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About Chris Cummins

NBN Episodes hosted by Chris:

Language June 22, 2017

Computational Models of Referring

A Study in Cognitive Science

Kees van Deemter

Hosted by Chris Cummins
Sometimes we have to depend on philosophy to explain to us why something apparently simple is in fact extremely complicated. The way we use referring expressions - things that pick …
Language January 18, 2017

Yiddish and Power

Dovid Katz

Hosted by Chris Cummins
As described by Dovid Katz, Yiddish is an extraordinarily multifaceted language: a language that is at once acclaimed as sacred and dismissed as deficient, profoundly connected to centuries of religious …
Language August 3, 2016

Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice

An Introduction to Applied Sociolinguistics

Ingrid Piller

Hosted by Chris Cummins
According to the blurb, Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice: An Introduction to Applied Sociolinguistics (Oxford University Press, 2016) "explores the ways in which linguistic diversity mediates social justice in liberal …
Language February 17, 2016

Language, Mind and Computation

Prakash Mondal

Hosted by Chris Cummins
My instinct as a researcher is usually to shy away from confrontation about foundational issues in the philosophy of language, which is probably why I do what I do (that …
Language November 8, 2015

Writing Systems (2nd Edition)

Geoffrey Sampson

Hosted by Chris Cummins
It's not always been clear how the study of written language fits into linguistics. As a relatively recent historical development, it's tempting to see it as a sideshow in terms …
Language May 28, 2015

Philosophy of Language

the Classics Explained

Colin McGinn

Hosted by Chris Cummins
I must admit that my relationship to philosophy of language is a bit like my relationship to classic literature: I tend to admire it from afar, and rely on the …
Language March 18, 2015

From Whorf to Montague

Explorations in the Theory of Language

Pieter Seuren

Hosted by Chris Cummins
A colleague once told me that people in linguistics could be divided into two groups: sheep and snipers. I'm not sure whether this is a proper dichotomy - it's certainly …
Language December 13, 2014

Speaking Our Minds

Why Human Communication is Different, and How Language Evolved to Make it Special

Thom Scott-Phillips

Hosted by Chris Cummins
I hope I'm not being species-centric when I say that the emergence of human language is a big deal. John Maynard Smith and Eors Szathmary rate it as one of …
Language September 14, 2014

Communicating

The Multiple Modes of Human Communication

Ruth Finnegan

Hosted by Chris Cummins
The name of the New Books in Language channel might hint at a disciplinary bias towards "language". So in some sense Ruth Finnegan's Communicating: the Multiple Modes of Human Communication …
Language August 10, 2014

Attitudes to Endangered Languages

Identities and Policies

Julia Sallabank

Hosted by Chris Cummins
As linguists, we're wont to get protective about languages, whether we see them as data points in a typological analysis or a mass of different ways of seeing the world …
Language July 18, 2014

The Language Hoax

Why the World Looks the Same in Any Language

John H. McWhorter

Hosted by Chris Cummins
The idea that the language we speak influences the way we think - sometimes referred to as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis - has had an interesting history. It's particularly associated with …
Language June 9, 2014

The Geometry of Meaning

Semantics Based on Conceptual Spaces

Peter Gardenfors

Hosted by Chris Cummins
A conceptual space sounds like a rather nebulous thing, and basing a semantics on conceptual spaces sounds similarly nebulous. In The Geometry of Meaning: Semantics Based on Conceptual Spaces (MIT …
Language April 15, 2014

Other People's English

Code-Meshing, Code-Switching, and African American Literacy

Vershawn Young, Rusty Barrett, Y'Shanda Young-Rivera, and Kim Brian Lovejoy

Hosted by Chris Cummins
In linguistics, we all happily and glibly affirm that there is no "better" or "worse" among languages (or dialects, or varieties), although we freely admit that people have irrational prejudices …
Language January 28, 2014

Sensorimotor Cognition and Natural Language Syntax

Alistair Knott

Hosted by Chris Cummins
When big claims are made about neurolinguistics, there often seems to be a subtext that the latest findings will render traditional linguistics obsolete. These claims are often met with appropriate …
Language November 7, 2013

The Materiality of Language

Gender, Politics and the University

David Bleich

Hosted by Chris Cummins
David Bleich's book The Materiality of Language: Gender, Politics and the University (Indiana University Press, 2013) is described as a wide-ranging critique of academic practice, which is almost an understatement …
Language September 25, 2013

Health and Risk Communication

An Applied Linguistic Perspective

Rodney H. Jones

Hosted by Chris Cummins
Scientists - and I claim to include myself in this category - sometimes seem to be disparaging about the ability of people in general to understand and act upon quantitative …
Language September 14, 2013

From Utterances to Speech Acts

Mikhail Kissine

Hosted by Chris Cummins
The recognition of speech acts - classically, things like stating, requesting, promising, and so on - sometimes seems like a curiously neglected topic in the psychology of language. This is …
Language July 1, 2013

Native Listening

Language Experience and the Recognition of Spoken Words

Anne Cutler

Hosted by Chris Cummins
One of the risks of a telephone interview is that the sound quality can be less than ideal, and sometimes there's no way around this and we just have to …
Language June 10, 2013

Lexical Analysis

Norms and Exploitations

Patrick Hanks

Hosted by Chris Cummins
It's tempting to think that lexicography can go on, untroubled by the concerns of theoretical linguistics, while the rest of us plunge into round after round of bloody internecine strife …
Language May 30, 2013

The Emergence of Meaning

Stephen Crain

Hosted by Chris Cummins
It's not surprising that human language reflects and respects logical relations - logic, in some sense, 'works'. For linguists, this represents a potentially interesting avenue of approach to the much-debated …
Language April 13, 2013

The Neural Architecture of Grammar

Stephen E. Nadeau

Hosted by Chris Cummins
Although there seems to be a trend towards linguistic theories getting more cognitively or neurally plausible, there doesn't seem to be an imminent prospect of a reconciliation between linguistics and …
Language March 15, 2013

Understanding Language Through Humor

Stanley Dubinsky and Chris Holcomb

Hosted by Chris Cummins
A problem with doing linguistics is that once you start, it's kind of inescapable - you see it everywhere. At some point a few months back, I was watching a …
Language February 19, 2013

A History of Psycholinguistics

The Pre-Chomskyan Era

Willem J. M. Levelt

Hosted by Chris Cummins
The only disappointment with A History of Psycholinguistics: The Pre-Chomskyan Era (Oxford UP, 2012) is that, as the subtitle says, the story it tells stops at the cognitive revolution, before …
Language January 16, 2013

The Anatomy of Meaning

Speech, Gesture, and Composite Utterances

Nick J. Enfield

Hosted by Chris Cummins
Linguists are apt to get excited when a language is identified that exhibits exotic properties, and gladly travel halfway round the world to document it, particularly if they think it's …