Darin Flynn

Very cool example of implied ‘even’, thanks @languagedoodad.bsky.social! I think it would sound a bit contrived to say “He hasn’t even the brains of a gnat” or “he doesn’t even have the brains of a gnat”

“He doesn’t have the brains of a gnat”

British hyperforeignism du jour

John Kenneth “Jack” Chambers (July 12, 1938- March 2, 2026) Jack left us on the eve of a lunar eclipse, ‘round midnight March 2nd, 2026, fighting to the end after a short bout with cancer. He is survived by his wife of 65 years, Susan (née L’Heureux), and h…

Heartbroken to learn that my friend, godfather of Canadian sociolinguistics, and Miles Davis biographer, Jack Chambers has moved on.

“Tomoip phonetics and phonology” by Russell Barlow and Don Killian (2023) pure.mpg.de/rest/items/i...

Prof. Gilbert Ansre has passed. Our field is indebted to him for foundational work on Ewe, starting with his 1961 MA thesis “The tonal structure of Ewe” and his 1966 PhD thesis “The grammatical units of Ewe: a study of their structure, classes and systems”

They all did it:

Ooh this is handy dandy! #GoogleScholar

That was fun, thanks. His monophthongized /eɪ/ and /oʊ/ made me think he was latino, as many suggested, but I was thrown off by his “different to,” which suggests a British influence. Minnesota/Wisconsin makes sense for these features, but only after the fact ;)

YouTube video by Evan Edinger The Strange Rules of America's Most Confusing Accent

“The strange rules of America’s most confusing accent” by Evan Edinger (Feb. ’26) www.youtube.com/watch?v=ec0-...

Gricean maxxing

The highlighted example suggests freedom vs. un+freedom, but grammatically, the latter must be unfree+dom. It’s interesting, because phonologically I also prefer the compound-like un+freedom, as opposed to suffixing -dom to the compound-like unfree

If Wells is right that <aer> causes speakers to go for a long vowel, I imagine there are speakers out there who disyllabify it: /ˈmeɪ̯.əɹsk/. The final unstressed rhyme -əɹsk is still pretty crazy for English! (Cf. Simbirsk, now Ulyanovsk, which I imagine was /sɪmˈbɜɹsk/ or /ˈsɪmˌbɜɹsk/ in English?)

Maersk is /mɛɹsk/ for me, which has a crazy enough rhyme, but Wells (2008) claims that the vowel is also long (as in Mary): /mɛəɹsk/ (Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, 3rd edn.)

Also via dan-sk: Maersk’s a Danish company. I mean, c’mon: [mɛəɹ̠sks]

“Quantitative evidence of complex metrical prosody in Chugach Alutiiq” by McKinley Alden and Anja Arnhold (Feb. ’26) doi.org/10.1016/j.wo...

New info on the cool tonogenesis that’s underway among young Seoulites: “The effect of contrast-specific minimal pair competitor in hyperarticulation of VOT and F0 phonetic cues in Korean initial stops in tonogenetic sound change” by Cheonkam Jeong and Andrew Wedel (Feb. ’26) doi.org/10.1016/j.wo...

“Crossing the boundaries: perception of voice onset time in word-initial stops by multilingual learners” by Zuzanna Cal (Feb. ’26) journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1...

“Palatalization is a lexically triggered phonological process operating at multiple levels” by Anna Poĺomská (Jan. ’26) www.researchgate.net/publication/...

“Shared and language-specific phonological processing in the human temporal lobe” by Ilina Bhaya-Grossman, Matthew K. Leonard, Yizhen Zhang, Laura Gwilliams, Keith Johnson, Junfeng Lu and Edward F. Chang (Jan. ’26) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Btw, rhotic dialects have more of these exceptional antepenultimate cases, e.g. ‘allergen’ /(ˈæ.lǝɹʤn)/ → /(ˈæ.lǝɹ).ʤn/. Incidentally the serial approach feels especially abstract to me with final [i], e.g., ‘cavalry’ /(ˈkævǝlɹj)/ → /(ˈkævǝl)ɹi/—but it works at explaining ə-final stems; cf. *CAvalra

In rhotic areas like mine, it’s about ə-final words, which is why serialists do stuff like “regular penultimate” /(ˈkæ.ləndɹ̠)/ → “irregular surface antepenultimate” /(ˈkæ.lən).dɹ̠/; cf. */ˈkæləndə/. That strong intuition of mine is probably unlearnable and therefore untenable in non-rhotic varieties

Cool! Thanks

I'm from the US midwest, with some southern traits; for me, these are syllabic L:

[pʰɫ̩z], [pʰɫ̩s]
[ʃɫ̩ts], [ʃɫ̩z]
[ˈbɫ̩zˌwɫ̩], [ˈbɫ̩bɫ̩]
[pʰɫ̩pɪʔ], [pʰɫ̩pɪŋ]
[ˈbɫ̩ˌhɛɾ], [ˈbɫ̩ˌkɛɾ]
[ˈbɫ̩jɪ̈n], [ˈbɫ̩d͡ʒɪŋ]
[ˈbɫ̩mɪ̈n], [ˈbɫ̩bɪ̈s]

“Gesture and information structure: a case study on gestural topic markers in southern Italo-Romance” by Valentina Colasanti and Chiara Marchetiello (Feb. ’26) www.italian-journal-linguistics.com/app/uploads/...

Verb ellipsis klaxon:
[characters discuss marriage]
'Ever been?'
'Married? No.'
#linguistics

Love it. Far more natural than the crass “would” meme

Open access source: “Redefining the Epiclassic Period in Mesoamerica: Proceedings of the Copenhagen Roundtable” ed. by Claudia I. Alvarado León and Christophe Helmke (Feb. ’26) www.archaeopress.com/Archaeopress...

“Grosso modo” map of the hypothesized distribution of language families and isolates in Mesoamerica during the Classic period (c. ad 1–550) from “The linguistic panorama of the epiclassic: placing Nahuan among the languages of western Mesoamerica” by @magnuspharao.bsky.social Hansen (Feb. ’26)