More People Have Learned about Linguistics than I Have: The Comparative Illusion

How do some sentences trick us into thinking they're good, when really they're not? And what can that tell us about how we process language? In this week's video, we take a look at the comparative illusion, a tricky kind of sentence that seems meaningful, but falls apart when we consider it further. And then we look at what exactly it is about them that confuses our minds.
This is a shorter format video that we'd been toying with making for a while! Do you like this length? We'll be making more of our regular length videos coming up soon!
Last episode:
Who Is She? The Syntax and Semantics of Pronouns: • Who Is She? The Syntax...
Other of our psycholinguistics videos:
Why Are There So Many Meanings? Ambiguities: • Why Are There So Many ...
Do Sounds Carry Their Own Meaning? Arbitrariness of the Sign: • Do Sounds Carry Their ...
What Can Our Eyes Tell Us about Language? Eye-Tracking: • What Can Our Eyes Tell...
Our website also has extra content about this week's topic at: www.thelingspace.com/bonus-epi...
Find us on all the social media worlds:
Tumblr: / thelingspace
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And at our website, www.thelingspace.com/ !
You can also find our store at the website, thelingspace.storenvy.com/
We also have forums to discuss this episode, and linguistics more generally.
Sources:
The material for this video came most from:
faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/...
and
ling.umd.edu/~wellwood/downloa...
But also from:
Articles:
itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/langua...
itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/langua...
itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/langua...
facultyoflanguage.blogspot.ca/...
thelousylinguist.blogspot.ca/2...
languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/...
Papers:
ling.umd.edu/~wellwood/downloa...
semanticsarchive.net/sub2012/O...
deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstr...
www.colinphillips.net/wp-conte...
ling.umd.edu/~colin/research/p...
internal.psychology.illinois.e...
Ferreira & Patson (2007)
www.ai.mit.edu/projects/dm/the...
Abstracts:
www.ling.upenn.edu/Events/PLC/...
Notes:
people.umass.edu/scable/LING75...
Looking forward to next time!

[@Chlocean]

The sentence is correct if you're referring to the number of people you own. I don't keep that many humans, so it's inevitable that more people have been to Berlin than I have.

[@madelynh7052]

your shirt is a super schwa This is possibly the greatest shirt I have ever seen Edit: My credit card is going on a trip with me to the merch store...😍

[@thelingspace]

Thanks so much! I really like the design on it, and it is a very comfortable shirt. ^_^

[@hlicj]

more people have (more) schwas on their t-shirts than I have? :-D (1>0)

[@Noideaforausernamex3]

I really like this shorter format :)

[@thelingspace]

Glad you like it! I think we may try doing some of these shorter ones in the future. There are a lot of fun topics that don't really fit into the larger time slot, but that we could do this way. ^_^

[@stationshelter]

More I have been to Montreal than people

[@Biped]

Yes.

[@JaldaboathIrghen]

Nice

[@EchoHeo]

Mind blown

[@JuniperHatesTwitterlikeHandles]

Wow how many you do you have!?

[@stationshelter]

@@JuniperHatesTwitterlikeHandles sometimes!

[@marijastrahinjic8273]

More ling teachers should be like you, Moti. Thank you for making it so entertaining!

[@alexolas1246]

More examples of this have been made in the comments than I have.

[@thelingspace]

There sure are! This is a pretty common one to crop up, and I don't know if it's that linguists like doing it, or it just is something that happens in speech in English sometimes. But I definitely notice people doing it occasionally in the wild. ^_^

[@nataliadovgal1880]

Just found your channel and can't stop watching:)

[@moondust2365]

Am I the only one that thinks "More people have been to Montreal than I have." means "More people have been to Montreal more times than I have." as in there are more people that have been to Montreal x times than me whose only been y times with x being a larger number than y? I feel like that's the default assumption, but I could be wrong. The sentence in the middle of this video, from my interpretation, compares the number of people who've been to Montreal and the number of times I've been to Montreal. But from my interpretation of the original sentence, I've assumed it to be saying that the number of times I've been there is less than average.

[@DoBetterAnteUp]

i also feel like the sentance makes complete sense (im not a native btw) but like i feel its a tottaly valid sentence that convaies (idk spelling) the idea that theres loads of people that have been to Montrealo, meanwhile i havent been to Montrealo or that more people go to Montrealo way more often than i go to Montrealo

[@UnconsciousQualms]

HE'S STILL ALIVE!

[@alexolas1246]

HE WILL ALWAYS BE ALIVE

[@EchoHeo]

la .alEksolas. Illuminati confirmed??????

[@thelingspace]

I've done my best to remain so! ^_^

[@thelingspace]

That is an interesting proposition, but I'm not 100% sure how to feel about it. ^_^

[@felipevasconcelos6736]

@@thelingspace Have you failed to remain alive?

[@streaklight]

It's simple: it just means "people have been to Montreal more times than I have" (where "people" is generic meaning 'your average person') hence works only for repeatable events.

[@hgb3405]

by the way the first thing I interpreted this as is people have been to Montreal longer than I have

[@brookenjonas]

Where can I get that shirt?

[@thelingspace]

You can get it at thelingspace.storenvy.com/ ! Glad you like it. ^_^

[@Gimodon]

When I was a kid I would sometimes tell my brother "I'm better at Doom than you are at Quake" (or some other 2 games). Does that count as an Escher Sentence?

[@CoffeeWhispers]

oh no. after watching this, i ended up always adding 'than i have' to every sentence.

[@MySerpentine]

LOL that last line

[@frankharr9466]

Huh. That's really quite interesting.

[@sugarfrosted2005]

Where's you go? :(

[@thelingspace]

We've been caught up in other projects, and we've been trying to find the best way to make new videos alongside that. The plus side is, I think we're starting to make headway on it! We're looking to restart posting for the fall semester, although we'll be putting up a new interview before then. We're looking forward to getting back to sharing some exciting language with everyone! ^_^

[@princeicio]

Are you Italian?

[@MOPCLinguistica]

"1.5 billion people don't live in Paris" actually they do. There are 1.5 billion people and more not living in Paris.

[@matt_dude2446]

But thent he sentence is true.

[@katlehokomeke]

The audio quality needs to improve 😐

[@CarmenLC]

Wait. Who are you and what is this?

[@thelingspace]

I know, it feels weird to me, too! But we wanted to try something a bit different format-wise, so. ^_^

[@rasmusn.e.m1064]

I hope the title is correct. Having people in this modern age as a concept makes me uncomfortable.