LINGUIST List 14.1979

Mon Jul 21 2003

Qs: Dutch voiceless stops/Researching Languages

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Directory

  1. Gilbert Lang, Dutch voiceless stops
  2. Loren A. Billings, Alternatives to "Projects in Linguistics (Wray et al., eds.)"

Message 1: Dutch voiceless stops

 Date: Sat, 19 Jul 2003 19:07:12 +0000
From: Gilbert Lang <lgzsfu.ca>
Subject: Dutch voiceless stops

I know that Dutch voiceless stops are said to be unaspirated.
However, the pronunciation of the voiceless stops in Dutch strikes me
as different from that of Spanish, French, Italian, etc. Could it be
that it's due to a difference in the Voice Onset Time? Is it possible
that Dutch voiceless stops are released a little bit after voicing of
the following vowel? Is it possible that there is a slight lag? I've
noticed from spectrographic analysis that the Dutch voiceless stops
definitely seem to have more energy than those of Spanish, so maybe
it's just a difference of airflow. Can anyone give me more
information?
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Message 2: Alternatives to "Projects in Linguistics (Wray et al., eds.)"

 Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2003 20:18:11 +0800
From: Loren A. Billings <billingsncnu.edu.tw>
Subject: Alternatives to "Projects in Linguistics (Wray et al., eds.)"


I am planning to teach a course in which last-year undergraduates will
be assigned a research project. I am considering one book in
particular:

Projects in Linguistics: A Practical Guide to Researching
Language. (1988) Alison Wray, Kate Trott, and Aileen Bloomer,
eds. London: Arnold.

The publisher's web site for this book is quite detailed:
http://www.arnoldpublishers.com/Scripts/webbook.asp?isbn=0340652101

So far, I have found one bit of commentary about this book on Linguist:
http://www.linguistlist.org/~ask-ling/archive-most-recent/msg07553.html

I have also found several course syllabi on the web that highly
recommend the book. However, I have found no discussion of other books
in this category. Are there such publications? As I see it, this book
is very strong in areas of applied and experimental linguistics but
quite skimpy in areas of linguistic theory; see the publisher's web
site for list of topics the book covers. (As a theorist, I could use
some help with things like statistics and sociolinguistics, so this
book happens to complement my interests nicely.) Before taking the
plunge, I thought I might ask you all about any other options. Any
comments would be appreciated, and I promise to post a summary.

Loren A. Billings, Ph.D.
Associate professor of linguistics
Department of Foreign Languages and Literature
National Chi Nan University
Puli, Nantou, Taiwan 545
E-mail: billingsncnu.edu.tw
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