2023-03-21
24 分钟From New York City, this is Lexicon Valley, a podcast about language.
I'm John McWhorter at Columbia University.
I teach linguistics, among other things, and my book out this September is Words on the Move,
Why English Can't and Won't Sit Still Like Literally.
Today, I want to discuss a quirky issue that has always fascinated me, and it starts...
with the fact that people often say that our language,
English, doesn't have as much grammar as other languages.
And it certainly seems like it
because we don't have long lists of conjugational classes and endings and assigning inanimate objects to genders arbitrarily.
But the truth is that under the surface, we actually have a lot of really neat grammar.
There are things that we do without effort that are as awesome.
in their way as people who don't have any trouble keeping track of the idea that the moon is female and the sun isn't,
and so many irregular verbs that you can barely count them,
etc. We actually have our fancy stuff as well.
Once we know about some of it,
and we can feel proud of ourselves for our subconsciously acquired deafnesses, then...
we can look at a grammatical issue that I think concerns us all and maybe see it in a different way.
So first, here's something that you may have never thought about.
Suppose I say, little old Bill.
Bill being somebody named William who's being referred to in a familiar way.