(About music rather than language.)
Woke yesterday to a piece of shapenote music that I’ve heard but never sung: Psalm 34th (that’s the tune name; the text begins, “Through all the changing scenes of life”), as sung by Norumbega Harmony on their album Sing and Joyful Be. It has a nice rhythmic effect in the chorus that makes it memorable to me.
Woke up this morning — Solstice Day — to the distinctive sound of Tom Waits‘s voice singing his own “Ol ’55”, with the haunting chorus:
Now the sun’s coming up,
I’m riding with Lady Luck,
Freeway cars and trucks,
Stars beginning to fade,
And I lead the parade.
Words that seem to suggest all sorts of interpretive possibilities, but certainly begin with a kind of pocket reference guide to types of half-rhyme: the first three lines, rhyming up, luck, and trucks, illustrate feature rhyme (up vs. luck, with /p/ vs. /k/, two voiceless stops differing only in the feature of point of articulation and so “sounding alike”) and subsequence rhyme (luck vs. trucks, with /k/ vs. /ks/, the first being a subsequence of the second and so, again, “sounding alike”).
Two recent mess-ups in my postings: my original comments on the latest One Big Happy (here), which crashingly missed the point of the strip, although that wasn’t subtle; and, going back a while, my labeling my new right hip the Platinum Wonder Hip, when in fact it turns out to be titanium. Different specific sources, though both errors probably go back to the circus of medical treatments.
Two brief entertaining items: a typo and an imperfect pun.
That was the question this morning at 10 (PST) on KQED-FM, on the Forum program with host Scott Shafer and guests Penny Eckert (variationist sociolinguist, scholar of language and gender and of the language of adolescents, and director of the Stanford Voices of California project, described here) and Geoff Nunberg (semanticist, public intellectual commenting broadly in the media on issues involving language, and author of books on language in public life).
A really good hour, covering most of the topics people want to hear about and most of the topics linguists would like to explain to a general audience. An mp3 of the show is on the KQED site, here.
The answer to the question in the show’s title is: Yes, of course; everyone does. But the actual question being asked was something like “Is there a (single) California accent?”, the answer to that one is: No, but there are recognizable dialect areas within the state, plus a lot of variation that has to do with factors other than geography: class, sex, race and ethnicity, etc.
From Benita Bendon Campbell, a recent One Big Happy:
Now you’re wondering: which word? ASS is just too easy, FUCK way too hard. SHIT would be a good choice, since it can appear within a longer word in several ways; a first part ending in -SH and second part beginning with IT- is especially likely. Nominations?
… by Elizabeth Traugott and Arnold Zwicky, for Winter Quarter 2014. (Freshman and Sophomore Seminars have to be on topics not already covered by regular courses, and the classes are deliberately small — typically, around 15 students tops.) This has to be approved by the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, in brisk competition with other proposals from faculty members from all over the university, and then by the linguistics department, where it has to fit in with the year’s course offerings. No guarantee that it will happen.
Today’s Zits, with Jeremy strumming, texting, and typing:
Ah, the problem with snow shoveling is a simple physical limitation!