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There’s a nice review of Odden’s textbook by Anthi Revithiadou in the most recent issue of Lingua — apologies to those without access, but according to Revithiadou’s publications page, you can e-mail her for a copy.

Fellow phonologist Bruce Morén recently began a discussion on LINGUIST List entitled “Cultural Sensitivity & Endangered Languages: Saami” (referred to throughout Morén’s post as Sami, and once as Sámi). Among the reasons why we should care is “the uniquely complex grammar of the Sami languages”:

In the words of one of the foremost researchers on these languages, “Sámi phonetics, phonology and morphophonology are amongst the most complicated in Europe if not in the whole world” (Sammallahti 1990:441). This includes what looks like a preference for simple onsets and complex codas, three linguistically significant degrees of consonant duration, quasi-harmonizing “glide vowels”, laryngeal contrasts only in post-stressed medial position, an extensive and pervasive consonant gradation system, productive morphological paradigms including literally hundreds of forms, etc. Each one of these phenomena is interesting and perhaps problematic for some linguistic theories, but taken in concert, they are astoundingly complex and form a perfect testing ground for many theoretical claims. These languages are important sources of unique linguistic data, and they should not be allowed to simply vanish.

Several of the good folks at Tromsø’s CASTL — both permanent members (e.g., Morén and Curt Rice) and past visitors (e.g., Patrik Bye, Dave Odden) — have written about many of these and other delightful complexities of Saami/Sami/Sámi grammar. If you haven’t already, you may be interested in taking a look — you can start, for example, with some of Bye’s work on ROA.

Update, 11/21: this book just announced.

For some time now, the LINGUIST List has been practically begging us all to edit Wikipedia entries having to do with linguistics, either because they’re out of date, inaccurate, or simply non-existent. Here’s a more specific plea for would-be editors of phonetics and phonology entries. Do you has?

Although they’ve been announced, as of this writing there are still “coming soon” notes on the links to the conference program, the abstract booklet, and the workshop program for OCP 5, to be held at the University of Toulouse-le Mirail Jan. 23-26.

Having just missed the deadlines for the CUNY syllable conference and BLS 34, I was pleased to see that the deadline for the GLOW 31 workshop on categorical phonology and gradient facts has recently been extended until Dec. 1.

Joe Pater, Chris Potts and I just released version 1.1 of OT-Help, and we figured we’d use this occasion to announce it on Phonoloblog.

If you’re already using OTHelp 1.0, upgrading will give you a somewhat smoother interface and the ability to export Praat files from every screen.

If you aren’t familiar with OT-Help, read more here.

We’re happy to get your comments and feedback, including ideas and requests for future versions, stories of how you used OT-Help in research or teaching, etc.

With technical issues of any kind, please contact Michael Becker.

OT-Help 1.1