One of the requirements for the Introduction to Linguistics course that I teach is a term project, for which I ask students to In plain language: explain something about how a piece of talk works. More exactly: analyze the communicative effects of some aspects of one or more linguistic performances, attending to at least two […]
Over at headsup: the blog, fev recently pondered variation in transcription practice ("Annals of g-droppin'", 6/6/2011). He starts by noting that the same paper edited the same quote, in the same AP story, to have -in' in some but not all gerund-participles in one version, but -ing throughout in another version. And his main concern […]
In comments on my post about Tim Pawlenty's recent Iowa performance, various people have raised the question of vowel quality ([i] vs. [ɪ]) as opposed to consonant place ([ŋ] vs. [n]) as a feature of the phenomenon commonly (though misleadingly) known as "g-dropping". This issue, though part of the folklore of sociolinguists, has not gotten […]
[This is really a comment on a comment on one of our recent posts about the sociopolitics of g-dropping — I've set it up as a separate post because it's too long to fit gracefully in the comments section.]
…if you haven't noticed, is good. There are many applications, from conversing with Siri and Alexa and Google Assistant, to getting voicemail in textual form, to automatically generated subtitles, and so on. For linguists, one parochial (but important) application is accurate automatic transcription of speech corpora, and the example that motivates this post comes from […]
The next-most-recent xkcd: Mouseover title: "Slowly progressing from 'how do protons behave in relativistic collisions?' to 'what the heck are protons even doing when they're just sitting there?'"
From Ellen Fleming, a reporter for WWLP22 in Chicopee, Massachusetts: Sometimes that Boston accent slips out when you least expect it pic.twitter.com/urXO2xrQ6E — Ellen Fleming (@EllenFlem) January 12, 2023
The term "eye dialect" has come to cover a range of non-standard spellings. At one end, we have a non-standard representation of a totally standard pronunciation, like "wuz" for "was" — and that's how the phrase's inventor, George Philip Krapp, meant "eye dialect" to be used: The impression of popular speech is easily produced by […]
The last three panels of Dumbing of Age for 8/10/2017, featuring Danny and Sal: Mouseover text: "They have a similar smell."
Commenters on a recent post ("Australian hypocoristics") discussed the vowel quality of the first syllable of McDonald's in detail and at length. The issues involved are interesting enough to deserve a post of their own.
Matt Flegenheimer, "A Voice of New York’s Streets, Saying That It’s Safe to Wawk" (New York Times, 7/7/2012): In a city increasingly conditioned to the automated droning of public address systems, GPS guides and disembodied cellphone sages, Dennis Ferrara stands out, precisely because he seems to fit right in. Mr. Ferrara, 55, the supervisor electrician […]
LS, in Charleston, West Virginia, writes: I have a question I've thought about for years, and today, when I decided to poke around google, I stumbled upon a blog that had your name. Can you tell me why, in southern dialects where the velar nasal changes to a coronal nasal, there are two exceptions? I […]
A couple of days ago, Greta van Susteren interviewed Sarah Palin on Fox ("'Maverick' Palin vs. 'Quasi Reality Show'", 9/27/2011). Out of the whole 16-minute segment, one word got the lion's share of the coverage. Thus Sheila Marikar, "Sarah Palin: ‘Is a Title and Campaign Too Shackle-y?’", ABC News 9/27/2011: A Palin presidency: Too “shackle-y?” […]