LINGUIST List 17.1574

Tue May 23 2006

Qs: Conversational Invectives; Discovery of Phonological Categories

Editor for this issue: Jessica Boynton <jessicalinguistlist.org>


Directory         1.    Dieter Hartmann, Conversational Invectives/ Insults/ Offensive Language
        2.    John Goldsmith, Automatic Discovery of Phonological Categories


Message 1: Conversational Invectives/ Insults/ Offensive Language
Date: 23-May-2006
From: Dieter Hartmann <dieter.hartmanngmail.com>
Subject: Conversational Invectives/ Insults/ Offensive Language


I am doing a research paper into the use of insults (invectives/ offences etc.) in conversational language. I shall focus specifically on real conversational use, particularly in English.

For this purpose I am looking for relevant research already performed in this field. If you are familiar with research that has been done in this regard, please contact me. Furthermore, I wish to find general text that deal with this phenomenon.

I have already found numerous sources for taboo and offensive language, my work will however focus on the first derivative of such language, the underlying intention of purposeful offensiveness.

Most sincerely Dieter Hartmann University of the Witwatersrand South Africa

Linguistic Field(s): Sociolinguistics
Message 2: Automatic Discovery of Phonological Categories
Date: 22-May-2006
From: John Goldsmith <jagoldsmuchicago.edu>
Subject: Automatic Discovery of Phonological Categories



I am interested in hearing from Linguist List readers about recent work in automatic learning of phonological categories. I am aware of work done up through the 1960s, especially as reviewed in Eli Fischer-Joergensen's 1952 paper in Acta Linguistica, and Householder's works in Lingua 1962 and 1971. I would be delighted if readers could inform me of more recent work done (especially in a computational context) on inferring such categories as vowel, consonant, sonorant, obstruent, and so forth, from purely distributional information.

Thanks,

John Goldsmith

Linguistic Field(s): Computational Linguistics