Melissa Boiko @melissaboiko@scholar.social

organizing accounts:

this alt = linguistics, conlangs, academic life.

selfies, comments on books+comic books, transgender issues, politics, miscellanea = @elilla .

trying to keep this account’s public timeline more on-topic as per instance rules \o/

#introduction hallöchen! I’m a Brazilian trans woman living in Germany working on Japanese dialectal fieldwork (long story). Interests include fantasy fiction, imaginary languages, free software, comic books, intersectional veganism, cute cuddly things, and supporting anticapitalist revolutions to bring down the whole rotten edifice

#introductions #germany #bochum #nrw #linguistics #transgender #vegan

IPA is so useful and cool cause in any language, in any dialect, each symbol always means the same sound. a single alphabet for all.

except Englishes where out of ‘tradition’ /e/ means [ɛ], /r/ means [ɹ̠], /ɔː/ is [oː], /ɒ/ is [ɔ], /ʌ/ is [ɐ], /o/ is [ow], and /æ/ is either [a] or [eə].

English speakers are so used to an orthography outdated for centuries that they won't update even their IPA... (tho kudos to Australians for using the international phonetic alphabet as a phonetic alphabet!)

it is frustrating when you study guides on how to write academic texts that are engaging and readable (e.g. use first person; tell anecdotes; use metaphors, analogies and imagistic, sensorial language) and when you try to apply these techniques, they are ironed out by reviewers who believe your text doesn’t feel sufficiently like academese.

the sociologically fascinating thing is that nobody likes abstract academese; ppl just think that if you don’t do it, somebody else will reject the text.

it would be convenient if you could provide to biblatex a list of words that should always be capitalised, even when the citation style requires lowercase (like ‘English’ or ‘ǃXóõ’).

it could also be smart enough to guess that all-caps acronyms should probably stay all-caps.

#latex

down with all citation styles which require place of publishing

I'm a Japanologist and gf does Chinese politics. between us, no string of hànzì remains unread 😌

(as long as we have our cellphones with Pleco/Kenkyūsha at hand)
(and a few minutes)

kind of surprises me that apparently apuds are not popular outside of Brazilian academia? at least judging by how apud commands are missing from biblatex except for abntex.

an apud ("by", "according to") is used to cite second-hand references. so you can say "…discovered by Hattori 1930 (apud Ramsey 1979)" to credit Hattori’s original discovery, while also being honest about the fact that you’re not working with the original article but with Ramsey 1979’s summary of it.

hey, would anybody like to try thesis writing accountability with me for a while?

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I was thinking of something like this. I toot to you daily about what did I work on on that day (or didn't). I don't expect engagement other than clicking the lil star so that I know I'm being seen. my drafts will be synced online and you can glance and opine if you want, but never a requirement. I offer the same level of attention for your work (not necessarily linguistics) should you want it.

« Gender bias and stereotypes in linguistic example sentences »

https://ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/005367

#linguistics

set up a raspberry pi 4 to automatedly backup my work laptop, itself, my research server, and the latter’s databases

also running a masto (glitch-soc) instance there just for kicks

certainly not the same as going in person but I appreciate the effort they put into it 😌

my university (#RuhrUniBochum) does a periodic ‘writing week’ event (#Schreibwoche). this time it has to be online, but it’s starting today.

this week I’m gonna get some of my thesis done, it’s past time 😖

some Japanese mastodon slang (2/2):

JOJ: LOL but looks like elephant trunk
tori 'bird': Twitter user
tori-kusai 'reeking of bird': behaves like a bird
tori-kizoku 'Lord Bird': behaves like a bird, i.e. like they own the place
zōgo 'elephant language': what I’m listing here (rather than zokugo, 'slang')

#Japanese #mastodon

(source: 『マストドンつまみ食い日記』)

some Japanese mastodon slang (1/2):

paoru パオる (from pao, 'toot'): to use masto (wider in usage than 'to toot')

paopao-sio: let's masto

paorā 'paorer': mastodonter, masto user

-pau: present progressive aspect; elephant version of Twitter -nau (<'now')

zōge 'tusk': lol (laugh = warai = w = looks like a bit of grass = kusa 'grass' (normal Internet slang) → looks like elephant tusks (Masto parody))

kiba-haeru 'to sprout tusks': similar play on kusa-haeru 'to sprout grass' (= wwww = laughs)

in the absence of words like "doch", the contour can be used to disambiguate tag-negative questions:

— so you don't like maple syrup?
— no˦˨ (, I don’t).
— no˦˨˦ (, I do like it.)

this kind of thing is why I reject the exoticisation of lexical tone as inhumanly hard and fussy. languages like English already have all sorts of sophisticated mappings between pitch and meaning; lexical tone is just doing that at the lexical level (which cases like 'quite' come quite˦˨ close to.)

#linguistics

the word "quite" in English has two meanings that can be distinguished by intonation. try to imagine how the conversation could go in:

a) it is qu↓ite˦˨ good, …
b) it is q↑u↓i↑te˦˨˦ good,…

(a) could be "…so we picked it”. b) could be "…but there are some issues to fix first".)

the fall-rise ˦˨˦ melody in b) is called a "contradictory contour", and it is widespread in languages to signal negation or ambivalence about the direction of the discourse.

> I was extruded on the age limit at the end of last term. In many ways a melancholy proceeding, especially financially. Though I have belonged to F.S.S.U. [university pension scheme] since it began in 1920, it does not provide enough for one to live on one's laurels (old and dusty as Christmas decorations in January). Without the assistance of 'Hobbits and all that' things would be meagre.

J.R.R. #Tolkien, some academic who would be unable to retire without getting lucky on a side gig

torn between being hyped for the upcoming #Schreibwoche/Writing Week (social support for writing my thesis, always helps me a lot) vs. it being on Zoom (anxiety generator engine)

#ruhrunibochum