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From f#ck to microorganism – why do words sound the way they do? – Dr Shiri Lev-Ari
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One of the characteristics of language is that there is no relationship between the way that words sound and their meaning. For example, there is nothing window-like about the word window, and it is named with completely different sounds in other languages, from fenêtre in French to shubak in Arabic. In this talk, I will discuss cases where the sounds of words are not arbitrary. I will start by showing what characterises the sounds of swear words across the world’s languages. I will then discuss which languages have more words whose sounds express their meaning, and why that is the case. I will end with an example that illustrates that our intuition regarding whether the sounds of certain words express their meaning can be very wrong.
Dr. Shiri Lev-Ari is a cognitive scientist studying language from a social perspective. She is particularly interested in how language evolution is shaped by the social needs of the society. She holds a PhD from The University of Chicago and is currently a lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of London.
The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.
74 episoder
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Hmmm there seems to be a problem fetching this series right now. Last successful fetch was on August 05, 2024 21:47 ()
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Manage episode 359010223 series 3327627
One of the characteristics of language is that there is no relationship between the way that words sound and their meaning. For example, there is nothing window-like about the word window, and it is named with completely different sounds in other languages, from fenêtre in French to shubak in Arabic. In this talk, I will discuss cases where the sounds of words are not arbitrary. I will start by showing what characterises the sounds of swear words across the world’s languages. I will then discuss which languages have more words whose sounds express their meaning, and why that is the case. I will end with an example that illustrates that our intuition regarding whether the sounds of certain words express their meaning can be very wrong.
Dr. Shiri Lev-Ari is a cognitive scientist studying language from a social perspective. She is particularly interested in how language evolution is shaped by the social needs of the society. She holds a PhD from The University of Chicago and is currently a lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of London.
The music used in this episode is by Thula Borah and is used with permission.
74 episoder
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