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I'm a lexicographer.

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I make dictionaries.

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And my job as a lexicographer

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is to try to put all the words
possible into the dictionary.

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My job is not to decide what a
word is, that is your job.

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Everybody who speaks english

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decides together what's a word
and what's not a word.

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Every language is just a group of people
who agree to understand each other.

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Now sometimes when people
are trying to decide

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if a word is good
or bad,

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they don't really
have a good reason.

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They say something like,
"Because...grammar!"

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(Laughter).

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And I don't actually care 
about grammar too much.

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don't tell anyone

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But the word grammar--

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actually, there are two 
kinds of grammar.

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There's the kind of grammar that kind 
of lives inside your brain.

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If you're a native speaker of a language or 
a good speaker of a language,

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it's the unconscious rules that you follow
when you speak that language.

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And this is what you learn when
you learn language as a child.

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Here's an example:

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this is a Wug.

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Right, it's a Wug.

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Now there is another one.

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There are two of these.

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there are two...

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(audience): Wugs.

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Exactly! You know how to
make the plural of Wug.

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That rule lives
in your brain.

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You never had to be 
taught this rule

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You just understand it.

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this is a experiment that was invented

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by a professor

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at boston college

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named jean burco0gleesin

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back in 1958

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so we've been talking about this for a long time

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now these kinds of natural

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rules that exist in your brain

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there's not like traffic laws

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there more like laws of nature

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and nobody has to remind you to obey 


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a law of nature, right?

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when you leave the house in the morning

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your mom doesn't say,

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"hey honey, it's going to be cold

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take a hoodie, don't forget
to obey the law of gravity"

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no body says this

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laughter

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now there are other rules

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that are more about manners than they are about nature

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so you can think of like

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a word is like a hat

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once you know how hats work

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nobody has to tell you

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don't wear hats on your feet

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what they have to tell you is

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can you wear hats inside

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who gets to wear a hat

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what are the kinds of hats you get to wear

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those are more of the second kind of grammar

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that linguists often call usage

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as opposed togrammar

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now, sometimes people use

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this kind of rules-based grammar

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to discourage people from

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making up words

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and i think that is, well, stupid

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so for example,

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people are always telling you,

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"be creative, make music

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do art, invent things

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science and technology"

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but when it comes to words,

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they're like

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"don't! no. creativity stops right here,

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whipper-snappers, give it a rest"

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(laughter)

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but, that makes no sense to me

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words are great

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we should have more of them

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i want you to make
as many new words as possible

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and I'm going to tell you six ways

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that you can use to make new words

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the first way is the simplest way

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basically, steal them from
other languages

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(laughter)

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linguists call this borrwing

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but we never give the words back

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so I'm just going to be honest

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and call it stealing

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we usually take words for things
that we like

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like delicious food

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we took cumquat from chinese,

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we took caramel from french

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we also take words for cool things

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like ninja, right?

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we took that from japanese

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which is kind of a cool

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trick cause ninjas are hard to steal from

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(laugter)

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so another way that you can make

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words in english is by squishing

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two toehr english words together

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it's called compounding

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words in english are like legos

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if you use enough force

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you can put any two of them together

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we do this all the time in english

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words like heartbroken

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bookworm, sandcastle

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all are compounds

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so go ahead and make words

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like duck face, just don't make duckface

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(laughter)

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another way you can make words in english

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is kind of like compounding

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but instead you use so much force

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when you squish the words together

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that some parts fall off

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so these are blend words

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like brunch

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is a blend of breakfast and lunch

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motel is a blend of

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motor and hotel

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who here knew that

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motel was a blend word?

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yeah, that word is like so old

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in english that lots of people don't know that

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there are parts missing

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edutainment is a blend word

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of education and entertainment

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and of course electrocute

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is a blend of electric and execute

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you can also make words by chaning

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how they operate

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this is called functional shift

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you take one word that acts

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as one part of speech

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and you change it into
another part of speech

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okay, who here knew that "friend"

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hasn't always been a verb?

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friend, used to be noun

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and then we verbed it

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almost any word in english
can be verbed

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you can also take adjectives

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and make them into nouns

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commercial use to be an adjective

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and now it's a noun

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you can green things

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another way to make words

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in english is backformation

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you can take a word

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and kind of squish it down a little bit

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so for example, we had the word

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editor before we had the word edit

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edit was formed from editor

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sometimes back-formations sound

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a little silly

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bulldozers bulldoze

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butlers butle

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and burglers burgle

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(laughter)

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another way to make 
words in english

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is to take the first letters of something

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and squish them together

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So National Aeronautics and Space Administration

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becomes NASA

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and of course you can do this

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with anything--OMG!

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So, it doesn't matter how silly

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the words are

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they can be really good words of english

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absquatulate is a perfectly good word of english

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mugwhump is a perfectly goo word of english

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words don't have to sound normal

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they can sound really silly

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why should you make words?

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you should make words because every word

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is a chance to express your idea

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and get your meaning across

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and new words grab people's attention

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they get people to focus on what you're saying

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and that gives you a better chance

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to get your meaning across

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a lot of people on the stage have said, 


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"in the future, you can do this

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you can help with this

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you can help explore

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you can help us invent"

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you can make a new word now

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english has no age limit

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go ahead

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start making words today

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send them to me

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and ill put them in my online

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dictionary word bank

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Thank you so much

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(Applause).