“What that house-sized corpse does do is sit there, ...” Does ‘does’ feel marked to you here? It does for me, for some reason

Btw, is anything more random than standard English restricting overt agreement to 3s?

Huh: ‘myths’ /mɪðz/

Looking forward to reading this: “Phonotactic learning with structure, not statistics” by Logan Swanson, Jeffrey Heinz and Jonathan Rawski (May ’26) direct.mit.edu/ling/article...

The speakers of this language isolate in Colombia are in the news unfortunately. Good dissertation if you can read Spanish: “El habla nasa (páez) de Munchique : nuevos acercamientos a su sociolingüística, fonología y sintaxis” by Esteban Díaz Montenegro (2019) theses.hal.science/tel-02469166...

“Phonetic prominence and lexical stress in Munster Irish, 1928 and 2020–21” by Connor McCabe (May ’26) www.cambridge.org/core/service...

Fascinating: “Documentation of transposition of aspiration in dialectal Balochi” by Ali Hussain Birahimani (May ’26) www.researchgate.net/profile/Ali-...

So cool: ‘can’ as [ʔŋ]

Did you know: some Canadians carry over the raised diphthong of ‘house’ to ‘houses’ in spite of voicing ablaut in the plural: /ˈh[əu]zəz/

Canva, draw me an anti-anti-missile-missile-missile.

We must be fearless. We must have fearlessness. We must not be fearlessnessless. We must not have fearlessnesslessness. We must be fearlessnesslessnessless.

IShowSpeed is famous for great uplifting content and for mispronouncing names—countries, players, etc. youtu.be/vrY1THC_NQE?...

“What has changed in the Science of Reading conversation over the last ten years, and where does the field go from here? In this expert panel episode, we feature discussion from three leading voices …: John McWhorter, Mark Seidenberg, and Tim Shanahan.” m.youtube.com/watch?v=Wgvp...

This hospital has a tipi—a loanword from Dakota/Lakota which reminds me that the 46th Siouan and Caddoan Languages Conference is happening at the University of Kansas this weekend, I believe. (Online attendance is possible)

The OED tends to show intrusive r in parentheses in pronunciations, yet it doesn’t give ‘Judahite’ as /ˈʤuːdə(ɹ)ʌɪt/, so maybe I thought/hoped wrong

-ite also creates marked vowel hiatuses: ‘Utahite’ /ˈjuːtɔːˌaɪt/, ‘Noonkanbahite’ /ˈnʊŋkənbɑːˌaɪt/, ‘uintahite’ /juːˈɪntəˌaɪt/, etc. Again, I would think/hope that varieties with r-intrusion “repair” these monstrous vowel sequences

On the other hand, /...ɔː.ən/ ~ /...ɑː.ən/ is marked but certainly a possible pronunciation, e.g. at the end of ‘Utahan’, ‘Wichitan’, ‘Tonopahan’, ‘Issaquahan’, etc. (Again, varieties with r-intrusion may “repair” these nicely, e.g. ‘Utahan’ /ˈjuːtɔːɹən/, etc.)

“PHOIBLE inventories suggest that diachrony contributes to the appearance of feature economy” by Kai Schenck and Alexandra M. Pfiffner (May ’26) journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/...

“The meter-phonology interface: weak elements, dependency relations, and Internally Layered Feet in Italian anapaestic meter” by Alessia Giordano (May ’26) www.researchgate.net/profile/Ales...

Dictionaries give Sabah as /ˈsɑː.bə/ or /ˈsɑː.bɑː/. None give the pronunciation of Sabahan, unfortunately. I can’t do /ˈsɑː.bə.hən/ or /ˈsɑː.bɑː.hən/. /ˈsɑː.bə.ən/ or /ˈsɑː.bɑː.ən/ are better, but still not ideal—though varieties with r-intrusion may do /ˈsɑːbəɹən/ or /ˈsɑːbɑːɹən/? Does anyone know?

“Linguistic variation in Dimili (Zazaki): a descriptive study of the Modan dialect” by Pınar Yıldız (May ’26) dergipark.org.tr/en/download/...

My kung fu is strong

New open-access book on phonology: “Indigenous languages of the Americas and their structures: Sounds” ed. by the Saguaro Group (May ’26) langsci-press.org/catalog/book...

“Effects of the semantic context on the processing of careful and casual speech” by Marco van de Ven, Benjamin V. Tucker and Mirjam Ernestus (May ’26) link.springer.com/article/10.3...

“Temporal patterns in articulation underlying repetitions, prolongations and blocks” by Yijing Lu, Louis Goldstein, Christina Hagedorn and Shrikanth Narayanan (May ’26) www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

a.k.a. the Greed-ler

Good news for #Gaeilge: people are using it for normal fun human stuff! It's not just a duty. Laura Pakenham breaks it down for us. Laura is the author of "Irish: History and Culture Through Language", available from Simon & Schuster. Listen to the full episode: becauselanguage.com/138-pop-up-g...

“Interactions between lexical tone and intonation in Rɨ̀kpa’ [Bantoid; Cameroon]” by Fridah Gam and Kathryn Franich (May ’26) langsci-press.org/catalog/book...

“An overview of Nduga phonology” by Kenneth S. Olson (May ’26) langsci-press.org/catalog/book...

“Iconic sound–shape correspondences in aphasia” by Josh Dorsi, Chaleece Sandberg, Simon Lacey, Lynne Nygaard and K. Sathian (May ’26) www.biorxiv.org/content/bior...

“Do words for loud things sound louder? Vowel iconicity for acoustic intensity across English and 253 language families” by Thomas Schlatter and Ivo Niethammer (May ’26) papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

“The distribution of nasal codas across Chinese dialects and its implication” by Pauline Bolin Liu (May ’26) www.researchgate.net/profile/Kaix...

“Cue-weighting and (indivi)dual pathways to the acquisition of vowel height contrasts: The F0 and F1 routes” by Jérémy Genette, Steven Gillis and Jo Verhoeven (May ’26) www.journal-labphon.org/article/id/1...

Cool velar ~ uvular shifts!

“A descriptive grammar of Bandari” by Tahereh Rezaei (2017) shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/handle/10603... h/t @shjsat.bsky.social and @alcabbage045.bsky.social — thanks, good stuff!

While I’m at it, I might as well nominate these as English suffixes, too: ‑zer as in ‘wowzer’ ‑fer as in ‘twofer’ ‑ka as in ‘judoka’ when pronounced /ˈʤuːdoʊkə/ ‑fa as in ‘antifa’ when pronounced /ˈæntifə/ or /ˈæntaɪfə/ ‑fry as in ‘belfry’ /ˈbɛlfɹi/ which surely has the stem ‘bell’ in most heads

If no one else has, I declare ‑ler to be an English suffix. It’s not in Wikipedia’s enormous list en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Categor... nor even in Bauer’s (2014) “Rare, obscure and marginal affixes in English” journals.openedition.org/lexis/304 but it was in ‘jizzler’, ‘fuckler’, etc.—and now ‘rizzler’

French would be very jealous of all these silent letters

“The moraicity of sonorant geminates in Tamil” by Srinivas S. (May ’26) www.researchgate.net/profile/Kaix...

“Strict modularity at the morphosyntax-phonology interface: The case of Irish preverbal d’” by Anna Laoide-Kemp (May ’26) link.springer.com/article/10.1...

“Towards a typology of imperative interjections: ‘Take it!’ in the Caucasus” by Timur Maisak (May ’26) onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1...

“Vowel dynamics in Nigerian English: The intersection between speaker’s ethnicity, variability, and speech rate” by Oluwasegun Amoniyan, poster presented at the 57th Annual Conference on African Linguistics (ACAL 57) at BU, May 22, 2026 sites.google.com/view/acal57

“An OT analysis of verbal reduplication in Dzə” by Peace Benson, poster presented at the 57th Annual Conference on African Linguistics (ACAL 57) at BU, May 22, 2026 sites.google.com/view/acal57

“Voice quality differences in [+ATR] and [−ATR] vowels in Asante Twi” by Chloe Guttmann, poster presented at the 57th Annual Conference on African Linguistics (ACAL 57) at BU, May 22, 2026 sites.google.com/view/acal57

“How Do Listeners Perceive a Negative VOT Contrast? Gradient Perception of Gã /gb–kp/” by Danielle Quaye, poster presented at the 57th Annual Conference on African Linguistics (ACAL 57) at BU, May 22, 2026 sites.google.com/view/acal57

“Vowel nasality and nasal coarticulation in Yoro Mumuye” by Ahmed Alzahrani, Malleeswari Jagabattuni, Jordan White and Matthew Faytak, poster presented at the 57th Annual Conference on African Linguistics (ACAL 57) at BU, May 22, 2026 sites.google.com/view/acal57