dr Julie Sedivy.
Also: Large language models have proven adept at duplicating patterns of language that humans find possible. But what about impossible language patterns? Can LLMs learn those? And what even is an impossible language? Dr Matt Spike explains.
Timestamps
Cold open: 0:00
Intros: 0:34
News: 5:49
Interview with Matt Spike: 32:01
Related or Not: 50:57
Interview with Julie Sedivy: 1:05:34
Words of the Week: 1:33:33
The Reads: 1:55:04
Outtakes: 2:01:21
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@becauselangpod I had a chat with Julie Sedivy about her book "Linguaphile". It's about language, life, love, and the evanescence of everything. Episode coming soon on becauselanguage.com
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Become a Patron!Show notes
Ladies and Gentlemen…. The future is here. 🍓
https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1ff9d9l/ladies_and_gentlemen_the_future_is_here/
To Gen Z, Google is just a relic – not a verb anymore
https://bgr.com/tech/to-gen-z-google-is-just-a-relic-not-a-verb-anymore/
Is the word ‘Google’ losing its shine as search pivots?
https://www.marketing-interactive.com/is-the-word-google-losing-its-shine-as-search-pivots
AI generates covertly racist decisions about people based on their dialect
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07856-5
Mission: Impossible Language Models
https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.06416
Julie Sedivy
https://juliesedivy.com
Linguaphile: A Life of Language Love by Julie Sedivy | MacMillan
https://www.panmacmillan.com.au/9780374601836/
The “Sane-Washing” of Donald Trump
https://link.motherjones.com/public/36678690
Oops, They Did It Again: The Mainstream Media Buries Trump’s Outrage
https://newrepublic.com/series/51/mainstream-media-sanewashing-trump-migrants
Study: many of the “oldest” people in the world may not be as old as we think
https://www.vox.com/2019/8/8/20758813/secrets-ultra-elderly-supercentenarians-fraud-error
Turbofunk on Threads: Learned a new gen z slang term: aura. Sorry I’m late to the party.
https://www.threads.net/@turbofunk_/post/C8ovV1xuyu8?hl=en
‘The data on extreme human ageing is rotten from the inside out’ – Ig Nobel winner Saul Justin Newman
https://theconversation.com/the-data-on-extreme-human-ageing-is-rotten-from-the-inside-out-ig-nobel-winner-saul-justin-newman-239023
Saul Justin Newman: Supercentenarian and remarkable age records exhibit patterns indicative of clerical errors and pension fraud
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/704080v3
[PDF] Three Little Words: Law and Order, Videostyle Framing, and Dog Whistle Racism in Richard Nixon’s 1968 Campaign
https://eloncdn.blob.core.windows.net/eu3/sites/153/2022/12/01-dalrymple.pdf
Transcript
Coming soon.