They’ll, we’ve, you’re, and even ain’t.

This week, we’re having contractions, but not the muscular kind — the word kind! We squash words together all the time, but why? And how well can you recognise them?

Daniel, Kylie, and Ben are gonna find out on this episode of Talk the Talk.


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Promo

Promo with Antonino Tati, 21 Mar 2017: Willy-Nilly

Cutting Room Floor

Cutting Room Floor 280: Contractions

We’re tackling the big questions. When did you learn to adult? Would you want to be a social justice trebuchet? How is that different from a catapult? What happens when you pee on something in D&D?

We spare a thought for companies that lose money over commas. Ben explains why he’s so competitive in games. He also goes a bit funny over the Voynich manuscript obeying Zipf’s Law and time paradoxes in Back to the Future. Fortunately there’s Sister Rosetta Tharpe to calm us down a bit.


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Show notes

The Oxford comma: Do you or don’t you?
http://publishingresourceguide.com/writers-life/writing-ideas-inspiration/oxford-comma-yes-or-no

Oxford commas, Nelson Mandela, and Stephen King
https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2014/09/15/oxford-commas-nelson-mandela-and-stephen-king/

The Best Shots Fired in the Oxford Comma Wars
http://mentalfloss.com/article/33637/best-shots-fired-oxford-comma-wars

An Oxford comma changed this court case completely
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/03/15/health/oxford-comma-maine-court-case-trnd/index.html

A Missing Oxford Comma Just Changed the Course of a Court Case
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/missing-oxford-comma-just-changed-course-court-case-180962551/

Infographic: The Oxford comma debate
https://www.ragan.com/Main/Articles/Infographic_The_Oxford_comma_debate_52369.aspx

6/ When @LouiseMensch reported on the FISA tap, she included details that implicated Putin’s own daughters, Carter Page and Paul Manafort. pic.twitter.com/TgeO9x1NvC

— Justin Hendrix (@justinhendrix) March 4, 2017

Wikipedia: Contraction (grammar)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contraction_(grammar)

Major Trends in Theoretical and Applied Linguistics 1 (increased use of –n’t; interesting charts)
Google Books link

Amn’t
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-amn1.htm

The Story of Ain’t
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=7100#more-7100

The Cockney and His Dialect
https://www.jstor.org/stable/534097?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

London dialect in Dickens
http://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item126779.html

Online Etymology Dictionary: won’t
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=won%27t

Why Does “Will Not” Become “Won’t”?
http://mentalfloss.com/article/55232/why-does-will-not-become-wont

Online Etymology Dictionary: contraction
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=contraction&searchmode=&p=3&allowed_in_frame=0

Word lengths are optimized for efficient communication
http://www.pnas.org/content/108/9/3526.long

Why “won’t” isn’t “willn’t”
http://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2013/03/wont-willnt.html

Throw Mama From the Train: Favorite Line
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4c1sgug6prw

(principle of) least effort [Zipf’s Law]
https://www.thoughtco.com/principle-of-least-effort-zipfs-law-1691104

Understanding Zipf’s Law
http://david.pilato.fr/blog/2016/01/05/understanding-zipfs-law/

The mystery of Zipf
https://plus.maths.org/content/mystery-zipf

A mysterious law that predicts the size of the world’s biggest cities
http://io9.gizmodo.com/the-mysterious-law-that-governs-the-size-of-your-city-1479244159

Applying Zipf’s Law to galaxies
https://phys.org/news/2016-04-zipf-law-galaxies.html

Wikipedia: List of placeholder names by language
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_placeholder_names_by_language

UD: doovalacky
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=doovalacky

MW: doohickey
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/doohickey

Chuck Berry, rock ‘n’ roll icon, dead at 90
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-19/chuck-berry-rock-n-roll-icon-dies-aged-90/8367220

How Chuck Berry Wrote “Johnny B. Goode” and Created the First Rock and Roll Guitar Hero
http://www.guitarworld.com/artist-news/how-chuck-berry-wrote-johnny-b-goode-and-created-first-rock-and-roll-guitar-hero/30217

Sister Rosetta Tharpe Biography
http://www.biography.com/people/sister-rosetta-tharpe-17172332

Sister Rosetta Tharpe – Didn’t It Rain
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SR2gR6SZC2M

Vapour Trails: Revisiting Shoegaze
https://www.xlr8r.com/features/2009/01/vapour-trails-revisiting-shoegaze/

List of rock genres
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rock_genres

Music Genres List
http://www.musicgenreslist.com

Our Least Favorite Genre Names
http://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/2012/01/28/145858309/our-least-favorite-genre-names

Can -core survive normcore?
http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2014/04/can-core-survive-normcore/

Slutwave, Tumblr Rap, Rape Gaze: Obscure Musical Genres Explained
http://www.laweekly.com/music/slutwave-tumblr-rap-rape-gaze-obscure-musical-genres-explained-2409158

Eminem and The Beatles: The Top-Selling Artists of the 2000s
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/eminem-and-the-beatles-the-top-selling-artists-of-the-2000s-20091209

Google Ngram Viewer: on / in an island
Control-click the lines to make similar items collapse.


Image credit: http://i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/facebook/001/217/719/10a.jpg


Transcript

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