Tag: protolinguist

April 2015: Wikimedia #lingwiki grant, language is open source talk, resources for high school teachers, and IPA Scrabble

Gretchen McCulloch
IPA Scrabble set

I received a grant from Wikimedia to fund the upcoming #lingwiki editathons in May (at the CLA in Ottawa), July (at the LSA summer institute in July), and October (at NELS in Montreal). You can see the grant information here: Linguistics Editathon series: Improving female linguists’ participation and representation on Wikipedia. The grant was funded through Wikimedia’s Inspire campaign to improve the gender gap in Wikipedia editing, which was a great fit considering that a lot of fantastic female linguists have participated in previous lingwikis, and many articles about notable female linguists have already been added. I’m excited to see more articles in that area as well as our other two categories of under-documented languages and linguistics stubs improved in the three upcoming lingwikis.

I gave a lightning talk called “Language is Open Source” at AdaCamp Montreal, a conference for women in open source and open culture. You can read the full text here. I also facilitated a round-table session about linguistics at AdaCamp — turns out there are a quite a lot of former linguists in tech!

I wrote two articles for Mental Floss:

I compiled a resource post for high school teachers who want to do linguistics activities with their classes. Feel free to share with any high school teachers in your life!

The second episode of Ling Vids came out, on what “wanna” tells us about how sentences fit together:

Selected blog posts:

I also posted some gorgeous photos of an IPA Scrabble set that the Yale Undergraduate Linguistics Society made (see all the pictures here):

IPA Scrabble set
IPA Scrabble picture courtesy of YULS

October 2014: #LingTomSwifties, teaching yourself syntax trees, and conference pins

Gretchen McCulloch

The abstract for my LSA panel about popularizing linguistics online is now up.

I had some fun with #LingTomSwifties on twitter.

On Lexicon Valley:

Selected blog posts:

I ran a series on my blog about the various possible ways to teach yourself to draw syntax trees.

  1. So, you asked the internet how to draw syntax trees. Here’s why you’re confused.
  2. What do we even mean by a syntax tree?
  3. Type 1: A sentence is an S
  4. Type 2: A sentence is an IP
  5. Type 3: A sentence is a TP
  6. Reconciling theories and final notes
  7. Other resources and topics

I also attended NWAV 43 (New Ways of Analyzing Variation) in Chicago (which memorably involved witnessing this song to Bill Labov), and NELS 45 (North-East Linguistics Society) in Boston. Here are my Lexicon Valley and All Things Linguistic pins for conference-wearing!

Lexicon Valley and All Things Linguistic (ATL) pins

August 2014: Crowdsourced linguistics and plans for a Wikipedia editathon

Gretchen McCulloch

In August, I organized a project on Crowdsourced Linguistics, to help bridge the gap between common questions people have about linguistics and linguists who can answer them. The three organizational posts with the plans and summary of the series are here:

I’d also like to highlight a few of the more in-depth explanations that people wrote:

As a result of the Crowdsourced Linguistics project, I’ve also begun working with the LSA to organize an editathon at the January 2015 Linguistics Society of America annual meeting, where linguists can learn how to edit Wikipedia and tackle a few of the many linguistics stubs. More details to follow as we work them out, but if you think you might be interested in helping out, do get in touch!

I also wrote about crash blossoms for Grammar Girl and marked my 1000th post on All Things Linguistic.

Highlights of my recent writing for Lexicon Valley:

Selected blog posts:

July 2014: Ling Camp wrapup and crowdsourced linguistics

Gretchen McCulloch

I’m starting a new way of getting updates about my linguistic activities: summary blog posts on my website approximately once a month. My blog, All Things Linguistic, continues to update daily, and I continue to write for Slate’s language blog, Lexicon Valley, and elsewhere, but if you’d rather get a highlights version or you prefer to subscribe to things via email, that’s what these posts are for. They’ll also be a useful record, as All Things Linguistic by now has a considerable archive. You can subscribe via email using the “follow” button at the side, via rss, or just check my website and probably other social media profiles.

In July, I taught two linguistics sessions to 9-14 year olds at Explorations summer camp in Montreal. I wrote summary blog posts each week with the activities we did and some reflections on the experience.

Highlights of my recent writing for Lexicon Valley:

Selected blog posts:

For August, I’m starting a new project on crowdsourced linguistics, which you can read about here.