47: The happy fun big adjective episode - parts of speech, lexical categories, adjective ordering
Channel: Ling Thusiasm
Date: 2020-08-20

Adjectives: they’re big, they’re fun, they’re...maybe non-existent? In English, we have a fairly straightforward category of adjectives: they’re words that can get described with a comparative or a superlative, such as “bigger” or “most fun”. But when we start looking across lots of languages, we find that some languages lump adjectives in with verbs, some with nouns, and some do different things altogether.  

In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about adjectives! We talk about how linguists come up with diagnostic tests to determine whether something is an adjective, other quirks about adjectives (such as why we say “big red ball” but not “red big ball”), and the galaxy-brain question of whether grammatical categories like adjectives are even valid across all languages. 
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This month’s bonus episode is about doing LingComm on a budget - plus the Lingthusiasm origin story! We got started doing linguistics communication when we were both broke grad students. We talk about the various stages we went through with launching our blogs, Superlinguo and All Things Linguistic, and of course this podcast a few years later! We give tips on how to come up with a topic, set a schedule, and promote your project, as well as the nitty-gritty details on free or low-cost ways to do  things like registering a website and starting a blog, podcast, or youtube channel. Support Lingthusiasm on Patreon to get access to this and 40 other bonus episodes, and to chat with fellow lingthusiasts in the Lingthusiasm patron Discord https://www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm

Announcements:
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Also check out our Schwa (Never Stressed) pins, IPA scarves, IPA socks, and more at RedBubble https://www.redbubble.com/people/lingthusiasm/shop?asc=u

For links to everything mentioned in this episode go to: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/627014557132603392/change-audio-link-lingthusiasm-episode-47-the