phonoloblog | all things phonology | camba.ucsd.edu/phonoloblog

I’m very happy to see Heidi Harley starting a linguistics blog. Recent posts of hers include a list of stock syntactic-construction examples and a huge compendium of Simpsons language jokes (which Eric also linked). Heidi was on my orals committee and I was once her TA, so she knows I enjoy pointing out linguistically odd constructions.

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I’ve gotten a handful of replies to my query earlier this week about the meaning of “A counterbleeds B”, and I’ve also polled a few people personally. Given the nearly-even split in the replies (4 for my bet-losing definition, 5 for Colin’s bet-winning one), I’m confident that there’s something weird going on with this “counter-” morpheme, whatever it is.

Just to set the record straight from the beginning: I’m not on some sort of mission to change this terminology. (I also don’t care about my $10; I lost ‘em fair and square.) Sure, the concepts are complex enough on their own without the difficulty with the terminology, but I’m not convinced the concepts would be made any easier to understand if the terminology were unambiguous. Some people simply internalize it one way (in terms of the example I gave, “Lengthening counterbleeds Devoicing”) and others the other way (”Devoicing counterbleeds Lengthening”), but the ordering relation itself (”Lengthening and Devoicing are in a counterbleeding relationship”) is not under dispute, and that’s really all that matters.

Besides, this issue just doesn’t seem to come up all that often, if at all. For all I know, Colin and I are the first to notice that there was something to notice here. Sure, I’ve only discussed this with fewer than a dozen people and phonoloblog has not (yet) reached all phonologists, but nobody’s written to tell me that this issue has been the topic of discussion somewhere, whether in writing or between some stumbling-drunk phonologists at a party (or whatever).

OK, so are you ready to find out the answer? Read on.

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Citing a query to phoneticians/phonologists by Heidi Harley on her blog, Mark Liberman wonders whether Marge Simpson’s voice involves “pharyngeal constriction and creaky voice”. Anyone care to weigh in?

I lost $10 to Colin Wilson the other day. We bet on what the correct definition of “Rule A counterbleeds Rule B” is; specifically, which rule is A and which rule is B in a counterbleeding relationship. We agreed on a particular source as arbiter, and this source defined “A counterbleeds B” in the way Colin did, and so Colin won.

For various reasons (not the least of which was having lost $10), I got interested in just how very wrong I was, and so I did a little digging — but only a little, since I’m away from my usual sources at the moment and I don’t have time for extensive googling or anything like that. But I observed two interesting things in this little bit of digging:

1. At least in the more recent literature and in class notes available online, it’s more common to see use of only the -ing form counterbleeding; e.g., “rules A and B are in a counterbleeding relationship”. This side-steps the “A counterbleeds B” problem.

2. In the relatively fewer sources that explitly make a statement like “A counterbleeds B” (equivalently, “B is counterbled by A”) there is disagreement. Some identify A and B like Colin does, some like I do.

I’ll reveal the bet-winning definition in a later post (as well as the source Colin and I used as arbiter). In the meantime, I’d like to ask all phonoloblog readers to consider the counterbleeding relationship described below and to write to me (phonoloblog#gmail|com) saying which rule you think counterbleeds the other. I’d prefer “unrehearsed” replies; if you end up looking it up somewhere, I’d appreciate it if you let me know (i) where and (ii) whether or not your intuition agreed with that definition. I won’t reveal anyone’s identity unless you specifically say that I can.

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Eric’s preceding post contains a “note to self” to compile a list of phonoloblog links that bear on the current tighty whitey thread unfolding at Language Log. Well, Eric and others, I have already compiled such a list, because I think phonoloblog has quite a bit of content in its archives that pertains to diphthongs and/or flaps. It’s posted as an update to an old post of mine, and to cut to the chase I added an anchor that takes you directly to the update.

Just in case you would have otherwise missed it: Mark Liberman wrote earlier today about flapping and related/interacting processes in English.

[ INSERT LIST 1: "LINKS TO MANY PREVIOUS RELEVANT PHONOLOBLOG POSTS" ABOUT HERE ]

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By way of Sun Media, the following linguistic oddity showed up online today:

Copyright kills movie title
By CP

TORONTO — A Toronto woman who owns the trademark for the word “wannabe” says she’s the reason the title of an upcoming film starring singer Ashlee Simpson has been changed. Robin Devine said she trademarked “wannabe” in 1985 after hearing her husband say it.

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While Googling for new examples of intrusive vowels, I keep running into a 1976 film called “New Improved Institutional Quality: In the Environment of Liquids and Nasals a Parasitic Vowel Sometimes Develops”. It’s apparently a 10 minute artsy kind of thing. Has anyone seen it?

If you have a little kid, you probably know that Dora the Explorer is all the rage. Since I have neither a child nor cable, I only get to watch it when I’m at the home of someone who has both. Despite the fact that I’ve seen Dora only a few times, I still have something to say.

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The LA Times has a story by Steve Lopez this morning about how local voters have trouble pronouncing the name of mayoral candidate Antonio Villaraigosa. Transparently it’s a practical issue, if indeed the name is such a challenge. If you read only the headline and first few paragraphs, you’d believe voters want leaders whose names are easy to pronounce. Read a little more, and you discover what the piece ought to have mentioned a little earlier: the more pressing issue is the willingness of voters to vote outside ethnic lines. (more…)