Clik here to view.
‘Has anybody seen the, uh, child genius around here?’
Children use uh and um to help them acquire language. A young child’s world is full of obstacles that they need to negotiate, not least in language. Imagine constantly listening to lots of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Coming to the end
Speaker A: “Let’s discuss the use of final particles in conversational English”Speaker B: “Ok … What does that mean though?”Alexander Haselow was interested in the fact that,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Are regional dialects dying out?
is increasing mobility the cause?It’s often thought that local dialect forms are withering away as people adopt more widespread ‘supralocal’ forms. In England, for example, glottal stop pronunciations...
View ArticleClik here to view.
‘Throve’ and ‘dove’ or ‘thrived’ and ‘dived’? Let’s call the whole thing off!
At first, trying to explain the formation of the past tense in English may seem simple – you just add –-ed, don’t you? So that walk becomes walked and help becomes helped, right? Correct! ... for...
View ArticleClik here to view.
“You are the dancing queen, young and sweet, only 55…”
Dance is a medium that is strongly associated with youth. When we speak of professional ballet dancers we tend to think of young people with strong and supple bodies, whose movement makes them very...
View ArticleClik here to view.
We'll be taking a break during August!
Dear Digest readers,Due to holidays and research commitments, the Digest team will be taking a break during August. Postings will resume in September.This year has seen a huge growth in the number of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Like it's teenage talk – or is it?
People often think that using like as a discourse marker is typical of teenage talk. Christopher V. Odato’s research, though, finds that children as young as 4 use like in this way. Odato...
View ArticleClik here to view.
‘Researches’, ‘informations’ and ‘knowledges’ in World Englishes
The spread of English across the world has been viewed in terms of three concentric circles, which are traditionally referred to as the Inner, Outer and Expanding Circles. The Inner Circle (IC) refers...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The pen is mightier than the javelin?
safe and secure Olympic Games?Summer Olympic Games have been called ‘sport mega-events’ due to their huge scale. They take place in large capital cities and are generally considered as immensely...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Who said that? Zero/null quotatives to introduce speech.
The quotative system, particularly in teenage speech, has received a lot of attention from linguists in recent years (for other summaries related to this topic click ‘Quotatives’ in the left-hand bar)....
View ArticleClik here to view.
‘Have a global day!’
Is the world becoming more or less polite?As the global population grows, our world has somehow seemed to shrink. Walk down the main streets of London, Paris, New York or Tokyo and you will see many...
View ArticleClik here to view.
R you an Arsenal supporter?
Ahsenal or Arsenal? Did you know that being a football fan can affect your pronunciation? This is what Jessica Loveand Abby Walker discovered from their interviews with fans of English Premier League...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A be’er way to analyse t-glottaling?
Most people are familiar with the concept of t-glottaling, that is to say the replacement of /t/ with a glottal stop in a word. Using the symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet, a word such as...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Gentlemen before ladies?
Does word order perpetuate outdated images about women and men? You probably say pots and pans, not pans and pots, and lords and ladies, not ladies and lords. Why,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Is the use of racial slurs really just black and white?
Slurs are terms, such as slut, nigger or bitch, that are typically used to offend members of certain groups. They are largely considered as the most taboo and offensive of all linguistic expressions....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Wi’ a guid Scots tongue
Can we still feel Scottish if we lose our accent? This was the question Inès Brulard and Philip Carr wanted to investigate when looking at the changing speech patterns of Scottish politicians in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Putting Gender in Writing
A lot of sociolinguistic work has focussed on how males and females use linguistic features in spoken language. This research has led to certain features being associated more with male use, such as I...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Getting on together in conversation
we communicate through gestures too!When we talk, the nods, gestures, posture and body movements that we make convey important messages to our conversational partners. They can help in understanding...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Article 0
Season's Greetings to all our readers.We will resume our weekly summaries on January 6 2014. We look forward to your continued interest in 2014.Best wishes from the Linguistics Research Digest team
View ArticleClik here to view.
Go on – Flex those linguistic muscles at the 2014 Olympiad!
In their article ‘Linguistics at School: The UK Linguistics Olympiad’,Richard Hudson and Neil Sheldonexplain why a Linguistics Olympiad (LO) can be beneficial to us all. So, to get your students...
View Article