Comments for prosody.lab

Comment on if worst comes to worst by chael

chael — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 14:35:10 +0000

Hopefully if E. B. White was still around he would write great fiction rather than spreading his ill-conceived grammar advice. The idea that there could be a single correct answer to the question which version of "worse comes to worst" is appropriate would certainly fit his prescriptivist attitude, but it reveals a misconception about natural language. It's easy to come up with a rationale to make sense of any of the versions, so who is to say which version should be the correct one? Different native speakers prefer different versions, because they have different ways of making sense of the idiom. The goal of this post was simply to observe that there is a lot of variation in the use of this expression, and to speculate a little why that might be.

Comment on if worst comes to worst by Mac Steves

Mac Steves — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 21:31:20 +0000

First of all, let me say it is unfortunate that E. B. White is no longer with us for he didn’t address this. That leaves Dr. Levin, my high school English teacher who explained the meaning of the phrase as a succession of superlatives. In order for the phrase to make the most sense, use “if worst comes to worse.” The implication is that things are already as bad as they can possibly get (worst), yet through some horrible turn of events things actually degenerate from the worst into worse than that. Hence things have gone from worst (imaginable) to worse (than worst imaginable).

Comment on frown by Carol

Carol — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 22:43:38 +0000

Very interesting! I’m editing a novel and was trying to find a word meaning “sad expression” (something comparable to “frown” for “angry expression.” Evidently, “frown” is the best we can do. I think you’re right that the association between frowns and sadness comes from children’s books (maybe the Little Miss books of the 1970s?). I would add TV shows like “Sesame Street” as a possible factor. I was a child in the 1950s, and I’m pretty sure that we associated frowns with anger rather than sadness back then, but we definitely thought of frowns as upside-down smiles even in those long-ago days. (I wonder if the word “frown” occurs anywhere in the Dick and Jane books, the ubiquitous early-reader books of that decade.) At any rate, it never occurred to me that frowns involved the forehead (brow) until I started reading English novels as a teenager. It’s odd that American dictionaries like Merriam-Webster don’t reflect that very common visualization. For what it’s worth, a Google search for “sad frown” yields about 64,200 hits, so clearly it’s an acceptable phrase, however inadequate. Funny how many words we have for an angry or displeased expression: frown, glower, lower (lour), scowl, sneer, etc. But for a sad expression, the closest I can come is “pout”!

Comment on Prosodylab-Aligner by prosodylab aligner

prosodylab aligner — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 20:37:10 +0000

[...] Prosodylab-Aligner is a set of Python and shell scripts for performing automated alignment of text to audio of speech [...]

Comment on Prosody in the Lab—LSA Institute 2011 by prosody in the lab

prosody in the lab — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 20:35:40 +0000

[...] 2011 LSA Institute at the University of Colorado in Boulder. I’ve posted more information on class website. This entry was posted in news. Bookmark the permalink. Post a comment or leave a trackback: [...]

Comment on neuroblaste by Mister Rider

Mister Rider — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 02:44:37 +0000

You don’t actually have to be in Canada to watch the episodes. Cuz the Canadian intertubes are nice and friendly and don’t Geoblock
http://www.Radio-Canada.ca/neuroblaste

Comment on gripp by two talks at mcgill on friday

two talks at mcgill on friday — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 00:41:43 +0000

[...] gripp [...]

Comment on frown by chael

chael — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 03:57:35 +0000

hi Patrick,
thanks for your comment. This is not the kind of thing I really do research on (other than as a form of procrastination). I think your idea that the rhyme with ‘down’ has something to do with this new meaning is very plausible. It’s also plausible that English didn’t have a word before for the mouth-related reading of ‘frown’ (other languages don’t, e.g. my native language German, which is probably why it was such a surprise to me).
M

Comment on frown by Patrick

Patrick — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 01:55:20 +0000

I am a linguist who has lived in US, Europe, Asia and Canada and who regular translates into both US and UK English (so, I thought I had a pretty good idea of most of the differences). I came across the ‘furrow one’s brow’ of frown meaning and I was shocked. I’m in my mid-30′s now, and my whole life I’ve only ever known the ‘opposite of smile’ meaning. (I’m originally from the Southern US). First I wanted to find out how to say ‘opposite of smile’ in non-North American English. Incredibly, I can’t seem to find anything. Just circumlocutions like “sad mouth” or “mouthy frown” (obviously playing on familiarity with the newer use). Could it be that English simply did not have any word at all for such a basic facial expression in the past? (Or what seems to me like a basic facial expression….)
You research is interesting. One thing that strikes me is that both of the earliest two attestations play on a rhyme with ‘down’. Indeed, ‘turn that frown upside-down’ is a phrase I remember hearing often in my youth. Could this have been an impetus in the shift in meaning. The 70′s smiley face proto-emoticon also seems an interesting factor.

At any rate, thanks for yourself intriguing post.

Best regards,

Patrick

Comment on Digging into Data by prosody and dr. syntax, 1832

prosody and dr. syntax, 1832 — Sun, 05 Dec 2010 22:15:32 +0000

[...] literary and other texts in the humanities. The first discusses some projects that are part of the digging-into-data challenge. The second article illustrates what race horses with conspicuous names can teach us about the [...]