Author Archives: Joseph Pater

The representation of women in phonological discussion

From Joe Pater.

My impression is that women are relatively well-represented in phonology, maybe more so than in other sub-disciplines of linguistics. A little piece of encouraging data on this comes from the 2015 Annual Meeting on Phonology, in which 18/27, or 66%, of the authors of oral presentations , including plenaries but not tutorials, were women (I was unable to identify the gender of one author). I’d be very interested if anyone has any better data on the representation of women in phonology, especially with respect to semantics, syntax and phonetics.

I also have the impression that women are under-represented in phonological discussion, that is, in question periods and other discussions at conferences, and I suspect this is part of a much broader phenomenon. A piece of data on this also comes from AMP 2015. Kie Zuraw kept track of the gender of question askers for 16 of the talks (all but the first two). 74/103 = 77% of the questions were asked by men, even though the audience was about equally balanced between men and women. Zuraw’s observations replicate previous observations by Stephanie Shih from the Computational Phonology and Morphology Workshop held July 11 2015 at the LSA Summer Institute, in which the audience was roughly gender balanced, but the question takers skewed male. Inspired by Shih and Zuraw’s observations, I kept track of the gender of question takers at the LSA Phonology: Learning and Learnability session January 7th, 2016, and got 26/29 = 90% male questioners, with what looked again to be a roughly gender balanced audience.

These results are not surprising – I think they are just confirming what we’ve all informally observed in conferences and elsewhere (though I have to say that I was surprised at how skewed my own count was). There is undoubtedly a complex set of conscious and unconscious biases underlying our behavior that’s producing this distribution, and presumably there is a literature in some field that has studied related phenomena. My current thinking is that there are some pretty obvious conscious decisions we can each make to change this distribution, and that simply talking about this phenomenon and raising awareness of it may well help to get a better representation of women in phonological and other academic discussion. I do hope this situation changes, because I’d very much to like to hear more of my female colleagues’ thoughts after talks.

Thanks to Ellen Broselow, Jenny Culbertson, Claire Moore-Cantwell, Magda Oiry, Stephanie Shih and Kie Zuraw for discussion.

Update Jan. 10th: Thanks to someone who prefers to remain anonymous for the following graph, which shows we still have some work to do in terms of representation of women as invited speakers. The ns in the graph are the total number of speakers.

proportion_females_invited_to_phon_confs copy

Update Jan. 12th Sharon Peperkamp has shared “data for 53 conferences between 1993 and 2013, for a total of almost 300 invited and more than 2000 selected speakers, with 37% invited vs. 49% selected women”. It’s great to see that women are indeed well represented in phonology in general, and this makes it even clearer that we have work to do on the invited speaker numbers. Sharon has also contributed this plot of percentages over time.sharon

The spreadsheet is available here, if anyone would like to further analyze it, make figures, or continue to keep track of the numbers. If someone wants to volunteer to coordinate this effort, please e-mail me, and I’ll put that information here. As Rachel Walker has pointed out to me, conferences could also keep track of diversity statistics themselves – apparently she’ll be bringing this up with the AMP board. If this happens, we could keep a consolidated public record here.

Alderete 2015: Updating the analysis of Japanese compound accent

From Rutgers Optimality Archive, Dec. 23, 2015.

ROA: 1265
Title: Updating the analysis of Japanese compound accent
Authors: John Alderete
Comment: In Short ‘schrift for Alan Prince, compiled by Eric Bakovi?
Length: 5 pgs
Abstract: Antepenultimacy has long been an organizing principle for both word and compound accent in Japanese, but constraint-based phonology has not yet formalized the relationship between the two domains. This squib assumes the formal commitments to antepenultimacy in Ito & Mester 2015/to appear (Linguistic Inquiry) and sketches a way to unify the two domains by further assuming compounds are layered into recursive prosodic words, the second of which is the head and must therefore bear accent.
Type: Paper/tech report
Area/

Keywords:

prosody, pitch accent, Japanese, compounds, headedness

Position: Associate/Full Professor, UL Lafayette. Phonology, Phonetics, Speech Sound Disorders

The Department of Communicative Disorders invites applications for a tenure track position to begin Fall, 2016.

Responsibilities include teaching undergraduate and graduate courses at the Master’s level as well as mentoring and teaching in the doctoral program in Applied Language and Speech Sciences. Conducting research in areas of expertise and providing service to the department and University are also expected. Applicants must have an earned doctorate in Communicative Disorders or a related area; evidence of extensive scholarly activity including research publications and grants; and expertise in one of more of the following areas: phonology and phonological disorders, speech sound disorders, speech-language development, multicultural issues, research methodologies or speech science. The certificate of Clinical Competence is preferred. Salary and rank are dependent upon qualifications and experience.

The University of Louisiana at Lafayette is classified as a public research university with Doctoral/High Research Activity, an enrollment of approximately 19,000 students and a full-time faculty of about 620. The Department of Communicative Disorders, in the College of Liberal Arts, runs a BA program with over 200 students, an accredited MS program in Speech-Language Pathology with approximately 65 students students, and a PhD program of about 25 students. There are currently 9 tenured or tenure-track faculty and a speech and hearing clinic with four full-time clinical instructors and a full-time clinic director. The Department also houses the Doris B. Hawthorn Research Center for Special Education and Communicative Disorders.

Located midway between New Orleans and Houston, Lafayette is the heart of Louisiana’s Acadian-Creole region. The city of over 122,000 is part of the Lafayette-Acadiana area with a total population of 550,000. It is the hub of numerous music and cultural festivals and celebrations.

The University of Louisiana at Lafaeytte is an Equal Opportunity Employer. EEO-LA 14-13

Applicant Instructions:
Applications should include a letter of application, current curriculum vitae and three letters of recommendation. Applications will continue to be accepted until the search is closed. All materials whould be sent to Dr. Jack S. Damico, Chair QSN Committee.
Contact Information:
University of Louisiana at Lafayette
Dr. Jack Damico, Chair QSN Committee
Department of Communicative Disorders P.O. Box 43170
Lafayette, LA    70504-3170
E-Mail: jsdamico@louisiana.edu
Phone: 337-482-6551337-482-6551

Call for papers: “Tools for Big Data in Laboratory Phonology”

From Peggy Renwick

Call for papers
Satellite Workshop: “Tools for Big Data in Laboratory Phonology”
Abstract deadline: 26 February 2016
Notification: 15 March 2016

We are pleased to announce a special workshop showcasing and providing hands-on experience with tools for working with large datasets in Laboratory Phonology. This workshop will be held immediately preceding LabPhon15 at Cornell University, on Wednesday, 13 July 2016, and further information is available at http://mlmlab.org/bigphon.

Research in laboratory phonology is increasingly scaling up to large datasets, from diverse sources, such as speech corpora, crowdsourced data, or experiments carried out across multiple laboratories. The size and complexity of these datasets make technical tools (e.g. for forced aligners, database systems, automatic phonetic measurement) crucial for working with them. The purpose of this workshop is to bring together the users and the developers of such tools, and to meet the needs of both groups. Users (workshop participants) will gain knowledge about a range of state-of-the-art tools, have hands-on experience using them, and be able to access real-time help from the tools’ developers (workshop presenters), who will in turn have a platform for the dissemination of their tools and feedback on ways to improve them for increased use in the LabPhon community. The workshop will also provide an opportunity to discuss the utility and future development of existing or additional tools.

We invite proposals from tool developers who would like to present in this workshop. We welcome submissions on tools that might be useful for any aspect of working with large datasets in Laboratory Phonology, including (but not limited to): constructing, organizing, and searching phonetic and phonological corpora (e.g. forced aligners, database systems); automating phonetic and textual annotation (e.g. prosodic structure, VOT, part-of-speech tags); deriving and extracting acoustic- or transcription-based measures (e.g. F0, formants, neighborhood densities, phoneme distributions).

Before the workshop, developers will provide access to their tools, including basic documentation and a sample dataset; these will be linked from the workshop web page. During the workshop, developers will give a tutorial on their tool, introducing its purpose and capabilities and illustrating its usage through examples. Developers will also be present for unstructured time where participants practice using the tool(s) of their choice on their own projects, with individualized help from developers as needed.

We anticipate accepting no more than six proposals in the interest of providing sufficient time for developers to showcase their tool and for participants to gain hands-on experience using it.

Proposals no longer than two pages, including figures and references, should be submitted to Kathleen Currie Hall at kathleen.hall@ubc.ca. Each proposal should include a description of the tool to be presented, its utility for working with large phonetic/phonological datasets, and an explanation of the kinds of hands-on examples that could be provided during the workshop.

Tessier 2015: Phonological Acquisition: Child Language and Constraint-Based Grammar

Tessier, Anne-Michelle. 2015. Phonological Acquisition: Child Language and Constraint-Based GrammarBasingstoke, UK.

How do children learn to produce speech? What kinds of errors do they make along the way? What can those errors teach us about phonological theory?

In this comprehensive introduction, Anne-Michelle Tessier examines how we acquire the sounds and sound patterns of language. Analyzing child speech patterns and their analogues among adult languages while also teaching the basics of Optimality Theory, this novel textbook will help students develop a broad grammatical understanding of phonological acquisition.

Assuming only a basic knowledge of phonology, this textbook is aimed at students of linguistics, developmental psychology, speech pathology and communication disorders. It will also be of interest to professional psychologists, acquisition researchers, clinicians, and anyone concerned with child speech development.
@book{Tessier2015,
Address = {Basingstoke, UK},
Publisher = {Palgrave},
Title = {Phonological Acquisition: Child Language and Constraint-Based Grammar},
Year = {2015}}

MFM24 Fringe meeting: Computation and Learnability in Phonology

From Giorgio Magri (e-mail)

Topic:
Computation and learnability play an increasing important role in phonological theory with many recent developments moving along different lines of research. The fringe workshop of the MFM in 2016 will therefore try to make the point on the role of computation and learnability in phonological theory.

Call for papers:
We invite 45 minute presentations that review some computational or learnability technique, approach, paradigm, or coherent set of results relevant to the phonological community. The goal of the meeting is to provide computational tutorials rather than to present original research results. Practicalities:
— One page abstract
— Submission deadline: February 12, 2016 (same as MFM)
— Abstract submission by email to the organizers (see below)
— Author notifications by early March 2016

Attending:
It is free to attend the workshop, and no registration is necessary — you can simply turn up on the day.

When and where:
— the afternoon of Wednesday 25th May 2016
— at the University of Manchester (close to Hulme Hall, where the MFM will be held; more details available soon)

Workshop website:
https://sites.google.com/site/24mfmfringe/

Organizers:
Jeffrey Heinz (heinz@udel.edu)
Giorgio Magri (magrigrg@gmail.com)

 

MOLT 2016: call for papers

E-mail from Lev Blumenfeld, Dec. 17, 2015

Dear phonologists,

The School of Linguistics and Language Studies at Carleton University is pleased to announce a call for papers for the Montreal-Ottawa-Laval-Toronto Phonology Workshop (MOLT). The workshop will take place on March 18th-20th. Depending on the number of submitted abstracts, we may run the workshop only on the 19th and the 20th.

Abstracts are invited on any topic relevant to phonology, phonetics, or their interfaces. Please submit anonymous abstracts in pdf format with the words “MOLT 2016” in the subject line, to lev.blumenfeld@carleton.ca. Abstracts are not to exceed 1 page, including data and references, with 1-inch margins and font no smaller than 11 points. Please submit abstracts by Friday, January 22nd, 2016, 5pm. Abstracts will be reviewed internally at Carleton, with results expected within a week of submission.

Logistical details about the workshop will follow in due course. Please address any questions to Lev Blumenfeld (lev.blumenfeld@carleton.ca).

Hope to see you at MOLT!

Best,
Lev

C’est avec plaisir que l’école de linguistique et d’études langagières (SLaLS) lance un appel de propositions pour l’atelier de phonologie MOLT (Montréal-Ottawa-Laval-Toronto). L’atelier est prévu du 18 au 20 mars 2016. Toutefois, selon le nombre de résumés soumis, il est possible que l’atelier ait lieu seulement les 19 et 20 mars.

Nous invitons les participants potentiels à soumettre des résumés portant sur tout sujet en phonologie, en phonétique ou concernant leurs interfaces. Les résumés doivent être soumis par courriel en format pdf, avec les mots “MOLT 2016” dans le titre du message, à lev.blumenfeld@carleton.ca. Les résumés ne doivent pas dépasser 1 page, y compris les références et les exemples, avec des marges de 1 pouce et une taille de caractère d’au moins 11pt. La date limite pour soumettre un résumé est le vendredi 22 janvier 2016, 17h00. Les résumés seront évalués à Carleton. L’annonce des résultats sera faite une semaine après la date limite.

Les détails logistiques sur MOLT vous parviendront plus tard. Veuillez vous adresser à Lev Blumenfeld (lev.blumenfeld@carleton.ca) si vous avez des questions.

Au plaisir de vous voir,

Lev