next week in #sociophonetics I'm teaching @mixedlinguist.bsky.social's 2024 article on Southern CA English along Black & Latinx teens. Are there good video or audio clips I can use to illustrate this multiethnolect?
Call for applications to cognitive science PhD program with QR code to the link above
The department of Cognitive Science @jhu.edu is seeking motivated students interested in joining our interdisciplinary PhD program! Applications due 1 Dec
Our PhD students also run an application mentoring program for prospective students. Mentoring requests due November 15.
tinyurl.com/2nrn4jf9
The department of #CognitiveScience at @jhu.edu is seeking motivated students interested in joining our PhD program -- including #sociophonetics in my lab! Applications due 1 Dec; for those interested, we have an Application Mentoring Program thanks to current grads. See flyer for QR link.
#Linguistics at the University of Georgia is hiring a tenure-track faculty member in #phonetics and #phonology. Spread the word and let me know if you have questions!
linguistlist.org/issues/36/31...
okay thanks! The default number of formants (n_formants) is not 4? fasttrackiverse.github.io/fasttrackpy/...
F2 as measured by DARLA vs. new-fave
PRICE F2 as measured by DARLA vs. new-fave
I'm just going by what worked in Praat, which was to change the formant settings to 4 formants with a max of 5 kHz. Should changing max_min_formant to 5000 not have a similar effect?
Looks like o was worst among our comparisons, but PRICE was also bad:
e.g. extremely fronted MOUTH tokens (female speaker) where the correct F1,F2 are like 713 and 2215 (via DARLA, checked in Praat), but new-fave is giving 675 and 876 using the defaults. Phonologically front vowels seem to track OK.
We're going to try upping the min_max_formant parameter?
cool! we're gonna try tweaking the config file, and will keep this in our back pocket...
new-fave I believe uses FastTrack's methods. the issue we have is that archival (crappy) audio seems to get decent results from DARLA (with zero filtering!) but be error-prone in new-fave, while high-quality new audio from speakers with the same dialectal back-vowel hijinks tracks fine in new-fave.
does anyone in #sociophonetics know how the vowel formant training data or measurement process for DARLA and new-fave might be different? Asking for a whole pile of archival audio that's getting wildly different back-vowel values across the two. @jofrhwld.bsky.social @joeystanley.com ...?
life with a sociophonetician/phonologist...
oral history interviewee (b. 1910): "...ret[oɪ]red..."
me: "if he just said 'ret[oɪ]red' instead of 'ret[aɪ]red', how will he say 'fireman'?"
6yo: "f[oɪ]reman"
interviewee: "f[oɪ]reman"
my work here is done 🥳
The conference website for #LabPhon20 is now live: labphon.org/labphon20/home
#LabPhon 20 will happen in #Montréal, Québec, Canada, June 26–28, 2026, with additional pre-conference events on June 25. The call for papers and proposals for satellite workshops will be circulated in late August 2025.
oral history interviewer note-of-the-day:
"Mrs. Lo Grande a little hyper she had just won lottery"
I'll be looking for your tips and tricks!
hi linguists and sociolinguists! question: if a person wanted to state that Wells' lexical sets/keywords are in wide usage for studies of English, what accompanying references would be handiest or most expedient? (any reviews of lexical sets' usage in the literature?) thanks!
Please share widely: The dates for New Ways of Analyzing Variation 53 have changed to November 5-7, 2025, due to a late-breaking university calendar change.
Abstracts due June 15. Visit us at nwav53.ling.lsa.umich.edu (also accessible via nwavconference dot org but BlueSky doesn't like redirects)
Our research appears in a @todayshow.com bit with @parkerposey.bsky.social -- truly an honor!
Y'all, this work elicits public opinions, in the broadcast, that Southern accents are sexy and comforting. It was only possible thanks to the National Science Foundation.
www.today.com/video/is-the...
language change in the news! h/t all our @americandialect.org PADS contributors... apnews.com/article/migr... @joeystanley.com @drkatcarm.bsky.social @lhlew.bsky.social... 😊
if you're thinking matched guise, I'll give you three guesses as to the initial L. in my name 😉
opaque 😉
there's a line of research out of UIUC on this, and they frame it as a marginal contrast. there are several papers. here's one: www.frontiersin.org/journals/com...
A house in my neighborhood had a banner reading TR*MP 2024: MAKE LIBERALS CRY AGAIN... yeah a few weeks ago it finally disappeared
Columbia University has failed to defend academic freedom & freedom of speech & allowed a great institution to be bullied & extorted into submission by an administration hellbent on contorting higher education to their will.
The AAUP condemns this capitulation. We can & must fight back.
"On October 8, 1931, a law went into effect requiring every Italian university professor to sign an oath pledging their loyalty to the government of Benito Mussolini. Out of over 1,200 professors in the country, only 12 refused. All of them were immediately fired." www.chronicle.com/article/what...
hi friends! are you open to some linguistic distraction? consider the English Rhymes Survey below, especially if you're an adult native speaker of North American English. thanks!
englishrhymes.github.io
dear Romance linguists! The next iteration of #LSRL will take place in the Dominican Republic in September 2025. The deadline for abstract submissions is March 31. #LSRL55 #linguistics
lsrl55-lec.pucmm.edu.do#lsrl55
Why Official English is a terrible idea for the United States, from @lingsocam.bsky.social. Like and share! www.lsadc.org/content.asp?...
our 6yo has been saving money for weeks, helping out around the house to earn cash. Yesterday he decided to drop most of it *not* at Target, but at the local indie bookstore. I let him know he's giving back to his community this way. 🥰 #proudmama #shoplocal
when I was a teenager, each family member got their own junkdrawer in the kitchen... except I feel like we also had the term "junkum-bunkum"?
but their grandparents know it! music.youtube.com/watch?v=Ez8f...
can we toss in an old Volvo station wagon for good measure?