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Peggy Renwick @syllabicity.bsky.social · Jul 28

okay thanks! The default number of formants (n_formants) is not 4? fasttrackiverse.github.io/fasttrackpy/...

fasttrackiverse.github.io

Peggy Renwick @syllabicity.bsky.social · Jul 28

I'm just going by what worked in Praat, which was to change the formant settings to 4 formants with a max of 5 kHz. Should changing max_min_formant to 5000 not have a similar effect?

Looks like o was worst among our comparisons, but PRICE was also bad:

PRICE F2 as measured by DARLA vs. new-fave

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Peggy Renwick @syllabicity.bsky.social · Jul 28

e.g. extremely fronted MOUTH tokens (female speaker) where the correct F1,F2 are like 713 and 2215 (via DARLA, checked in Praat), but new-fave is giving 675 and 876 using the defaults. Phonologically front vowels seem to track OK.

We're going to try upping the min_max_formant parameter?

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Peggy Renwick @syllabicity.bsky.social · Jul 28

cool! we're gonna try tweaking the config file, and will keep this in our back pocket...

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Peggy Renwick @syllabicity.bsky.social · Jul 28

new-fave I believe uses FastTrack's methods. the issue we have is that archival (crappy) audio seems to get decent results from DARLA (with zero filtering!) but be error-prone in new-fave, while high-quality new audio from speakers with the same dialectal back-vowel hijinks tracks fine in new-fave.

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Peggy Renwick @syllabicity.bsky.social · Jul 28

does anyone in #sociophonetics know how the vowel formant training data or measurement process for DARLA and new-fave might be different? Asking for a whole pile of archival audio that's getting wildly different back-vowel values across the two. @jofrhwld.bsky.social @joeystanley.com ...?

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Peggy Renwick @syllabicity.bsky.social · Jul 27

life with a sociophonetician/phonologist...
oral history interviewee (b. 1910): "...ret[oɪ]red..."
me: "if he just said 'ret[oɪ]red' instead of 'ret[aɪ]red', how will he say 'fireman'?"
6yo: "f[oɪ]reman"
interviewee: "f[oɪ]reman"

my work here is done 🥳

Reposted by Peggy Renwick

Association for Laboratory Phonology @labphon.bsky.social · Jul 9

The conference website for #LabPhon20 is now live: labphon.org/labphon20/home

#LabPhon 20 will happen in #Montréal, Québec, Canada, June 26–28, 2026, with additional pre-conference events on June 25. The call for papers and proposals for satellite workshops will be circulated in late August 2025.

Home | Labphon

labphon.org

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Peggy Renwick @syllabicity.bsky.social · Jun 19

oral history interviewer note-of-the-day:
"Mrs. Lo Grande a little hyper she had just won lottery"

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Peggy Renwick @syllabicity.bsky.social · Jun 6

I'll be looking for your tips and tricks!

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Peggy Renwick @syllabicity.bsky.social · May 19

hi linguists and sociolinguists! question: if a person wanted to state that Wells' lexical sets/keywords are in wide usage for studies of English, what accompanying references would be handiest or most expedient? (any reviews of lexical sets' usage in the literature?) thanks!

Reposted by Peggy Renwick

Jessi Grieser @jessgrieser.com · May 19

Please share widely: The dates for New Ways of Analyzing Variation 53 have changed to November 5-7, 2025, due to a late-breaking university calendar change.

Abstracts due June 15. Visit us at nwav53.ling.lsa.umich.edu (also accessible via nwavconference dot org but BlueSky doesn't like redirects)

UM | NWAV53

nwav53.ling.lsa.umich.edu

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Peggy Renwick @syllabicity.bsky.social · May 15

Our research appears in a @todayshow.com bit with @parkerposey.bsky.social -- truly an honor!

Y'all, this work elicits public opinions, in the broadcast, that Southern accents are sexy and comforting. It was only possible thanks to the National Science Foundation.

www.today.com/video/is-the...

Why the iconic Southern accent appears to be slowly fading away

New research suggests that the classic Southern drawl is diminishing in regions across the South, with experts pointing to an increased migration to the South as the cause for younger generations losi...

www.today.com

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Peggy Renwick @syllabicity.bsky.social · May 12

language change in the news! h/t all our @americandialect.org PADS contributors... apnews.com/article/migr... @joeystanley.com @drkatcarm.bsky.social @lhlew.bsky.social... 😊

apnews.com

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Peggy Renwick @syllabicity.bsky.social · May 12

if you're thinking matched guise, I'll give you three guesses as to the initial L. in my name 😉

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Peggy Renwick @syllabicity.bsky.social · Mar 26

opaque 😉

there's a line of research out of UIUC on this, and they frame it as a marginal contrast. there are several papers. here's one: www.frontiersin.org/journals/com...

Frontiers | Within-Speaker Perception and Production of Two Marginal Contrasts in Illinois English

The notion of marginal contrasts and other gradient relations challenges the classification of phones as either contrastive phonemes or allophones of the sam...

www.frontiersin.org

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Peggy Renwick @syllabicity.bsky.social · Mar 26

A house in my neighborhood had a banner reading TR*MP 2024: MAKE LIBERALS CRY AGAIN... yeah a few weeks ago it finally disappeared

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Reposted by Peggy Renwick

AAUP @aaup.org · Mar 22

Columbia University has failed to defend academic freedom & freedom of speech & allowed a great institution to be bullied & extorted into submission by an administration hellbent on contorting higher education to their will.

The AAUP condemns this capitulation. We can & must fight back.

Columbia Concedes to Trump’s Demands After Federal Funds Are Stripped

The administration has moved to cut $400 million in federal funding to the university without changes to its policies and rules.

www.nytimes.com

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Reposted by Peggy Renwick

Stephanie M. Lee @stephaniemlee.bsky.social · Mar 21

"On October 8, 1931, a law went into effect requiring every Italian university professor to sign an oath pledging their loyalty to the government of Benito Mussolini. Out of over 1,200 professors in the country, only 12 refused. All of them were immediately fired." www.chronicle.com/article/what...

Opinion | What Autocrats Want From Academics: Servility

In 1931, Italian scholars were made to take loyalty oaths. Will that happen to us?

www.chronicle.com

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Peggy Renwick @syllabicity.bsky.social · Mar 8

hi friends! are you open to some linguistic distraction? consider the English Rhymes Survey below, especially if you're an adult native speaker of North American English. thanks!

englishrhymes.github.io

English Rhymes

englishrhymes.github.io

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Peggy Renwick @syllabicity.bsky.social · Mar 6

dear Romance linguists! The next iteration of #LSRL will take place in the Dominican Republic in September 2025. The deadline for abstract submissions is March 31. #LSRL55 #linguistics

lsrl55-lec.pucmm.edu.do#lsrl55

Reposted by Peggy Renwick

Heidi Harley @heidiharley.bsky.social · Mar 6

Why Official English is a terrible idea for the United States, from @lingsocam.bsky.social. Like and share! www.lsadc.org/content.asp?...

LSA

Four Reasons English Should Not be the Official Language: Statement Against White House Executive Order Designating English as the Official Language of The Un

www.lsadc.org

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Peggy Renwick @syllabicity.bsky.social · Mar 6

our 6yo has been saving money for weeks, helping out around the house to earn cash. Yesterday he decided to drop most of it *not* at Target, but at the local indie bookstore. I let him know he's giving back to his community this way. 🥰 #proudmama #shoplocal

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Peggy Renwick @syllabicity.bsky.social · Mar 6

when I was a teenager, each family member got their own junkdrawer in the kitchen... except I feel like we also had the term "junkum-bunkum"?

Peggy Renwick @syllabicity.bsky.social · Mar 6

but their grandparents know it! music.youtube.com/watch?v=Ez8f...

The Name Game

YouTube video by Shirley Ellis - Topic

music.youtube.com

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