Posts by linger
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Up Front: Where You From?, in reply to George Darroch,
an enthusiastic Canadian forcing me to drink clam juice
Really hoping that's a euphemism.
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Up Front: Where You From?, in reply to BenWilson,
Isn't diction the act of avoiding, e.g., Paul Henry?
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Up Front: Where You From?, in reply to Geoff Lealand,
In the original release; but the Chch exterior scenes (other than in the railway yard) were almost entirely removed from the “director’s cut” DVD.
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Up Front: Where You From?, in reply to Megan Wegan,
Interesting.
Have you noticed any age differences in the use of those two reading styles? -
Addendum and reference dump:
... On the other hand, a smaller-scale followup study of children's speech (Robb & Gillon 2007) found that NZ children spoke more slowly than American children.
In both studies, the authors explain the observed difference in speech rate in terms of differences in vowel pronunciation (e.g. higher vowels tend to be shorter than lower vowels; and tongue position in adult NZE tends to be higher for most vowels than in adult AmE).References:
Holmes, J. & Ainsworth, H. (1996), ‘Syllable-timing and Maori English’, Te Reo: Journal of the Linguistic Society of
New Zealand 39, 75-84.
Robb, M., Maclagan, M. & Chen, Y. (2004), ‘Speaking rates of American and New Zealand varieties of English’,
Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics 18(1), 1-15.
Robb, M.P. & Gillon, G. (2007) 'Speech rates of New Zealand English- and American English-speaking children.' International Journal of Speech-Language Pathology 9(2), 173-180.
Warren, P. (1998), ‘Timing Patterns in New Zealand English Rhythm’, Te Reo: Journal of the Linguistic Society of New Zealand 41, 80-93. -
I’m not sure that there is any difference in overall speech rate between NZE and other varieties of English -- though at least one study (Robb et al 2004) has indeed suggested that NZE is faster than American English -- but there are some other differences that might lead to a perception of a faster rate.
One well-attested feature of (at least some) NZE speakers is a tendency towards syllable-timing (Holmes & Ainsworth 1996), as measured by a fuller pronunciation of vowels in unstressed function words (e.g. of, the, he, you ). This should mean that NZers pronounce function words more slowly than other speakers; but it also means that there is less contrast between function words and content words in NZ speech, which may make NZ speech harder for speakers of other varieties to understand, even if the overall rate of delivery is the same.
An alternative – as yet unresearched, and not supported by Robb et al's results – is that (some) NZ speakers might be more “bursty” than speakers of other varieties (which would mean that words are on average spoken more quickly, but without necessarily affecting the overall number of words/minute). There was an interesting paper at the NWAV 39 conference (Schnoebelen 2010) that attempted to define “burstiness” using an acoustic analysis of the speech of the Star Trek characters Mr Spock (who uses a fairly even, or “flat”, style of delivery) versus Capt James Kirk (extremely “bursty”, with rapid delivery of phrases, but also many short pauses). [Schnoebelen also pointed out that “burstiness” is an age-graded feature, associated with “impetuous youth”.]* Robb et al's (2004) results for samples of 40 speakers each of NZE and AmE: speaking rate: US 250 syllables per minute vs. NZ 280 syllables per minute; and articulation rate (i.e. excluding pause time): US 316 syllables per minute vs. NZ 342 syllables per minute)
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Hard News: Limping Onwards, in reply to Jacqui Dunn,
Given the amount of abuse [Architecture School Macs] get I’m not so sure …
Verbal? Surely not. Physical, then?
Sexual, of course ;-)
[But the serious answer is that architecture = intensive graphics work. Which you knew.]
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the world’s foremost geopolitical director
Is that the job title of someone who cranks to keep the world turning?
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Moret’s 2004 Japan Times article contains little that I would disagree with; but also, no mention of weaponry.
It's clearly intended as an opinion piece rather than hard science (the hand-drawn map is a nice touch). -
I note merely that "independent scientist" = "unfundable research ideas".