linguistics flux "syntax doesn't grow on trees." 140819 ... flux 1: "people who do logic are such nerds." 2: "there is a possible world where i am not a nerd." 3: "unfortunately, it is not accessible." 140819 ... flux "conferences chaired by no syntactician ever end on time" 140819 ... flux "this work fills a much needed gap" 140819 ... flux "this is the sort of thing that comes out of hats. we don't want rabbits in linguistics. except perhaps for bugs bunny because of the questions he asks about operators." 140819 ... flux "nanosyntax... i have no idea why it's called that. maybe ask mork from ork?" 140819 ... flux "that's 'impenetrable whole', not 'impenetrable hole'" 140819 ... flux "this is from the horse's mouth... not to say that chomsky is a horse, but if he is, he is certainly a talking horse." 140819 ... flux "everybody loves somebody sometime. and that somebody is your mother." 140819 ... flux "this explanation is, shall we say, orthogonal to reality" 140819 ... flux "is it enough to be able to distinguish words from non_words? presumably not." 160803 ... flux and though insanity and not linguistics, :david-wynn: miller once said something like, "i can syntax as fast as i can talk" 160803 ... amy in red ""sweet" 160806 ... epitome of incomprehensibility The prof whose last name I pronounced "Reese" though it might be more like "Rice" went on a digression about how he put Chomsky's name into his course title to lure in rabble-rousing Concordians who'd think it was about the guy's political critiques. He was partly joking, but serious in his first-class point: English doesn't really exist. He wanted to know: was this shocking to us? (Maybe if I hadn't heard a similar thing from the sociolinguistics prof last year. Quoting "a language is a dialect with an army and a navy" and more. Basically, the boundaries of a single language are scientifically arbitrary. Where/when do you draw the lines? Politics will determine a lot of it.) Different branches of the discipline, but they seem pretty united on that front. 210914 ... e_o_i flux's quotes are great, by the way. I wish he were here, because have a couple of questions. E.g. who said the "orthogonal to" quote?? Mark Hale uses the expression "orthogonal to" as well. But more than one person can use a given expression. Just because I learned it just recently doesn't mean it's rare (perspective, Kirsten, perspective). 211004 ... nr listening ad nauseam to the british podcast my_dad_wrote_a_porno has me noticing different pronunciations of words than i'm used to. "says" to rhyme with "days" jaguar pronounced like jag-you-er condom pronounced like con-DOM (equal emphasis on both syllables) garage pronounced to rhyme with barrage vitamin pronounced to rhyme with bit-a-min (this one i'd known) 211104 ... nr a friend from illinois used the phrase "all the sudden." i'd never heard this before, until jeff tweedy said the same thing. i wondered if it was an illinois thing? a midwestern thing? so i googled the etymology of "all of a sudden," how i've always said it, and found this: https://www.grammarly.com/blog/all-of-a-sudden/?fbclid=IwAR1DQgIiFK4qxw7b-EyCmg2tjRUwzukrwDV3QN_Vq9ZnIi6Fjiwipf_2e_4 "all of a sudden" is what's used now, but "all of the sudden" was used in centuries past. words are neat. obvious statements are obvious. 211104 ... e_o_i You're reminding me I need to renew the Mark Abley book I got from the library. He writes eloquently and wittily about word origins. Used to have a column in the local paper, but they replaced a bunch of local people with Postmedia conservatives and people who only talk news and business, not Stuff of General Coolness - pah. 211105 ... e_o_i Also, apparently a lot of people know the expression "orthogonal to" - I'm just late to the game. 211105 ... e_o_i It was only a couple of months ago that I realized Americans pronounced the "ou" in "about" the SAME WAY as the "ou" in "how." It'd sound weird in my mouth. A-bawt! But apparently this is is why some Americans think Canadians say "a-boot" - I'd puzzled over this for a while, thinking, "Well, maybe someone heard a Scottish-accented Newfoundlander once and generalized to all of Canada...?" - but no, it's just an exaggeration of the differentness of the sound. It was actually a YouTube reply that taught me this, backed up by a fat old red dictionary and now by this post, if y'all want to learn more (y'all: very Canadian of me) - https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/how-canadians-really-pronounce-about 211110 ... nr i didn't want to hijack the page on which e_o_i_asks, but the question about merry/marry (and also Mary) interested me and i looked into it further. there are different combos of pronunciation (in the U.S., at least, where most of the data was): a. all 3 are the same (56.88%) b. all 3 are different (17.34%) c. Mary and merry are the same; marry is different (8.97%) d. merry and marry are the same; Mary is different (0.96%) e. Mary and marry are the same; merry is different (15.84%) i fall under category c. marry has an "a" sound like in jan, while merry/Mary have an "e" sound like in jen. 211218 ... nr the cot-caught merger intrigues me too. i'd never considered the words don and dawn not rhyming until a chicagoan questioned my pronunciation. he'd never have considered the opposite. 211218 ... tender_square synchronistic blathing—i was thinking about posting on this thread yesterday following a party where i had a conversation with two other women about how we pronounce words. how did it come up? janelle said she used “pap-rik-ah” in her scone recipe and annaliese and i were like, “uh, what now?” neither of us had ever heard the spice name said that way before. which led us to how annaliese places emphasis on the words “hash browns,” which has been a running joke between us for years. she says “hash” just fine, but when she gets to “browns” she ends with a lift in her inflection making it sound like a question. she also elongates “browns” to make it sound like it’s more than a single syllable: “browns-z.” whenever we’re at a breakfast place we crack the fuck up over this. before the party, erin gave annaliese gnome stickers for her new yeti mug and i remarked, “are those decals?” whenever i say the word “decal” i pronounce it “deck-al” rather than “dee-cal.” i don’t know, i heard it pronounced “deck-al” on an episode of “corner gas” once and i liked how it hit my ear so i’ve been rolling with it ever since. (did you also know that most of us pronounce the word “miniature” as “mini-ture” rather than how it’s supposed to be said, which is “mini-a-ture”?) 211219 ... e_o_i Category c too, and I say cot and caught the same. nr, we are pronunciation twins!! Except I add an extra glide to some vowels if I'm speaking casually. Which is apparently more common in Montreal English than Ontario English, again. Maybe it was spread up here from New York and New Jersey? A creative-writing friend's Brooklyn accent was like that a bit, but she doesn't usually put it on strong because she's lived here for years. David, imitating me, will say "toime" for "time" (me: it's not like THAT! I don't have TOIME for this!) tender_square, I'm NOT saying that your friend is Gollum (he with the "hobbitses")...just that you should watch out about wearing any invisibility-granting rings around her :P But yes, "miniature" is a great example of how a LOT of English spellings reflect how words used to be pronounced. 211220 what's it to you? who go blather from