#prosody

[coquelicoq]

i've been dying for a poll option ever since i saw my followers' answers to that text post from february 2022 asking people whether they pronounce beloved as "be-lov-ed" or "be-loved". many people were emphatic about only using one option, and many others use both but were not always able to articulate when they use 2 syllables vs. 3. so out of the goodness of my heart and my insatiable lust for knowledge i have gone through the notes on that post and written down some likely contenders! you're welcome!!!!

BEFORE YOU ANSWER! think about how you would pronounce beloved in the following syntactic contexts:

noun, talking directly to the beloved: hey there beloved

noun, talking about rather than to the beloved: my beloved lives in a pineapple under the sea

adjective in a noun phrase: my beloved x lives in a pineapple under the sea

verb participle: x is beloved by y

okay poll time! there are no wrong answers!! and apologies in advance if i didn't capture your truth, i only had 10 options and life is a rich tapestry!!

#oh man i could have easily come up with another 5-8 options but they cap you at 10. which is probably a good thing #one person said they say 'my be-lov-ed x' but 'my much be-loved x'. the only difference being the 'much'. couldn't fit that one on here #someone else said they use 3 syllables in a possessive noun phrase (my be-lov-ed x) but 2 if it's not possessive (the be-loved x) #one person said it depends on whether it's past or present & i wasn't exactly sure what that meant. 'x is beloved' vs. 'x was beloved'? #i also think there's likely a distinction for some people between 'x was beloved' and 'x was beloved by y' but couldn't get into that #oh and then there's 'beloved by' vs. 'beloved of' #and since some of these are syntactic distinctions and some are semantic or otherwise i'm sure there's a whole matrix of combinations #like '3-syll noun if it's a person but 2 if it's a thing. 2-syll adjective/verb participle for both people and things' #that was beyond the scope of this poll lol #but mostly why i'm so curious is because people will very emphatically say something that might not mean what they think it means #like for instance i got the impression that at least some of the people saying 'be-lov-ed when i'm talking to them‚ be-loved when i'm #talking about them' actually mean they use be-lov-ed as a noun and be-loved otherwise #and some of the people saying 'always 2 syllables' probably have exceptions that they weren't thinking of at the moment #in particular 'dearly beloved' #and i'm very curious to know if 3-syllable people still use 3 syllables in the construction 'he was beloved by all' #so i think people's answers might change when given a list of more detailed options #fun with pronunciation #prosody #my posts #also i stressed for so long about what to call beloved in the 'x is beloved by y' construction #but settled on verb participle because i think it's fairly descriptive and accurate #so hopefully that's not too confusing? like it is a verb participle but for a verb that doesn't exist anymore (other than the participle)? #and even in 'my beloved x' beloved is a verb participle being used as an adjective if you're thinking more etymologically #but a lot of people were distinguishing 'be-loved as a verb' from other forms and i assume what they meant by that was 'x is beloved'

[lingthusiasm]

Lingthusiasm Episode 74: Who questions the questions?

We use questions to ask people for information (who’s there?), but we can also use them to make a polite request (could you pass me that?), to confirm social understanding (what a game, eh), and for stylistic effect, such as ironic or rhetorical questions (who knows!).

In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about questions! We talk about question intonations from the classic rising pitch? to the British downstep (not a dance move...yet), and their written correlates, such as omitting a question mark in order to show that a question is rhetorical or intensified. We also talk about grammatical strategies for forming questions, from the common (like question particles and tag questions in so many languages), to the labyrinthine history that brings us English’s very uncommon use of “do” in questions. Plus: the English-centrically-named wh-word questions (like who, what, where), why we could maybe call them kw-word questions instead (at least for Indo-European), and why we don’t need to stress out as much about asking “open” questions.

Read the transcript here.

Announcements:

Lingthusiasm turns 6 this month! We invite you to celebrate six years of linguistics enthusiasm with us by sharing the show - you can share a link to an episode you liked or just share your lingthusiasm generally. Most people still find podcasts through word of mouth, and lots of them don’t yet realise that they could have a fun linguistics chat in their ears every month (or eyes, all Lingthusiasm episodes have transcripts!). If you share Lingthusiasm on social media, tag us so we can reply, and if you share in private, we won’t know but you can feel a warm glow of satisfaction - or feel free to tell us about it on social media if you want to be thanked! We’re also doing a listener survey for the first time! This is your chance to tell us about what you’re enjoying about Lingthusiasm so far, and what else we could be doing in the future - and your chance to suggest topics! It’s open until December 15, 2022. And we couldn’t resist the opportunity to add a few linguistic experiments in there as well, which we’ll be sharing the results of next year. We might even write up a paper about the survey one day, so we have ethics board approval from La Trobe University for this survey. Take the survey here! In this month’s bonus episode we get enthusiastic about a project that Gretchen did to read one paper for each of the 103 languages recorded in a recent paper by Evan Kidd and Rowena Garcia about child language acquisition. We talk about some of the specific papers that stood out to us, and what Gretchen hoped to achieve with her reading project. Join us on Patreon now to get access to this and 60+ other bonus episodes, as well as access to the Lingthusiasm Discord server where you can chat with other language nerds. Here are the links mentioned in this episode:

Take our listener survey here!

‘British intonation: Meghan teaches us’ post from English Speech Services

‘Question–response sequences in conversation across ten languages: An introduction’ Editorial, Journal of Pragmatics

Wikipedia entry for question grammar in Modern Standard Chinese

WALS entry for Polar Questions

All Things Linguistic post on tag questions

Yale Grammatical Diversity Project English in North America entry on Canadian Eh

Liz Stokoe Twitter thread on open-ended questions

Lingthusiasm episode ‘Corpus linguistics and consent - Interview with Kat Gupta’

Confirmation or Elaboration: What Do Yes/No Declaratives Want? by Lucan M. Seuren & Mike Huiskes

Dariusz Galasiński blog post on open questions

Superlinguo post ‘New Publication: Questions and answers in Lamjung Yolmo’

Lingthusiasm episode ‘You heard about it but I was there - Evidentiality’

You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening. To receive an email whenever a new episode drops, sign up for the Lingthusiasm mailing list.

You can help keep Lingthusiasm advertising-free by supporting our Patreon. Being a patron gives you access to bonus content, our Discord server, and other perks.

Lingthusiasm is on Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter.

Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com

Gretchen is on Twitter as @GretchenAMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic.

Lauren is on Twitter as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.

Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, and our production assistant is Martha Tsutsui Billins. Our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.

This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).

#linguistics #language #episodes #episode 74 #lingthusiasm #questions #interrogatives #syntax #intonation #prosody #phonetics #pragmatics #conversation

[insured-decorative-mug]

This post is going to be all about Parade the Musical.

First of all, LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE Parade. Absolutely adore it. It's my favorite musical of all time and here's why.

1. The Story

The plot is based off of the real life of Leo Frank and his story. If you don't know his story I highly suggest you read about it and his trial (warning: themes of antisemitism, murder and assault). Though this case happened in the early 20th century, many aspects of it still apply to us as a society now. The way the musical portrays the effects of racism on many different characters is just amazing. For Leo and for Newt, the prejudice against them means very different things for them, yet it's the same type of hatred in so many ways. There are just so many amazing and powerful moments in the musical that are noteworthy and the parallels you as an audience member are able to draw between then and now are eye opening.

2. The Music

The music is AMAZING. The use of instruments traditionally used in a marching band (or parade) setting vs. the use of more symphonic instruments is genius. The way JRB uses minor and major modes to portray each character's personal journey is PERFECTION. I highly suggest you watch some of his videos about how he uses musical devices to tell each character's story. Here is a video of him explaining some of the process between writing the opening number "The Old Red Hills Of Home" (sidenote: I HAD NO IDEA HE COULD SING UNTIL I WATCHED THIS VIDEO). Not only does he tell each character's story through these breathtaking orchestrations, but also he moves the audience with the characters through their journey. The main way I would describe Parade is as a musical journey. I have listened and seen lots of musicals but very few are able to put the audience on a true musical journey. In Parade, the music reflects the emotions and thoughts of each character. When there is a change in a character's thoughts or feelings, the music reflects that change. JRB does this through the use of major and minor and also reoccurring melodies (another thing composers do that I love). The music does an amazing job of capturing Leo and Lucille's darkest moments and their biggest breakthroughs. Just look at the difference musically in "Leo's Statement" vs. "This Is Not Over Yet". These choices were made by JRB on purpose to take the audience on Leo's musical journey. The musical journey helps the audience understand the story, above all else. The music is not simply an ornament on the story's tree. It's more akin to the straw in the story's cup. The audience could drink out of the cup without the straw. Would they still get the drink? Yes. However, using a straw is a more efficient way to get the drink to the audience. The "drink" is the meaning and message of the story in this metaphor (I hope that all made sense I am terrible at metaphors).

3. Impact On The Audience (+ my personal faves from Parade)

Of course, no two audience members are going to feel the exact same after seeing the show, however, I do think this point is important to note. The intended impact on the audience isn't necessarily to make them bawl their eyes out (though I do know many including myself who have because of this show). The intended impact is to both educate the audience on the story of Leo Frank and move them to examine their own lives and create change in society now. It's no mistake that this specific story was chosen. Leo Frank's story has many parallels to today that we still see. Themes of racism, injustice, antisemitism, loss of hope, etc. All of these are things we see today. In my opinion, the best musicals (or just art in general) are ones where we can watch (or read or listen to) them and come away from them learning something about today. No matter when it was made. If you walk out of a musical and find yourself making connections to the real world, it had an impact! This is part of why I love Parade. It's not only a great piece of art on its own but it's also relevant. Not only that but I believe musicals are one of the best mediums for impactful messages like this ESPECIALLY for younger generations. I could go on a whole tangent about why, but I will shorten it to this: people love music and love stories and musicals are both combined. So many people love musicals because it's combining 3 mediums (verbal storytelling, visual storytelling and music) to make one final product. Parade combines the three beautifully, making it very effective and impactful. A great example of this is my favorite song from the entire show, "Don't Make Sense". Short bits of dialogue interrupt the music throughout this song which make it all the more beautiful. The song starts with a group of people singing a hymn. The hymn is then overlayed with dialogue, a news report of Mary Phagan's funeral, which continues until we hear Frankie begin to sing. The beginning part alone is just beautiful storytelling. It introduces the funeral visually and musically. In the dialogue, the reporter mentions that Mary was "2 months shy of 14" and that some of Mary's friends were "deemed too small to shoulder the burden". This line alone reiterates just how young Mary was, reinforcing how tragic her death was and who it affects. The music in the back being a hymn sets the gloomy scene for the funeral. Then, when Frankie begins to sing about Mary and what he loved about her (on the lyrics "did you ever hear her laugh?), the music changes to a brighter tone (bright may not be the right word for it but I don't know what else to describe it as). Specifically, this change comes in on the word "laugh", which is just genius. Her laugh is the thing that triggers the music to lighten in tone because her laugh was able to lighten people's moods. This brighter melody returns in the song when other people sing about what Mary was like. Mary was a light in people's lives and so she's also a light in the music. There are so many more moments in this song AND in the musical I could talk about but I simply cannot or else this would be as long as War and Peace. I just wanted to highlight one from my favorite song in the musical.

This entire post was hardly proofread so excuse any errors. I may or may not go back to edit them.

Anyways, I HIGHLY suggest you listen to or even go see this amazing show. I highly recommend you listen to the OBC and revival cast albums. I also recommend the 2007 album also.. They're all amazing.

If you made it this far, thank you for reading!

#parade #parade the musical #musical analysis #in this essay i will #why i love this musical omg #jason robert brown #prosody #broadway #musicals #musical theatre #parade revival

[renegade-hierophant]

I recently realized that what was behind my dislike of certain languages, like Spanish, Italian, Greek, Bulgarian, Russian, etc., is that they all lack the distinction between long and short vowels (even if they might have reduced vowels like Russian), which to my ears just sounds kinda irritating, maybe because both my native languages, including English as my third learned language, have vowel length and one has pitch accent as well.

PS: Japanese and Korean also have vowel length and pitch accent, but I didn't want to make the map of the entire world since I don't know much about languages on other continents.

#languages #lingustics #prosody #langblr

[linguisticalities]

#child language acquisition #prosody

[fayrobertsuk]

Kith and Kin

So Fen Speak is Ten tonight, and I was asked to record a piece for the event. Glad I didn't rely on the notion that I would be there in person as I am very full of snot and tiredness and my throat hurts. Here's the specially written piece (Kith) that played tonight on the big screen - happy birthday, my beauties.

#fay speaks #prosody #poetry #storytelling #commission #spoken word #poem #fen speak #video post #video #Youtube

[ficmylife4]

How Surface Pressure Works & Why It's Catchy

Luisa is my favorite character and this was my favorite song from Encanto, and understanding the work and technical skill in how the lyrics and music were chosen and paced to aid the feelings is impressive!

#youtube #prosody #lyrics #song-writing #lin manuel miranda #encanto #luisa #trochee #poetry

[yersina]

I’d really love to see a linguistic study on the conveyance and perception of prosody in Internet spaces. Because this and this and this [underlined] and THIS and This and t h i s and tHIS and 👏this👏 and even /this/ and *this* are all sort of the same thing—they’re all used to indicate an idea that’s of more importance than the surrounding text, or possibly something that’s to be taken differently from how you’d normally read a post. But! At they same time they’re not? Because they all point to a slightly different meaning, and we all? Somehow decided to agree on this? (Don’t even get me started on what we do with punctuation.) AND WE DIDNT EVEN TALK ABOUT IT BEFOREHAND. I for one never read a post explaining what any of these mean, but I still understand implicitly, and I bet you do too! And it’s not just about meaning either—we also understand that because they’re different, they can’t just be used in combination with each other however you please (but also you can, if you want to indicate different types of emphasis), which is what language is about.

I could go on, but I!! Just love thinking about how language works on the internet

#sina rambles #linguistics #prosody #at least I think it’s prosody it might also fall into meta linguistics a bit? #different emphasis styles (?) also indicate sociocultural context #like you can just kinda Tell what part of the internet someone is from by how they’re writing emphasis #which is fucking wild to me #language is so cool!!!

[linguisticdiscovery]

Why does speaking with rising intonation make people sound less confident?

#linguistics #language #sociolinguistics #uptalk #intonation #prosody

[coquelicoq]

i've gotten so used to my daily practice of reading french aloud that now when i have to read something boring in english for work i default to reading it aloud. which takes way longer and also i feel like i retain even less information than i would otherwise, somehow. the upside is that my oral reading cadence in english, even of dense scientific articles, is rather excellent nowadays. i could read scientific articles out loud for a living, if that was a thing people needed me to do. which they do not, because screenreaders are a thing. maybe i could read crusty PDFs out loud for a living? but anyway all this is to say shoutout to my man alexandre dumas and also my other man victor hugo for training me to read run-on sentences in my second language. after that, dry journal articles in my first language are easy peasy.

#this practice is giving me some insights that are relevant to my actual job though #i mean we already knew this but. try reading your sentences out loud. can someone understand them without seeing them? #if not...your sentence may be too complex and may need to be broken up into multiple sentences. #my clients have to write complicated shit in a readable manner and one of my coworkers had this whole #initiative for a while just trying to get them to write shorter sentences. but they completely ignored him lol #reading out loud also helps you catch typos. i caught so many in this published journal article just now (embarrassing for them) #i probably would have caught most of them if i had read it silently but you never know #it's really interesting to me that i think this skill of parsing syntax on the fly to modulate sentence-level prosody in french #seems to transfer to english. i mean that i've been practicing reading french aloud and it seems to have made me better at #reading english aloud too even though french and english have different syntax and punctuation conventions. #so that's convenient #french #syntax #prosody #my posts #i cannot believe i STARTED this daily practice with the count of fucking monte-cristo. way to start on hard mode. jesus #and then followed it up with les misérables of all things. am i a masochist?? #don't answer that.

[voidstarzero]

no autograph has been found

In fact, Hopkins seems to have originated his sprung rhythm as a reform of Swinburne's ternary meter by eliminating what he perceived as its quantitative infelicities (Schneider 1968, Kiparsky 1989).

(Hanson and Kiparsky, 1996, p. 300)

Another [presentation piece] is supposed to be the 'Ad Mariam', printed in the 'Stonyhurst Magazine', Feb. '94. This is in five stanzas of eight lines, in direct and competent imitation of Swinburne: no autograph has been found; and, unless Fr. Hopkins's views of poetic form had been provisionally deranged or suspended, the verses can hardly be attributed to him ... nor can I put aside the overruling objection that G. M. H. would not have wished these 'little presentation pieces' to be set among his more serious artistic work. I do not think that they would please any one who is likely to be pleased with this book.

(Bridges, 1918, p. 105)

Wherefore we love thee, wherefore we sing to thee,                 Where shall we find her, how shall we sing to her, We, all we, thro' the length of our days,                     Fold our hands round her knees, and cling? The praise of the lips and the hearts of us bring to thee,                 O that man's heart were as fire and could spring to her, Thee, oh maiden, most worthy of praise;                     Fire, or the strength of the streams that spring! For lips and hearts they belong to thee                 For the stars and the winds are unto her Who to us are as dew unto grass and tree,                 As raiment, as songs of the harp-player; For the fallen rise and the stricken spring to thee,                 For the risen stars and the fallen cling to her, Thee, May-hope of our darkened ways!                     And the southwest wind and the west wind sing.

(Hopkins, 1894; Swinburne, 1865)

References

Bridges, R. (Ed.). (1918). Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins. London: Humphrey Milford

Hanson, K., & Kiparsky, P. (1996). A Parametric Theory of Poetic Meter. Language, 72 (2), 287–335. https://doi.org/10.2307/416652

Hopkins, G. M. (1894). Ad Mariam. Poetry Nook. Retrieved May 19, 2022, from https://www.poetrynook.com/poem/ad-mariam

Swinburne, A. C. (1865). Atalanta in Calydon. Retrieved May 19, 2022, from https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Atalanta_in_Calydon/Text

#poetry #algernon charles swinburne #gerard manley hopkins #sprung rhythm #ternary meter #prosody

[whateverwhimsy]

Nerve

We will glitter again, amidst the black doom that weaves nightly through our consciousness.

We will usurp the powers of dread, knocking down our locked love doors. When the moon is shimmering full, it foretells the coming conquest of night and its false sense of drapery. Among these hidden potential poisons, we whisk ourselves a cocktail to settle heart & mind. 

Who do these eyes think they're looking for? Where does the cosmic trust form in our hands? We must rise to seek the day through tumbling hills and forests, through lapping seabeds (threatening to slip our feet from the rocks), and by smoke-grey clouds that sleep across the skyline. There is but one heaven in our veins. 

We know it by the trail of our faded soul dust, streaking across the valleys we traverse in seeking solace.

We will glitter again, but with stronger bones to hold us up.

#prosody #poems #poetic #spilledink #prose #spilledprose #writing #written #thoghts #thestuffofthought

[ailelie]

Random video on reading prosody from Emily Muccianti and she shares an example using a text she made up:

I would like to point out that Kate is the one who figured out how to open the chest.

Kates are always awesome.

#prosody #kate

[mindrat]

I think the prosodic breakdown of phallus is pha(llus) so the expletive interjection would be pha-fucking-llus. Phallo-fuckin'-centrism, man!

#phallus #prosody #linguistics #phallocentrism

[linguisticalities]

#psycholinguistics #prosody #ai-assisted anaylsis #autism

[jonathanmorse]

The food they ate, the poems they wrote

Pre-footnote: after the widely unpredicted Republican victory in the presidential election of 2016, many media organizations in the United States dispatched pundits to rural precincts to learn what they had missed. Soon derided by the pundits themselves as “Cletus-hunting,” these expeditions typically involved respectful interviews with citizens lamenting their loss of economic and cultural…

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#history #pastoral #prosody