Tessera
Folgen

language science

@priap.bsky.social

phonologist in search of new frameworks in syntax

93 Posts267 Follower30 Folgt
language science@priap.bsky.social · last yr.

Paraphrasing the follow abstract: Science must be systematic or methodological in order to be rational. But equally, we must recognise our inherent tendency to lose our object if out work becomes excessively instrumental. Hence, we must constantly radicalise our methods.

Bild
Christian DiCanio@cdicanio.bsky.social · 2y ago

I think we can state clearly what our theoretical perspective is, what hypotheses we're testing, and what the data/results demonstrate. We can speculate about what the results mean for all of "language" I suppose, but linguists almost uniformly ignore language sampling bias.

ruhthebird@ruhthebird.bsky.social · 2y ago

the primary purpose of all social media is to amass data. if BlueSky isn’t taking down what’s supposed to be horrifying or offensive content such as revenge porn, then it’s because they see collecting related user data and interaction metrics as useful to whatever they’re building

Bluesky Safety@safety.bsky.app · 2y ago

We do not currently take action on accounts that share Bluesky screenshots with commentary, unless that commentary violates our Guidelines. We will take action when someone's private information is shared without their consent, but only when it is personally identifiable and verifiable in-app.

language science@priap.bsky.social · 2y ago

A great quote for the linguistic anthropologists among us: "We anthropologists [...] must re-examine basic premises and realize that English language patterns of thought are not a necessary model for the whole of human society." — Leach, E. R. (1961). Rethinking Anthropology. p. 27. 🐦🐦

language science@priap.bsky.social · 2y ago

Overreliance on English hinders cognitive science – premature claims of universality (due to over-sampling of English speakers) – limited cognitive constructs being examined (due to the use of English as a meta-language) (doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2022.09.015) 🐦🐦

Illustrative examples of biases due to English use
language science@priap.bsky.social · 2y ago

Shared widely elsewhere: "I have resisted the term 'sociolinguistics' for many years, since it implies that there can be a successful linguistic theory or practice which is not social.” — William Labov, 1927-2024 🐦🐦

Christian DiCanio@cdicanio.bsky.social · 2y ago

One thing that has stuck with me from my reading this fall is a point that Jeff Mielke makes in his 2008 book: "linguists often confuse their shared assumptions with linguistic universals." Since I care about features, I thought I should read Jeff's book in more detail. A thread. 1/n #linguistics

language science@priap.bsky.social · 2y ago

One nontrivial measure of a given framework is its direct utility or benefit to language description. We should consider more gravely the pros and cons of precision contra jargon.

Samuel Akinbo @akinbosk.bsky.social · 2y ago

Do we have any linguist here who is actively documenting iconicity in spoken language? I would love to connect with them. Most of the people I know working on iconicity focus on their he experimental sides of things.

language science@priap.bsky.social · 2y ago

The first that comes to mind is Hall (2013) on intermediate phonological relationships that as relegated as exceptional and rarely addressed despite their ubiquity (doi.org/10.1515/tlr-2013-0008)

A typology of intermediate phonological relationships

This paper presents an overview of phonological relationships that are “intermediate” between contrast and allophony. As has been observed for many years, such intermediate relationships occur widely ...

doi.org

language science@priap.bsky.social · 2y ago

Thinking about the systematicity of fast, slow, casual, and careful speech alternations but also what syntactic 'errors' reveal. Jefferson, G. (2004). Glossary of transcript symbols with an introduction. †22. Pragmatics and Beyond New Series, 125, 13-34.

“Harvey Sacks often spoke of the possibility of ‘order at all points’, and in one of his lectures (Sacks, 1966 [1992:I:238]) tells us that 'we’re dealing with something real and powerful. And not just grossly powerful, like, it provides for the rate of industrial development, but it provides for little tiny things that God might have overlooked, perhaps’ … (I have a feeling that Sacks’ specifically formulating this sort of material as something he found 'enormously amusing’, or had 'a fascination’ with, was dealing with their on-the-face-of-it utter trivialness, even for the sort of mundane stuff he was known to work with. These 'little tiny things’ were perhaps beginning to be just a bit too tiny for comfort.)”
Christian DiCanio@cdicanio.bsky.social · 2y ago

It's essentially a kind of phonemic vs. phonetic variant figure. Most speech sounds are variable and capturing this variation is one of my goals in writing the grammar. We're too stuck on "it's phonemically /t/, so it must always be a voiceless stop."

language science@priap.bsky.social · 2y ago

I'm surprised more phonologists and syntacticians aren't working together. We all agree there are minimal units in each domain (phone, morph, etc), but what about a program to identify cross-domain equivalents to phenomena?