322: Sense of Direction (featuring Alice Gaby)

North and south? Left and right? Or something else?

Different languages have different ways of talking about space. Sometimes this has to do with the environment of the people who speak them. But what happens when the environment changes?

Daniel, Ben, and Kylie will try to get their bearings on this episode of Talk the Talk.

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Promo

Promo with Rewi Lyall, 2018-04-24: Direction

Daniel chats with Rewi ahead of the show. Why is it that, when you try to point out something stuck in someone’s teeth, they always go for the wrong side? And we talk about how direction works in the Kokota language.

Also at https://www.patreon.com/posts/18371552

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Full interview

Interview with Alice Gaby (complete)

Here’s the full audio of Daniel talking with Alice Gaby about the strategies people use to talk about directions, and how languages adapt to the environment. We also talk about apprehensives — but don’t be scared.

Thanks to Hedvig Skirgård, the Centre for Excellence in the Dynamics of Language at ANU, and the Association for Linguistic Typology — and of course, Alice Gaby herself.

Also at https://www.patreon.com/posts/18293542

Cutting Room Floor

Cutting Room Floor 322: Directions

The Telegraph released what is probably the worst language story of the year: Emoji ruining English?

In discussions of this sort, Daniel likes to ask his classes if they can immediately point north. Will it work on Kylie and Ben, or will it all backfire? (The latter.)

More about Guugu Yimithirr. Also, when languages have evidential particles, is it because there’s a need? Daniel doesn’t think so, but still…

Also at https://www.patreon.com/posts/18459913

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Show notes

Kokota grammar
Google Books link

Algorithms trace how stereotypes have changed
https://www.futurity.org/algorithm-word-embeddings-stereotypes-bias-1722542/

Algorithms reveal changes in stereotypes, according to new Stanford research
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-04/su-arc041818.php

Google Translate’s gender bias pairs “he” with “hardworking” and “she” with lazy, and other examples
https://qz.com/1141122/google-translates-gender-bias-pairs-he-with-hardworking-and-she-with-lazy-and-other-examples/

Turkish is a gender neutral language. There is no “he” or “she” – everything is just “o”. But look what happens when Google translates to English. Thread: pic.twitter.com/mIWjP4E6xw
— Alex Shams (@seyyedreza) November 27, 2017

Word embeddings quantify 100 years of gender and ethnic stereotypes [$$]
http://www.pnas.org/content/115/16/E3635

Man is to Computer Programmer as Woman is to Homemaker? Debiasing Word Embeddings (PDF)
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1607.06520.pdf

Dr Alice Gaby
http://profiles.arts.monash.edu.au/alice-gaby/

John Haviland: Guugu Yimithirr Cardinal Directions (PDF)
http://pages.ucsd.edu/~jhaviland/Publications/ETHOSw.Diags.pdf

5 Languages That Could Change the Way You See the World
http://nautil.us/blog/5-languages-that-could-change-the-way-you-see-the-world

When south is north and right is left
https://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/2012/05/29/when-south-is-north/

What We Can Learn from the Guugu Yimithirr Language
http://ourlanguages.org.au/what-we-can-learn-from-the-guugu-yimithirr-language/

Aikhenvald: The essence of mirativity (PDF)
https://research.jcu.edu.au/lcrc/storeroom/research-projects/evidentiality/folder-2-sashas-publications/the-essence-of-mirativity-2012

Hundreds of sharks and other fish discovered tangled in ‘ghost net’ drifting through Caribbean Sea
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/ghost-net-fishing-caribbean-sea-dead-sharks-fish-cayman-island-pollution-a8310806.html

‘Ghost gear’ killing hundreds of thousands of whales, seals, turtles and birds
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-05/ghost-fishing-nets-killing-marine-animals/8591020

Derelict fishing nets have turned the bottom of the sea into a death trap
https://qz.com/247942/derelict-fishing-nets-have-turned-the-bottom-of-the-sea-into-a-death-trap-2/

Swaziland king renames country ‘the Kingdom of eSwatini’
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-43821512