LL-L "Phonology" 2008.04.19 (02) [E]

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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: LL-L "Phonology" 2008.04.17 (01) [E]

> From: Mark Dreyer <mrdreyer at lantic.net>
> Subject: LL-L "Phonology" 2008.04.16 (03) [E]

> I insist that a healthy mouth capable of moving a bolus of masticated
> food anywhere with the tongue, lips, teeth & soft palate can trap an
> acoustic space in the same point, from 'bed' right between the teeth
> to 'bard' right up against the glottis, &, pouting to extend the
> space, 'butter', RP English far down to 'butter' Northern English
> right up, with the schwa between. True, there are some vowels some
> English for example can't make (or interpret), but it is a matter of
> habituation, not structural disability. They can learn. If an African
> Grey parrot can manage a full gamut of vowels & vocal glides, sure as
> eggs is eggs so could a Neanderthal. I wonder if those savants that
> find this presumption hard to take are not suffering from racial
> snobbery?

Going more general and off-topic here (but with something we perhaps
should discuss), I always take a sceptical view of any research I read
about in the news these days. There seem to be three layers to assess
before deciding whether I can believe a thing:

   o    reliability of Web source;
   o    quality of reporting;
   o    quality of research.

I think the first is the easiest: you decide which websites you can
trust, but even those seem to have very poor journalism, either badly
written, written with a bias towards content that the readers want to
hear, or just plain copied from another site via the old "rewrite in
your own words" filter.

A few years ago there was a report on the BBC news site about a research
paper which stated that more goths committed suicide than any other
group of music-lovers in the UK. Finding this hard to believe, I asked a
friend who had access to the original research paper to read it and see
what it really said.

She said that the paper didn't say that more goths committed suicide, it
was some other group. She also examined the sample space and found that
the demographic was tiny. There were only two or three goths in the
sample (I don't remember the exact numbers) and they were in their early
teens.

Considering that goth is mostly a club scene, the vast majority of goths
are of legal drinking age, and we had to conclude that this was rubbish
research and hadn't actually been reported, it had simply been used as a
lever for a journalist, who might or might not have read the report, to
help the readers reinforce their stereotypes.

So in conclusion, yes, Mark, if you think the Neanderthal report is
rubbish from low forehead to hairy foot, I'm prepared to believe you're
right!

Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/

•

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