Richard Ogden

I loved reading about 'the wild side'! Semantic and phonological priming may explain some of what we can observe; but so many 'poetic' observations don't seem to be provable in any rigorous way. Your suggestion of treating poeticity as a distinctive layer of social order is intriguing.

You Know More Finnish Than You Think Linguistics illuminates the linguistically obscure – or so I’ve always thought. It’s a common theme of my online output that a little bit of historical linguistics goes a long way, maki…

I've strayed into another language family, and made Finnish the subject of this month's post. Under the surface though, it's a piece about prehistoric languages, and how millennia-long linguistic contact can make foreign languages seem more familiar.
dannybate.com/2025/08/03/y...

Very interesting! Speaks very well to the value of 'fine phonetic detail'.

... which might reflect the different histories and morphologies of these two [ʃ] sounds?

I don't really know the answer to this, and I suspect it's variable in distribution and in detail. Another case might be fisher vs. fissure; if I don't think too hard about it, I do the first with more lip-rounding, the second with more palatality. Subtle, fleeting but noticeable.

Cool as it is/was, even cooler are the skills of observation exemplified by Kelly & Local. They weren’t phonemicists, but classically trained British style phoneticians — a skill that’s too often deprecated.

This Brit (with dark and rounded [ɹ]) has very different vowels in these two words: fronter after /ʤ/ than /dɹ/; and lip-rounding starts earlier and persists longer with /dɹ/.

As many scholars are using Ai to help w/ their writing, I suggest doubling down on finding your own creative & distinctive style. As Ai 'slop" becomes increasingly obvious your personal, emotionful & idiosyncratic approach will standout & cut through against conformative & boring prose.

Yes -- to do quantitative work, you have to have something to count. So much of what is counted is not as well analytically motivated as it should be. So you all being at that conference, and having those dialogues (which must be two-way), is important.

Let’s hope this intervention and others help to change minds

It's great fun teaching this short course -- and I always learn something from the data (this time, noticing voicing and aspiration on the release of [d] sounds in turn-final productions of 'oh my god')

Great public engagement initiative by our PGRs, making CA accessible to very young audiences.

The York English Language Toolkit - Workshops FREE annual CPD workshops for teachers of English Language A level

We've just got a new episode in the can which will come out very soon. It's our annual preview of the @yorktoolkit.bsky.social teacher CPD event. Coming soon! Get signed up here if you haven't already: englishlanguagetoolkit.york.ac.uk/workshops

True. But alliteration is common in lists in conversation, for example. It helps to think of it as a resource among several for marking cohesion, rather than as an obligatory element — part of a family of practices.

Seems like a good place to plug Aino Koivisto's work on Finnish aijaa and aha(a):
Koivisto, A. (2016). Receipting information as newsworthy vs. responding to redirection: Finnish news particles aijaa and aha(a). Journal of Pragmatics, 104, 163-179.

Sacks and Jefferson wrote about Conversational Poetics quite a bit, and it features a lot in Jefferson's account of lists in conversation. I don't find all of it compelling, but there's some intriguing phenomena once you start noticing them. liso-archives.liso.ucsb.edu/Jefferson/Po...

Here are the three of us with our poster on the phonetic organisation of laughter, which kept us engaged in lively conversations for two hours (he said, hoarsely).

Kristian Skedsmo giving a brilliant talk about other repair initiation in Norwegian Sign Language and Norwegian. Not just fascinating material, but a masterclass in the skills of presenting complex things.

Rod Gardner presenting work on multi unit turns in languages of northern Australia at LingCologne. The quotes come from Schegloff’s lectures… so inspiring!

One of my favourite Keith Sprigg moments was when we asked him "how do you say 'bslabs'?" and he thought for a moment then said [˥pø]. Magic. www.keithsprigg.com

Do I know any DOTE users who have experience of subtitling in Dote, and then export subtitled movies? Would you be willing to help one of my students? Thanks.

Yet again the UK shoots itself in the foot, by proposing to make it harder for international students to come to the UK.

John Harris's book contains many fascinating (and unexpected) features of Hiberno-English: www.cambridge.org/gb/universit...

A light bulb inside the outline of a thought bubble traced in chalk. The text reads 'HRC Doctoral Competition. 21 May 12.30'

Join us on 21st May 12.30pm in the Treehouse for the finals of the HRC Doctoral Competition. A great chance to be inspired by all the wonderful work being done by doctoral researchers across the faculty. Check your emails for the Google Form to sign up to attend 🏆

To save UK higher education, start talking about knowledge - Research Professional News Until debate on universities foregrounds their core purposes, their woes will deepen, says Margot Finn

Now emancipated from its paywall.

www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-news-uk-v...

‘But for calves we were sweeter’. Traditional Finnish cattle calling as trans-species pidgin Examining archived recorded cattle calls, this article describes the traditional Finnish ways of cattle calling and suggests that these calls were a t…

The way she looks things from the cows perspective is really fascinating. Have you also seen this paper? Also fascinating

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

As an L1 speaker and apparently a member of the same culture, I am quite sure there are kinder, less personal ways to say this.

Makes you wonder who is the pirate, when they make money out of your labour that they haven't paid for.

The deadline for abstracts to the York Conference on Conversation Analysis has been extended to next Monday. The guest speakers are Paul Drew and Lorenza Mondada, so it promises to be an intellectually stimulating event!

I’ve just been listening to this — it’s wonderful! Highly recommended