John McWhorter

So Richard, let's just get right started, as people say at the beginning of interviews like this.

I want to explore, and I think you do too, the fact that if linguist me reads the selfish gene, I'm always thinking, oh, this is just like language.

And you have an interest in how the evolution of language is similar to the evolution of creatures.

And so just to explore the parallels, the first thing that I've always wanted to ask you is about excess and so.

In any language, any language, the language specifies more things than it needs to.

If you speak that language, you think of it as normal, but it isn't.

And so, for example, if you learn about the future tense in English, you're taught that we say will.

I will buy you some socks.

But if you think about it, that's not a sentence.

When would you say, I will buy you some socks?

That would only be at the culmination of an argument.

Really, more likely would be, I'm going to buy you some socks.

Or you could say, I buy you some socks tomorrow, which gives it a sense of event, or I shall buy you some socks, which doesn't really mean anything, but yet it's another way of saying it.

Our future tends to overdoze it.

I've often thought, so much of language really doesn't need to be there.

No language needs to be as picky about the future as English.

Do creatures, do plant, planters, do they overdo it in the same way?

And if so, why?

There's too much.

And the only thing that could stop it is if the tail became so large that it would interfere.