45: Tracing languages back before recorded history (Patreon)

Published:

2020-06-19 02:16:10

Imported:

2023-02

Content

Language is much older than writing. But audio and visual cues from sounds and signs don’t leave physical traces the way writing does. So when linguists want to figure out how people talked before history started being recorded, we need to engage in some careful detective work, by comparing two or more similar, known languages to (potentially!) reconstruct a hypothetical common ancestor.

In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about these prehistoric languages that historical linguists have reconstructed, known as proto-languages. We dive into some of our favourite proto-languages (Proto-Indo-European, Proto-Algonquian, Proto-Pama-Nyungan, and Proto-Bantu), look at their characteristic grammatical signatures, and explain what we can and can’t know about the people who spoke them based on their vocabularies.

Announcements:

We are delighted to announce the winners of the 2020 LingComm Grants. Here are the project titles for the 4 grantees, and there’s more information about each project on the LingComm website, as well as two honourable mentions. We’re very excited to share more with you as they develop.

The Black Language Podcast (Anansa Benbow)
Nonbinary Linguistics youtube channel (Nina Lorence-Ganong)
Jazicharnica (Јазичарница) blog (Nina Tunteva and Viktorija Blazheska)
War of Words podcast (Juana de los Santos, Angela Makeviciuz, Antonella Moschetti, Néstor Bermúdez)

We had over 75 applications from around the world and we’d like to thank all applicants for making the job of deciding extremely difficult!

New masks
By popular demand, our IPA, Tree and Esoteric Symbol designs are now available on these new non-medical grade reusable fabric masks from Redbubble. On our store you’ll find the white IPA characters on black, red or navy, and the esoteric symbols in white on black or green on black. If you fancy another colour, or the tree design, we’ve made masks available on all of the scarf pages.

For links to everything mentioned in this episode, check out the shownotes page: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/621315004953722880/lingthusiasm-episode-45-tracing-languages-back

Files

45: Tracing languages back before recorded history

Lingthusiasm Episode 45: Tracing languages back before recorded history Language is much older than writing. But audio and visual cues from sounds and signs don't leave physical traces the way writing does. So when linguists want to figure out how people talked before history started being recorded, we need to engage in some careful detective work, by comparing two or more similar, known languages to (potentially!)