#Pink Floyd Laser Spectacular

[night-vale-clips-unoffical]

Check out the official Welcome to Night Vale website and YouTube channel

[russian-dallas]

Календарь культурных событий Большого Далласа c 27 сентября по 11 октября 2021 года

Календарь культурных событий Большого Далласа c 27 сентября по 11 октября 2021 года

Музыкальный концерт «Через океан» Жительница Далласа — Заслуженная артистка Украины Людмила Касьяненко и гость города — Народный артист Украины Анатолий Матвийчук 1 октября в 7 часов вечера дадут концерт «Через океан». Вход — свободный. Адрес: 4001 Custer Rd., Plano, TX 75023. Световой туннель (Downtown Dallas, Inc. presents “Passage”) Downtown Dallas представит интерактивное произведение…

[paleblueskymusic-blog]

Coming soon!

Review of the Pink Floyd Laser Spectacular coming out tomorrow. It's definitely something...

[kevin--of-desert-bluffs]

WTNV Quick Rundown - 8 - The Lights in Radon Canyon

This is a series where I make bullet-points of lore, interesting facts, quotes and whatever else I think is relevant from the podcast and live show. Why? So new and old fans alike can very quickly catch up or remember things without having to go through all the bits in between.

Catch up here or by looking up the tag #wtnv quick rundown!

Silence is golden. Words are vibrations. Thoughts are magic. Welcome to Night Vale.

Carlos ('this stations favourite scientist') has asked for anyone to come forward who has seen a series of bright colourful lights coming from Radon Canyon, accompanied by unintelligible noises (possibly some form of coded message or signal jamming technique). Carlos declined a live interview and only expressed that he was very scared for everyone in NV.

It turns out these lights and noises as a private Pink Floyd concert, which worries Carlos even more. Cecil is still sad that weekend plans have not yet been discussed (by Carlos). Carlos also owns a 'economical but attractively sporty hybrid coupe'.

City Council however claims there was no 'Pink Floyd Multimedia Laser Spectacular ', that Pink Floyd isn't even a thing and everyone should stop discussing the non-concert and Pink Floyd who were not there with the ghost of former frontman Syd Barrett. Cecil mentions that they strangely all spoke at once in unison (later episodes will show that City Council is a kind of...hivemind, vaguely consisting of all the same people/entities that it did at the founding of NV).

Each quarter, NV has a mandatory lottery in which those who draw a purple slip of paper are fed to the wolves in the NV Petting Zoo and Makeshift Carnival. 'Younger people' think of it as a barbarous outdated tradition but it's apparently the only way the wolves get fed.

Cecil suggests remembering the three I's of playing the lottery: IDENTIFY - learn how to sense colours (purple has a grittier aura than the safe white coloured slips), IGNITE - set fire to your home because wolves aren't known to not eat arsonists but they can't detect the presence of one, IMITATE - pretend you got a safe white slip because months of painful colour re-education at City Hall because they think you're colour blind is still better than being fed to wolves.

There is a Dr. Dubinsky at the NV Community College (mentioned in passing).

The Night Vale school superintendent is called Nick Ford. He has announced that the Glow Cloud ("All Hail! All kneel for the Glow Cloud! Sacrifice! Pestilence! Sores! All Hail the Glow Cloud!") has joined the School Board. Apparently it was passing over Night Vale, dropping dead animals on the town, controlling everyone's thoughts and tertiary muscle groups, as well as erasing all digital recording devices because it was looking for a nice town to settle down and raise a child in.

It is in fact only remembered because some people wrote down what they saw. These people are kept anon because writing implements are illegal in NV (along with margarita glasses and barcode scanners).

I mean, no matter how good the school, a student can only get out as much as the parents put in. We should ALL take such an impactful role in our children's scholastic lives. Especially you, Steve Carlsberg, you don't do anything except bring unacceptably dry scones to PTA meetings and take grammatically disastrous minutes on your shifts as meeting secretary. Get it together, Steve. - Cecil is a 'serious journalist' that only reports 'unbias facts' and never ever gets personal lol

Billboards have appeared in town overnight in unusual places such as peoples living rooms, busy thoroughfares and directly through a living dog (which is completely fine, except for the new billboard through it). The billboards feature a picture of a turkey sandwich and the word HARLOT in block letters. It is apparently a campaign by the Department of Health and Human Services to promote healthy eating amongst children.

'Representatives for the Desert Bluffs School District, speaking in unpleasant and high-pitched voices indicative of weakness of will and character' are complaining to the Regional Football and Traffic Code Authority about the recent sports match which they lost because they claim that Micheal Sandero's second head counts as a 12th player on the field.

When asked about the controversy over his team’s winning record, Coach Nazr al-Mujaheed said “Our boys are good boys. They’re good boys at football. We win ‘em, with the boys, the football.” He then smiled vacantly, waved at no one, and wandered off in the direction of the woods.  More on this story, as it develops. - I seem to recall that either Joseph Fink or Jeffery Cranor (the writers, in case you didn't know) said that when they wrote and aired this they forgot they were in a desert which wouldn't have a woods so later explained that away into the lore.

The RFTCA said that they would look into these allegations with the utmost seriousness, along with their concurrent investigation into whether Night Vale’s “Invisible Crosswalk” policy is actually a desperate bid to save town funds at the cost of pedestrian lives.

The City Council tries and falls to capture some angels, which they don't recognise as legally existing.

There are several Subway locations in Night Vale, all easily accessible through witchcraft and chanting. They also offer reverse colonics and tobacco cookies. Their slogan is Subway: Devour your own empty heart.

The abandoned mineshaft outside of town where people are taken indefinitely for voting incorrectly now has HBO on Demand. They're also going to execute a random prisoner every day until all incorrect votes are corrected.

“A life of pain is the pain of life and you can never escape it… only hope it hides, unknown, in a drawer like a poisonous spider and never comes out again even though it probably will in unexpected and horrific fashion, scarring you from being able to comfortably conduct even the most mundane, quotidian tasks.” - something Cecil's grandparents used to say apparently

Weather: "This Too Shall Pass" by Danny Schmidt. dannyschmidt.com

Teddy Williams updates us on the city below lane 5. He saws lights are on down there day and night and he hears voices and marching like an army is coming to the surface. 'Since nothing matters any more' bowling is half off and each game comes with a free basket of wings.

We lead frantic lives, filled with needs and responsibilities but completely devoid of any actual purpose. I say, let’s try to enjoy the simple things.

Stay tuned for the NV Symphony Orchestra performing Eugene O'Neill's classic play 'The Iceman Cometh'.

Proverb: We are living in an immaterial world (a ghost world), and I'm an immaterial girl (a ghost).

[wtnv-episode-details]

'The Lights in Radon Canyon' (Episode 8)

'Mysterious lights and sounds are coming from Radon Canyon. Plus, tips on how to win the town lottery, our newest (incorporeal) School Board member, and he abandoned mineshaft finally gets HBO!'

[October 01, 2012]

Introduction:

"Silence is golden. Words are vibrations. Thoughts are magic. Welcome to Night Vale." (Cecil Baldwin)

News Headlines:

Big Lottery Draw To be Held Next Saturday

Carlos the Scientists Seeking Witnesses to the Lights in Radon Canyon

Glow Cloud Joins School Board, Superintendent Ford Announces

Traffic Report

Mysterious Billboard Appear Across Town

Lights in Radon Canyon From Pink Floyd Multimedia Laser Spectacular, Witnesses Claim

Night Vale Scorpions Accused of Tampering

[Subway Sponsorship]

Pink Floyd Multimedia Laser Spectacular Never Happened, Claims City Council

Teddy Williams Gives Update on Underground City

Weather: 'This Too Shall Pass' by Danny Schmidt

Proverb:

"We are living in an immaterial world (a ghost world), and I'm an immaterial girl (a ghost)." (Meg Bashwiner)

Mentioned Characters:

Cecil Palmer

Carlos the Scientist

Dr. Dubinsky (First Mention)

Superintendent Nick Ford (First Mention)

Glow Cloud

Steve Carlsberg

Michael Sandero

Angels (Erika)

Old Woman Josie

Coach Nazr al-Mujaheed

Syd Barrett (First Mention)

Cecil's Grandparents (First Mention)

Teddy Williams

Mentioned Groups:

Night Vale School Board (First Mention)

City Council

Sheriff's Secret Police

Night Vale School District

Night Vale PTA

Department of Health and Human Services (First Mention)

Park Department (First Mention)

Night Vale Scorpions

Desert Bluffs School District (First Mention)

Regional Football and Traffic Code Authority (First Mention)

Mentioned Locations:

City Hall

Night Vale Radio Station

Night Vale Petting Zoo and Makeshift Carnival (First Mention)

Night Vale Community College (First Mention)

Radon Canyon

Subway (First Mention)

Abandoned Mine Shaft Outside of Town

Desert Flower Bowling Alley and Arcade Fun Complex

Underground City

Written By: Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor

Music: Disparition

Voice Actors:

Cecil Baldwin

[lingthusiasm]

Transcript Lingthusiasm Episode 56: Not NOT a negation episode

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 56: Not NOT a negation episode. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the Episode 56 show notes page.

[Music]

Gretchen: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Gretchen McCulloch.

Lauren: I’m Lauren Gawne. Today we’re getting enthusiastic about negation!

Gretchen: Or “We’re not getting unenthusiastic about negation,” if you will.

Lauren: “We’re not NOT getting enthusiastic about negation.” But first, we just want to say thanks to everyone who became a patron or was already a patron and came to our April liveshow that was part of LingFest.

Gretchen: It was really fun to get to see and hear from you all in the chat and on social media. This show has been edited and put up on our Patreon bonus feed. If you want to listen to it in audio only like a normal podcast, you can listen to it on Patreon if you didn’t catch it live. We’d also like to thank everybody who came to LingFest in general. All of the great events that people put on were really fun! It was really great to see all of the community around that.

Lauren: LingFest came on the back of LingComm21, which was our conference for people doing LingComm, which was also a lovely experience. Thanks to everyone who participated in one or both of those events.

[Music]

Gretchen: “There is nothing to be suspicious about here.”

Lauren: “That’s good because I absolutely did not eat the whole secret stash of chocolate while you weren’t looking.”

Gretchen: “And I definitely didn’t spill water everywhere.”

Lauren: “I totally have not adopted a pet dinosaur.”

Gretchen: “The moon is absolutely in its usual position. No one has blown it up – especially not me.”

Lauren: I am quite dubious, and I’m just gonna wait until I can definitely check that by looking at the moon.

Gretchen: I am also a little bit worried about the status of your dinosaur or dinosaur-free lifestyle.

Lauren: I don’t have a pet dinosaur. I was very clear. No dinosaur.

Gretchen: But if you haven’t had a pet dinosaur the entire time I’ve known you, why are you bringing it up today?

Lauren: Every day I have not had a pet dinosaur, and yet, bringing it up today somehow makes it feel relevant in a way a bit like we talked about in our episode on Gricean maxims where you only talk about things because they are relevant.

Gretchen: Just like I have not been blowing up the moon every single day of my life –

Lauren: Thankfully.

Gretchen: – yet somehow, when I start saying it like that, it also reminds me of a feature of the podcast Welcome to Night Vale, which is a delightfully surreal podcast. There’s this bit in Episode 8 that I wrote about back in 2013 when I was first listening to Welcome to Night Vale that also uses negation in a very similar sort of way. Here’s the quote, “We’re receiving word from the City Council that there was absolutely not a Pink Floyd Multimedia Laser Spectacular this weekend at Radon Canyon – there never was a Pink Floyd Multimedia Laser Spectacular ever near Night Vale. ‘Pink Floyd is not even a thing,’ said the Council in a statement,” and at the same time, you’re left with this impression that –

Lauren: That’s a lot of denying.

Gretchen: Yeah. It’s sort of “Methinks thou dost protest too much,” like, “Why are you protesting so much?” Surely, every day, near my house, there is not a Pink Floyd Multimedia Laser Spectacular, and yet no one has felt obliged to inform me of this.

Lauren: It’s because the only times we talk about something not happening is because the absence of something is relevant. Language takes a default positive talking about things that are here or do exist. It’s the lack of something that gets overtly marked in the grammar of languages.

Gretchen: Right. It’s also the lack of something brings in this presupposition that the lack of something is a relevant thing to talk about or that it could have been expected but hasn’t happened. If I say something like, “I haven’t eaten dinner yet today,” that’s not ontologically weird, philosophically weird, in the same way “I don’t have a pet dinosaur” is weird. Because it is still an open question on any given day whether or not I’ve had dinner. Or if I say, “I don’t have a cat,” that is an open question that reasonable people sometimes do have cats, and so it could be reasonably relevant that I might or might not have a cat in the way that it’s not reasonably relevant that I might or might not have a pet dinosaur.

Lauren: This shows up in the grammar where the default is positive. You don’t add anything to a sentence, usually, to indicate that something’s positive. You have to add something to the grammar to show that it’s negative.

Gretchen: If you look at the World Atlas of Linguistic Structures, which is a great set of maps that is available on the internet for free for you to look at, they have over 1,000 languages on their negation map. They have a bunch of different ways that languages can indicate negation, whether you add a different word or whether you change something about the verb or whether you add two things or other things like that. In over 1,000 languages, all of them have something you add to make the sentence negative – not, for example, something you take away.

Lauren: You get to this point with language as a consistent feature of language where the absence of something or the negation of something is indicated by adding something to the grammar whether that’s a word or a morpheme that affixes to a word.

Gretchen: Which is philosophically weird when you think about it, right, because why is the presence of something indicated with the version of the sentence that has less in it, and the absence of something is indicated by the version of the sentence that has more in it.

Lauren: I think it definitely goes back to the initial examples we used where actually talking about the absence of something only happens when absence is relevant because there is not a dinosaur in my house every day, but I absolutely don’t need to point out every day all the things that are not in my house.

Gretchen: You don’t have any zebras either?

Lauren: I just start the day by rattling them off.

Gretchen: Listing every single animal that’s not in my house every day before I do anything else.

Lauren: We tend to only talk about the absence of something when it’s relevant. This is part of why negation is an additive thing to the grammar. We think about the positive version of the utterance as somehow being more default.

Gretchen: It’s actually kind of similar to how we think about numbers. Like, “one” and “two” and “three” were invented a long time before the number “zero” was invented. Even though before you have one of something, you have zero of it, but it wasn’t being commented on in a numerical way. It might’ve been being commented on in a negative way because languages do have negation, but it wasn’t being commented on as “I have zero dinosaurs.”

Lauren: Why negation is something that’s kept mathematicians and philosophers and people doing logic and linguists entertained, and many other people entertained, for such a long time and why we’re giving it its own whole episode.

Gretchen: “We’re not NOT doing a negation episode.”

Lauren: Alongside the strong consistency of having some kind of additional marking to indicate negation, the use of particular gestures to indicate negation seems to be one of the more consistent things that languages do across families.

Gretchen: I love it when you have a gesture tie-in.

Lauren: For a couple of centuries, people have grappled with the fact that shaking the head to indicate “no” is incredibly prevalent across languages – and way more prevalent and consistent than nodding is to indicate “yes.”

Gretchen: Oh! That’s interesting.

Lauren: The generally agreed-upon theory is that shaking your head to indicate “no” starts really early when infants are refusing food because it’s something you have an imperative to do.

Gretchen: “No, don’t want this food. No!”

Lauren: Even Charles Darwin wrote a book that, I think, it was just gonna be a chapter of On the Origin of Species, and he just got way into it looking at gestures looking across humans and other animals and different languages and was like, “The head shake for ‘no’ is really consistent.” How people indicate “yes” is less consistent, and it just seems to be “do something that isn’t ‘no’,” whereas “no” seems to be the starting point.

Gretchen: Hmm. That’s interesting.

Lauren: You have this really consistent pattern with head shaking, and you also have these families of gestural tendencies across languages where people use some kind of away motion for negation with their hands.

Gretchen: Like, “Oh, no, I can’t.” I’m doing some sort of sweeping away from my shoulders.

Lauren: A pushing away or a sweeping away or a throwing away are all part of this family that have been looked at across languages. I’ve just published a paper in a journal, Semiotica, about this flicking away, rolling away, gesture that you get in Syuba narratives when people are talking about the absence or the lack of something in a story. All of these types of away negation seem to also tap into this human conceptualisation of negation as something pushed away from or held away from the body – “away” and negation seems to fit together in our –

Gretchen: “It’s not near me.” That actually ties into this idea that the affirmative, the positive, the non-negative form is the default because if you’re pushing it away from your body that implies that it was near your body in the first place.

Lauren: We have a very bodily lived experience of existing and things being here or not being here. Although, that is a good point. I’ve been just talking about the positive, but there is a technical linguist term for “not negative” which is “affirmative” – probably should mention that.

Gretchen: I feel like people have encountered “affirmative” in a very robot voice, you know, [imitates computer voice] “Affirmative. Destroy all the humans” – or something like that.

Lauren: It’s one of those times where you’re like, “Oh, good. A technical term that’s already part of my vocabulary.” That’s a win.

Gretchen: It’s interesting because you could imagine a language where the default beginning is actually negative and, instead, you add something to make it affirmative.

Lauren: This is a hard-to-wrap-your-head-around constructed language experiment.

Gretchen: None of the languages in WALS do this, apparently, but you have English, which has “I don’t have a pet dino,” which is the negative, and “I have a pet dino,” which is the affirmative. English Prime, which is what linguists do when they’re trying to make up a language that is very similar to English but different except one thing so we don’t have to make up new words the whole way through, where you could say something like, “I have a pet dino,” meaning “I don’t have one” because that’s the default form of the sentence, and then if you have like, “I AFF have a pet dino,” which means “I do have one,” where the “AFF” is a fake word that means “affirmative.” That’s just not a thing you see grammatically.

Lauren: I have learnt many languages, I have encountered complex grammars of many languages, and this actually hurts my brain to conceptualise as a way of speaking. In English we have a variety of ways of expressing negation in the grammar. We have separate words like “no” or “not” that we can use to make a whole sentence negative, or we also have affixes that we can use to make a particular word negative. “Unenthusiastic” would be an example from the top of the show – or “unhappy,” “unexciting,” “uninteresting,” “hopeless.” There’re a variety of strategies that English has to do negating; it’s not just one particular thing.

Gretchen: The word formation side of negation often brings up the question of the fossilised words that English has in its vocabulary that look like they have a negative part to them, but we don’t have the positive version of them anymore. You have things like, “ruthless” or “feckless” or “unkempt,” but we don’t have like, “ruthful” or “feckful” or “kempt.”

Lauren: “Kempt.” Yes.

Gretchen: There’s a great poem about this which we can link to. What’s interesting is that I’ve actually been – this is a shameless bragging moment here – I was reading an advance copy of Arika Okrent’s upcoming book.

Lauren: I will be jealous of this on behalf of everyone because Arika Okrent wrote an amazing book about conlanging called In the Land of Invented Languages probably a decade ago now and has a new book about English grammar and its wonderful weirdnesses coming out in the middle of 2021.

Gretchen: Her book is called Highly Irregular. It’s coming out on July 1st, 2021. She makes this really interesting point in the advance copy which is, “We joke about the missing flipsides of ‘hapless,’ ‘ruthless,’ and ‘feckless,’ but not what we should be able to form but don’t from ‘bashful,’ ‘grateful,’ and ‘wistful.’”

Lauren: Huh! I feel like this is a reaction I have when I read Arika’s work a lot. I’m just like, “Ah, yeah. I hadn’t thought about that before.

Gretchen: There’s no “bashless,” “grateless,” or “wistless,” even though it feels natural that there should be a missing positive form of forms that have a negative. We don’t have the same reaction of the missing negative form of things that have a positive, which also gets into that positive-as-default form.

Lauren: These things always seem so consistent on the surface. Then you look at how people actually use them and what gets actively used and what becomes fossils, and you realise that applying negation is a little more complicated.

Gretchen: Then on the flipside of affirmative is no negation at all. There’s also this thing of like, “What if you have extra negation? What if you wanna make something even more emphatically negated?” “I absolutely did not get a baby dinosaur. Nope. No siree. Nah-uh. Didn’t happen.”

Lauren: Some languages can put in more than one negating word to really emphasise that something is negated, which is a strategy you might be familiar with as “double negation,” which occurs in about 10% of the world’s languages.

Gretchen: This is the strategy that I’m really familiar with in French because that’s the default way of doing negation. In formal, written French you have at least two negative words. Sometimes, you can put in more. The default way of doing that is a “ne” before the verb and a “pas” after the verb. Sometimes the “pas” can change into something else. So, “ne VERB pas” is “not,” but if you have “ne VERB personne,” that’s “no one,” or “ne VERB rien,” that’s “nothing.” Even if I just want to say, like, “I did not receive a baby dinosaur,” it would be, “Je n'ai pas reçu un dinosaure,” which is “dinosaur” in French, in case that wasn’t clear. You have the “ne” and the “pas” there. Although, in spoken French, a lot of times the “ne” gets dropped, and so you just have the “pas” indicating negation.

Lauren: The “ne” is the older part, right?

Gretchen: Yeah. English actually, historically, had a second negative particle that was before the verb. If you have “I cannot,” it was more something like, “I ne cannot.” They were both there and then the earlier one gets dropped. This happens sometimes you get negatives reinforcing each other and then “Oh, now we don’t need this one.”

Lauren: If we revisited those 120 languages with double negation in the WALS map in a century – because languages are constantly changing and moving around in their grammar some of them might’ve dropped one of those negative elements and gone back to being a single negation language, and some languages might add a second one and become a language that has double negation. French is kind of in the middle of doing that at the moment.

Gretchen: This process in linguistic research is called “negative concord” rather than “double negation” because it’s not just two of them necessarily. A language that has negative concord can continue stacking negative elements like “nothing” and “no one” and all of these on top. Like, “I didn’t give nothing to no one,” that’s totally the expected way of saying it in French.

Lauren: It’s interesting that that gloss works as the expected form in French because it is totally grammatically viable for some dialects of English, but it’s often stigmatised as being not acceptable or not part of standard English.

Gretchen: The thing that drives me up the wall about the logic for doing that is that the logic for stigmatising it is quote-unquote “two negatives form a positive,” but what this logic doesn’t realise is that it’s extremely spurious logic. It’s a misuse of how logic works.

Lauren: Do you wanna unpack that for us? Because I personally find joy in the fact that language is more interesting than logic, but if people have encountered this argument, where does it fall down for you?

Gretchen: First of all, languages like French exist.

Lauren: I do wonder how much more milage double negation or negative concord in English would get if we called it the “French negation.”

Gretchen: Right! “Oh, it’s like French toast!” Everyone likes things that are French. The “French toast” negation style. There were plenty of early logicians who were French who were surely not making this argument that doesn’t even work for their language in the only way that they were doing things in Descartes’s time.

Lauren: Language is not just numbers.

Gretchen: Also, in English, nobody is confused about the difference between “I didn’t give nothing to nobody” and “I’m not NOT excited.” Those both use multiple negations. In one of them, the negation is trying cancel out the negation, and in the other one, it’s reinforcing the negation. We do know what people mean. It’s not actually confusing.

Lauren: In fact, we can throw even more negation into the way that we speak, and people cope with it really fine.

Gretchen: The other thing is, is that – I don’t wanna get completely linguist on the logicians, but languages have been around for a lot longer than logic has.

Lauren: True.

Gretchen: Formal logic has existed for, I dunno, what, Aristotle? So, a couple thousand years, if we’re gonna be generous. Language has been around for somewhere in the tens of thousands of years. We’re not even sure whether it’s tens or hundreds of thousands because we literally don’t have records. Just several orders of magnitude longer than logic has existed, language has been around. If we think that roughly 10% of languages have negative concord now, probably some fraction of languages have always had negative concord because it’s a thing that people could do. It’s a bit rich for logic, this young interloper, to come into language, which has been doing just fine this entire time, and be like, “Sorry, you need to redo your entire system because I don’t like it.” Who are you? It’s so young.

Lauren: With that in mind, should we try squeezing even more negation into a sentence? Because we can do better than just double negatives for negative concord.

Gretchen: Yes. This is where we can do one of my favourite examples which is the Mean Girls approach to negation.

Lauren: Okay, not what I expected to be your favourite example, but let’s go.

Gretchen: I mean, look, any excuse to have a Mean Girls reference. That’s the “She doesn’t even go here” type of negation. When you have several bits in a sentence that are actually negative, you could still take one out, and that’s what makes the logical argument superficially appealing because you could get rid of someone, they’re just reinforcing each other. But in this case, you have “She doesn’t even go here,” and if you try to make that positive – “She does even go here.”

Lauren: “She even goes here.” I’m taking out the “n’t” – “She does even go here.” It doesn’t work for me.

Gretchen: Or you could do it with a different stress like, “She EVEN goes here.”

Lauren: Or I guess the affirmative form of this would just be “She goes here.” The “even” doesn’t turn up at all.

Gretchen: The “even” there is doing something interesting. It’s reinforcing the negation without itself being negative per se in isolation – just sort of not being around at all – without the negative there to help it.

Lauren: I guess it would be like a sentence like, “I don’t like ice cream at all,” which apart from being a fake fact –

Gretchen: [Laughs] Would you say, “I like ice cream at all”?

Lauren: I would just say, “I like ice cream.” The “at all” doesn’t need to be there at all.

Gretchen: Or the “I didn’t eat a crumb of cake,” which you can say, “I ate a crumb of cake,” but it’s not quite the opposite of “I didn’t eat a crumb of cake.”

Lauren: It’s a little bit too literal in the affirmative version.

Gretchen: Or something like, “I didn’t touch a drop of water.”

Lauren: “I touched a drop of water,” I just boop it with my ear.

Gretchen: Just going through the rain booping rain drops.

Lauren: That one absolutely does not work when you keep “a drop of water” in there. That construction only works for me in the negative even though a lot of the words in it that are adding to the negation aren’t necessarily negative in their structure.

Gretchen: Exactly. It’s saying, “I didn’t touch even the smallest amount of water” is what that’s doing there. And there’s that “even” again. Coincidentally, this is also something that Arika Okrent talks about in her book Highly Irregular, which is coming out. It’s not only a book about negation, I promise. I was just thinking about negation because I knew we were doing this episode when I was reading it.

Lauren: Also, as you can tell from the examples, negation is where grammar starts to get particularly interesting, so it’s unsurprisingly that a book like Highly Irregular would have a couple of stories about negation in it.

Gretchen: Yeah, because there’re interesting things to say there. Arika Okrent has this great section which talks about things like “even” and “any” and “at all” and “a drop of” which are called “negative polarity items,” if you want a technical term for it.

Lauren: This is a technical term that I know but hadn’t really thought about until we started putting the show together. I guess that by “items” they just mean things that are words or multiple words because “a crumb of” isn’t a word. We can’t just call them “negative polarity words.”

Gretchen: Some of them are individual words like “any” or “yet” or “even” or “either.” Some of them are longer phrases like “at all” or “a thing” or “an iota,” “a drop.” You can get verbs like “budge.”

Lauren: In a sentence like?

Gretchen: Like, “The boulder won’t budge.” You don’t say, “The bolder will budge.”

Lauren: Hmm. I guess some of these are like, “Huh.” Sorry. I’m just gonna take a moment to consult my intuitions there because, yeah, I guess not.

Gretchen: I might be able to say, “budge over,” or something to a person. Then you have whole phrases like, “breathe a word,” “hold a candle,” “sleep a wink,” “lift a finger.”

Lauren: “I couldn’t sleep a wink.”

Gretchen: “Couldn’t sleep a wink.” “I could sleep a wink.” [Laughter] “I could lift a finger.”

Lauren: When you put them into the affirmative, they don’t work. It also shows why they’re just called “negative polarity” rather than “negation” because they bring this negative sense with them, but they are not doing grammatical negating themselves. There’s no “no” or “not” or “un-” in there.

Gretchen: That’s what distinguishes them from something like, “no one,” “nowhere,” “nothing,” which are themselves already negative words. If you think about the polarity of a phrase as like, I guess, if you go away from the equator – let’s say you go north for negation because they both begin with N. As you head towards the North Pole, your negative polarity gets higher.

Lauren: As someone who lives on a continent that is often called the “antipodes” because we are on the opposite side of the world from the Northern Hemisphere, I appreciate that you’re putting north as your deficit for negation. Thank you.

Gretchen: It just, I dunno, acronyms – they’re nice.

Lauren: N for “north,” N for “negation.” Negative polarity items are just sending you in that direction without necessarily being negative themselves.

Gretchen: What’s interesting about them is that although they’re called “negative polarity items” because of this canonical contrast where you say, “There aren’t any here,” versus “There are any here,” which is weird because it doesn’t have the negation, there are also some other contexts where you can say stuff like this. You can say negative polarity items in questions often. “Do you see any?” Or in if-clauses.

Lauren: And if-clauses are famous for not existing quite in our reality. That’s one of the things they’re doing.

Gretchen: “If you make a peep, you’ll get in trouble.” The “if” part of that, you know, somehow that works for negative polarity. And also contexts with words like “without” or “doubt” or “surprise” or “regret.” That’s something like, “I regret lifting a finger to help.” You’re not gonna say, “I lifted a finger to help,” because that one’s weird, but as soon as you regret lifting a finger, somehow that one works fairly well.

Lauren: So, they’re not just doing straight up negating, there’s something more complicated happening there.

Gretchen: This is something that’s still an active area of research to figure out exactly what all the contexts are because some of the negative polarity items work better in some contexts than others, so there can be a bit of fuzziness around the borders for which ones work when. The theories for the reasons behind those conditions can get fairly complicated. It’s interesting to have this observation of like, here’s this whole class of words. You knew about nouns and verbs, but negative polarity items, they’ve been there this whole time, and yet you didn’t realise they had this unifying characteristic of them.

Lauren: There might be some times when something that’s listed as a negative polarity item actually works in the affirmative for some people and why intuition checking becomes a big part of thinking about this because I’ve definitely met some people who can use “anymore,” which I can only use in negative like, “I don’t have a dinosaur anymore.”

Gretchen: Oh no! What happened to it?

Lauren: But there are some English speakers who can use “anymore” in a positive sentence. Whenever I hear it, I’m like, “Oh, that works for you,” but I literally can’t even come up with an example in my head because it doesn’t work in my variety of English.

Gretchen: I have a fun story about positive “anymore,” which is, I didn’t have it growing up. I encountered it in grad school in this very like, “Did you know that in some varieties of English people have positive ‘anymore’?” I was reading the examples and being told these examples. It’s something like, “Cake is expensive anymore.”

Lauren: Alas.

Gretchen: Where it means “nowadays.”

Lauren: I can totally understand it functioning when you use it in a sentence like that. It’s not like my brain can’t process the meaning at all. It’s just not something I would say.

Gretchen: I actually went to a linguistics conference, and I went to a workshop by a linguist who had positive “anymore.” The first time I heard him say it in the wild, I was like, “Oh, this is this thing that I read about in the books.” Three days later, I’d heard this linguist on enough occasions say enough tokens of positive “anymore” that I’m like, “Yeah, it’s grammatical for me now.” I acquired it in this week in 2012.

Lauren: Amazing.

Gretchen: Sometimes, the only reason you don’t have positive “anymore” is because you only have negative evidence to suggest that it doesn’t exist.

Lauren: I just haven’t been exposed to it.

Gretchen: Then I have probably, I dunno, probably less than a dozen tokens of positive evidence in this naturalistic setting from this linguist who didn’t realise that he was grammatically teaching me to use positive “anymore.” He thought he was doing a workshop on a perfectly unrelated topic, and yet I walked out of that being like, “Yeah, it’s grammatical for me,” and it has been ever since.

Lauren: You are an inspiration for lifelong grammatical acquisition.

Gretchen: Right! Because I was an adult. It was great.

Lauren: You called it “positive anymore.” So, the fact that we have negative polarity items, can I intuit that there are also positive polarity items?

Gretchen: Yeah. There aren’t as many, but one of them is–

Lauren: Interesting. Again, this obsession with marking negation.

Gretchen: We mark negation a lot more. But one of them is “somewhat.” You can say, “I liked that cake somewhat.”

Lauren: We’re definitely not moving as close to the positive pole with the “somewhat” there.

Gretchen: “I didn’t like that cake somewhat” is just kind of ugh for a lot of people.

Lauren: That doesn’t work for me.

Gretchen: There’re a few positive polarity items as well that move people further towards the South Pole, if you will.

Lauren: I like that talking about positive polarity items has moved us full circle through negation and back into thinking about negation and thinking about negative structures and affirmative structures as all part of this larger, more complicated system of ways that we have of expressing that things exist or they don’t exist and how we go about talking about that.

[Music]

Lauren: For more Lingthusiasm and links to all the things mentioned in this episode, go to lingthusiasm.com. You can listen to us on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, SoundCloud, YouTube, or wherever else you get your podcasts. You can follow @Lingthusiasm on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr. You can get IPA scarves, esoteric symbol socks, and other Lingthusiasm merch at lingthusiasm.com/merch. I tweet and blog as Superlinguo.

Gretchen: I can be found as @GretchenAMcC on Twitter, my blog is AllThingsLinguistic.com, and my book about internet language is called Because Internet. Have you listened to all the Lingthusiasm episodes and you wish there were more? You can get access to 49 bonus episodes to listen to right now at patreon.com/lingthusiasm or follow the links from our website.

 Patrons also get access to our Discord chatroom to talk with other linguistics fans and other rewards, as well as helping keep the show ad-free. Recent bonus topics include reduplication, an AMA with a lexicographer, and the recording of our liveshow. Can’t afford to pledge? That’s okay, too. We also really appreciate it if you could recommend Lingthusiasm to anyone who needs a little more linguistics in their life.

Lauren: Lingthusiasm is produced by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne, our Senior Producer is Claire Gawne, our editorial producer is Sarah Dopierala, and our music is “Ancient City” by The Triangles.

Gretchen: Stay lingthusiastic! Don’t stay unlingthusiastic!

[Music]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

[dewdropdaydream]

I just want to go to Pink Floyd Laser Spectacular :c

[yahoonewsdigest-us-extra]

Trans-Siberian Orchestra founder Paul O'Neill dies at 61

Entertainment

Trans-Siberian Orchestra founder Paul O'Neill dies at 61

Paul O'Neill, who founded the progressive metal band Trans-Siberian Orchestra that was known for its spectacular holiday concerts filled with theatrics, lasers and pyrotechnics, has died. He was 61. University of South Florida police spokeswoman Renna Reddick said O'Neill was found dead in his room by hotel staff at a Tampa Embassy Suites Wednesday afternoon.

The best description of a TSO show I ever saw came from a reporter who said the only way to describe TSO is 'The Who meets Phantom of the Opera with Pink Floyd's light show,'

bands like ELO, Pink Floyd

The band is best known for its hard rock takes on Christmas staples like Carol of the Bells, but also more experimental, arena-rock songs such as Christmas Eve (Sarajevo 12/24), which described a lone cello player playing a forgotten holiday song in war-torn Sarajevo. That song was on the band's 1996 album, "Christmas Eve and Other Stories," which went triple platinum.Fans especially loved the band's Christmas tours, which were heavy on guitar solos and heavier on special effects — similar to a Broadways Christmas pageant with a heavy metal soundtrack.

O'Neill was a rock producer and manager who began putting together Trans-Siberian Orchestra in 1996, blending heavy metal with classical music and creating a unique brand of rock theater.

bands like ELO, Pink Floyd

[night-vale-clips-unoffical]

Check out the official Welcome to Night Vale website and YouTube channel

[russian-dallas]

Календарь культурных событий Большого Далласа c 25 января по 17 февраля

Календарь культурных событий Большого Далласа c 25 января по 17 февраля

Бразильская вечеринка в Turkish Cafe (Brazilian Dance Party)

25 января с 7 часов вечера до 2 утра Turkish Cafe приглашает на Бразильскую вечеринку. В программе: Dj Goraz и United Dance Academy с лучшими танцорами самбо. Стоимость еды — от 25 до 35 долларов, а также 10 долларов Cover Charge, если приехать в ресторан после 9 часов вечера (до 9 часов вход — свободный). Адрес: Turkish Cafe and…

[whatsupsac]

What’s Up With Your Weekend, 3/31/17-4/2/17:

Friday: 

Pink Floyd Laser Spectacular: A tribute to Pink Floyd complete with a laser spectacular show. Ace of Spades. 6PM. $22-24.

The Big Leboskwi: A lighthearted, absurd piece of film noir, this movie is considered by most experts to be the funniest bowling detective movie ever made. Memorable moments and insane characterizations abound, as "The Dude" stumbles through L.A. on the verge of solving the case of his life. A costume contest will be held for those who wish to come dressed as their favorite character from the film. The Crest Theatre. 7:30-9:30PM. $8-10.

TOMMY’s EP “Beauty is Everywhere” Release Show: Electro Pop-rock artist Tommy will be playing every song from his new EP “Beauty is Everywhere”; sharing the stories, inspiration, and what went into writing them. Guild Theater. 8-9:30PM. $15 at the Door, $12 General Admission in advance, $10 for Students.

Jem&Scout *This Friday!!* OMG!: Jem&Scout perform live with opening acts Simpl3jack and West of Leo. Old Ironsides. 9PM-12AM. $8.

Saturday: 

River City Marketplace: A makers' market designed to showcase over 100 artists, designers, crafters, and small businesses who are sending the message loud and clear: Sacramento is a hub of talent and creativity. Includes live music and local bites. Fremont Park. 11AM-5PM. 

Succulent Wreath Workshop: Create a living wreath! These beautiful wreaths are perfect to decorate your house inside or out. All materials, including succulents, are included in admission. Everyone will create their own 12" wreath. Space is limited so sign up early. Verge Center for the Arts. 2-4PM. $75 for members, $90 for non-members. 

Ana Castillo Reading & Book Signing: Ana Castillo is a celebrated Chicana poet, essayist, editor, activist, novelist, and translator. Castillo’s work in poetry and prose is at once highly innovative and based on established oral and literary traditions. Sol Collective. 6PM. $6.12.

Sacramento Food Festival Premiere: The Sacramento Food Film Festival celebrates food and drink paired with films about our food system. This year's festival kicks off with an all-star cast of chefs pairing bites with short food films from America's Farm-to-Fork Capital and beyond. Sacramento Turn Verein. 6-10PM. $50-75.

Comedy Exchange w/Like Soin and Lendy West: Comedy Exchange invites favorite stand-up comedians to perform 7-minute sets and then our cast of improvisers performs comedy scenes inspired by the comedians’ jokes. This show will feature stand-up comedy by Luke Soin and Lendy West. Sacramento Comedy Spot. 10:30-11:30PM. $8.

Sunday:

43rd Annial Xipe/Colores: Maquilli Tonatiuh and the Sacramento Community invite you to the 43rd Annual Xipe/Colores ceremonia that will honor our children and spring time new life that leaves the old behind so the blessings continue to arrive. Southside Park. 10AM-2PM.

Inter-Association Spring Saunter on R St: Join the Sacramento Inter-Association of Emerging Professionals for an afternoon spring saunter along historic R Street and hear about individual projects such as the Warehouse Artist Lofts and Ice Blocks from developers and architects, as well as the vision for revitalizing this vibrant area of downtown Sacramento. The tour will end at Dos Coyotes with a taco bar and mingling with fellow emerging professionals. Reserve your spot now - space is limited. Meet at WAL Picnic Tables. 1-4PM. $5.

Community Sit Returns: Life can be overwhelming to our bodies and minds, causing stress that affects our lives, families, and community. Meditation is an ancient tool for being happier and healthier. Let’s learn and practie together at Community Sit, a weekly drop-in meditation group. All meditation traditions are welcome, as are first-time mediators. Oak Park Healing Center. 5:30-6:30PM. $10 suggested donation, but no one will be turned away for lack of funds.

Beatles ‘67 - Sgt Pepper and other magical mysteries: Celebrate the Beatles' landmark year with music from Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band + Magical Mystery Tour + a few select singles featuring performances from Adrian Bourgeois, Bellygunner, Casey Sims, City Of Trees Brass Band, David, Houston, Jacob Golden, Lauren Wakefield, Sealegs and Larry Carr. Harlow’s Nightclub. 6:30-10PM. All Ages. $10 in Advance, $12 at the Door.

[rayroa]

The Pink Floyd Laser Spectacular is coming to St. Pete this spring

Probably the best way to see "Dark Side of The Moon." source http://www.cltampa.com/music/show-previews/article/21098231/the-pink-floyd-laser-spectacular-is-coming-to-st-pete-this-spring

[kellyrick]

Blown away last night by Pink Floyd Laser Spectacular Show.... #lasers #pinkfloyd #cryptocurrency #lightart

[actionyak]

I just got back from the Brit Floyd laser light spectacular show (a British Pink Floyd tribute band)

But Pink Floyd was already a British band. Does that make Brit Floyd like double British or something how does that work

[sarahsasti]

New Post has been published on Gridthefestival Home Decor

New Post has been published on http://gridthefestival.com/spectacular-pink-floyd-laser-light-show/

Spectacular Pink Floyd Laser Light Show 2018

Pink floyd laser light show can be visited in this holiday and it will be a really good place where there you can see the spectacular laser light show. Anyway, laser light becomes the artistic part this day which will be really excellent in its result of design and look. In a spectacular show now you can see how people make the laser becomes shaped and forming a really good formation with beautiful color combination.

There are some spectacular laser light shows in the world, but such one of the popular place you can visit is the pink floyd laser light show. They will serve and offer you some beautiful and emotional shows of a laser with good music setting. It is an masterpiece, and will make your raise your eyebrow when you see this show.

To prepare the best Christmas party as well, pink floyd laser light show and its laser design shown to you all will probably be a good inspiration to apply in your Christmas party, a Christmas laser light will be awesome anyway. Just check out out photo gallery, and find such the most beautiful design of it. Good luck.