The Endless Knot
We discuss etymology, history, literature, science, and language, and the connections between them.
We look at the history of English’s conceptualization of time, and update Mark’s research on spatiotemporal metaphor. Also, words for arrows, the surprising origin of ‘toxic’, and a bit of Latin poetry!
Old English Schemata
Old Norse Schemata
Latin Schemata
Anglo-Norman Schemata
© Martin Szillat
We spoke to Dr. Valerie Fridland about her new book, “Like, Literally, Dude!” and talked about the fascinating role that many ‘errors’ in English speech actually play in communication. We discuss the never-ending changes that English has gone through, the surprisingly sophisticated rules behind our use of ‘um’ and ‘uh’, and much more.
Dr. Valerie Fridland’s website
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We’re talking all about the future in this episode — and if we even have one (in English). This is a topic near and dear to Mark’s heart, and in part the subject of his dissertation! We get into the nitty gritty of grammatical tense, ways of thinking about the future, and a mystery cocktail.
Whisky Exchange article about Futurist cocktails
Lavery, Gerard B. “Hoc Aeui Quodcumquest : Lucretius and Time.” Latomus, vol. 46, no. 4, 1987, pp. 720–29. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41534650
Berns, Gisela. “Time and Nature in Lucretius’ ‘De Rerum Natura.’” Hermes, vol. 104, no. 4, 1976, pp. 477–92. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4475983
This podcast is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
photo credit: Flickr user get directly down
We trace the etymologies and development of the words “sex” and “gender”, as well as words for women and men in Greek, Latin, and English, touching on Roman, Greek, and medieval English ideas about gender. Then we discuss the grammatical term “gender” and how it differs across languages around the world.
This podcast is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
