WEBVTT

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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 at Boston College
named Jean Berko Gleason

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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
rules that exist in your brain.

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Theres aren't 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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Nobody 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
a word like a hat.

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Once you know how hats work

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nobody has to tell you, 
"Don't wear hats on your feet."

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What they have to tell you is, 
"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
as opposed to grammar.

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Now, sometimes people use
this kind of rules-based grammar

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to discourage people from
making up words.

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And I think that is, well, stupid.

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So, for example, people
are always telling you,

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"Be creative, make music
do art, invent things,

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science and technology."

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But when it comes to words,
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 borrowing,

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but we never give the words back

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so I'm just going to be honest
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,
like "ninja", right?

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We took that from Japanese,

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which is kind of a cool trick cause
ninjas are hard to steal from.

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(Laughter).

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So another way that 
you can make

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words in English is by squishing
two other 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", 
"bookworm", "sandcastle"

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-- all are compounds.

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So go ahead and 
make words

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like "duckface", 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
that some parts fall off.

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So these are blend words, 


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Like "Brunch" is a blend of
"breakfast and lunch".

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"Motel" is a blend of 
"motor" and "hotel".

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Who here knew that "motel"
was a blend word?

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Yeah, that word is like so old
in English that lots of people

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don't know that there
are parts missing.

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"Edutainment" is a blend word
of "education" and "entertainment".

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And of course "electrocute" is a
blend of "electric" and "execute".

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You can also make words by 
changing how they operate.

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This is called functional shift.

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You take one word that act
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
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
and make them into nouns.

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"Commercial" use to be an adjective
adjective and now it's a noun.

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And of course, you can 
"green" things.

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Another way to make words
in English is back-formation.

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You can take a word and squish
it down a little bit.

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So for example, we had the word
"editor" before we had the word "edit".

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"Edit" was formed from "editor".

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Sometimes back-formations 
sound 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
with anything--OMG!

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So it doesn't matter how 
silly 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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"Mugwump" is a perfectly
good 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 
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,
you can help us 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, start making
words today.

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Send them to me,

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and I'll put them in my online
dictionary word-bank.

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Thank you so much

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(Applause).