Linguists David Adger and John Goldsmith discuss generativism, its claims, and its relationship to nativism and functionalism. They delve into personal experiences with the generativism vs. functionalism debate and explore Noam Chomsky's focus on syntax and mind. The podcast also touches on derogatory words, linguistic areas, and the evolving concept of generativism. Topics like booster shots and mix and match vaccines are also discussed, along with ways for listeners to engage with the podcast.

The Because Language team are talking through some of the most interesting research around, and you get to listen! Valuable medical information gets lost when Indigenous languages are wiped out When it comes to learning languages, multilinguals have the edge over bilinguals A generativist argues that languages don't adapt to their environment. What's behind this? And it's iconicity turned up to 11: some experiments that explore how language began.

Linguistics as a discipline throws up challenges to Indigenous linguists. At the same time, they're the ones called upon to fix it. It can't stay like this. How do we make linguistics a safe place to work? Daniel, Hedvig, and very special co-host Ayesha Marshall are having a yarn with Lesley Woods and Dr Alice Gaby about their work in changing linguistics for the better.

OzCLO is the Australian Computational and Linguistic Olympiad. It gets students together to compete and solve linguistic problems. It’s also a gateway to further linguistic study. We’ve brought some of the winning students to compete in a linguistic quiz with Ben and Hedvig. Will it go well for them?

All it took was a tweet. Last week, linguists refocused their attention on a paper about humidity and tone. Was it bad linguistics? Environmental determinism? The reaction said a lot about linguistics and the nature of linguistic communication in the digital age.

What we call sometimes Chinese is really a gigantic family of languages. They’re somewhat divided in mutual intelligibility, and somewhat united in their writing system. How are they different, and how are they maintaining themselves? Two Chinese researchers, Wu Mei-Shin and Ye Jingting, join us. And what’s going on in the Cantonese lingopod world? We’re joined by Israel Lai of Rhapsody in Lingo.

Words of the Week are coming out of the woodwork, and who better to work through them with us than Grant Barrett of A Way with Words? Wowee.

Our Mailbag is once again full of questions, and podcasting luminary Helen Zaltzman is here to help us answer them! Why is the raspberry sound (PBTPBBBBT) not a speech sound in any language? Or is it? How can sounds in a language change so much over time? Am I BURNED OUT? Or BURNT OUT? Why are they called metaphysicians and not metaphysicists? What can we call something besides LAME? Why is AMPHI- so infrequently used in English?

Blog post with show notes: http://becauselanguage.com/29-cultish/ Support the show on Patreon: http://patreon.com/join/becauselangpod/ Language helps us build and maintain social relationships. Cults — however we define them — exploit this function and subvert it for their own ends. Amanda Montell is the author of the new book Cultish, and she joins us for this show. And researcher Jared Holt explains why QAnon conspiracy catch phrases seem to be dropping off in popularity from the mainstream web.  

Show notes: http://becauselanguage.com/28-the-cutting-edge/ Become a patron and support the show: http://patreon.com/join/becauselangpod/ We're taking over Pint of Science (or are they taking over us?) for this episode! Three researchers are presenting their work in language, and they'll also tell us what they're learning about public science communication.