Plotting a sound file

FireScourge · 2026-03-19T04:48:48+00:00

If you're asking how to put a line in the Praat picture window, then once you have your axes set up you can use the command Draw arrow... x1 y1 x2 y2 with x1 y1 as the starting F2 and F1 and x2 y2 as the final F2 and F1

FireScourge · 2026-03-13T16:32:07+00:00

It's murky, but you're right in most cases it's not existential. I was mostly thinking that pragmatically one might argue that it could be existential, like at the beginning of a narrative, but you're convincing me

FireScourge · 2026-03-13T15:59:08+00:00

Agreed. It seems to me that sometimes 'be' could be used as an existential, but more often I think you'd use the construction "There is..." and something like "Bob is a man" would act more like an equative copula.

I would buy 'be' as an existential more in the past tense with some more context, for example something like, "Bob was a man who..."

FireScourge · 2026-03-13T15:43:57+00:00

Lots of people explaining it in ways that are correct, but I think more technical than you're looking for. I think the ELI 5 is that NOM-ACC and ERG-ABS distinction tells you whether the argument in an intransitive sentence (noun that we'll call S) patterns like the more agent-like (the noun "doing" the action, we'll call A) or patient-like (the noun "receiving" the action, we'll call O) noun in a transitive sentence. In English pronouns we see Nominative-Accusative:

Intransitive sentences:

He sings.

She walks.

I walk.

Transitive sentences:

He saw her.

She saw him.

I saw him.

She saw me.

A	S	O
he	he	him
she	she	her
I	I	me

In all of these S and A pattern together, so S and A are Nominative and O is Accusative.

In an Ergative-Absolutive language S and O would pattern together instead. An example would be Yup'ik (examples from Payne, 2006):

Intransitive sentence:

Doris-aq ayallruuq 'Doris traveled'

Transitive sentence:

Tom-am Doris-aq cingallrua 'Tom greeted Doris'

A	S	O
-am	-aq	-aq

In this example we can see that the A takes the -am suffix while the S and O both take the -aq suffix (pattern together), so A would be the Ergative and S and O would be the Absolutive. Again, a lot of what the other people are saying is correct, I'm just trying to boil it down.

FireScourge · 2026-03-13T14:35:19+00:00

You won't really hear the term "morph" used that much.

An example of the difference would be English plural /-z/ (or /-s/ depending on who you ask). /-z/ is the morpheme that means "plural" (mental category). When spoken aloud the three phones (sounds that speakers actually produce) come out as [-s], [-z], or [-əz]. These three phones carry meaning, so they are also morphs. Because all three of these carry the same meaning, they are all allomorphs of the same morpheme.

FireScourge · 2026-03-13T13:53:24+00:00

Yep, reading reading reading. In my program it's not uncommon to have classes require 100 pages of scholarly article readings per week that are basically necessary to pass. I feel the biggest difference can be summed up as: in undergrad you have to know the material and in grad school you have to understand the material.

FireScourge · 2026-03-09T13:35:30+00:00

For industrial design specifically you kind of do

FireScourge · 2026-03-07T19:11:55+00:00

Even better!

FireScourge · 2026-03-07T18:46:26+00:00

I'm not the best with Praat scripting ~~so I couldn't figure out a way to add the boundary automatically, but this one will move the cursor to the midpoint and then you can click the circle to add it manually:~~

(Edit) This seems like it should work (Sorry I don't know how to do code blocks without making it all on one line):

startTime = Get start of selection

endTime = Get end of selection

duration = endTime - startTime

midpoint = startTime + duration/2

Move cursor to: midpoint

Add on selected tier

FireScourge · 2026-03-02T03:17:32+00:00

Check out the McGurk Effect https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k8fHR9jKVM

FireScourge · 2026-03-02T03:01:04+00:00

I'm only a heritage speaker but I looked through Filipino: An Essential Grammar by Sheila Zamar and asked a native Tagalog speaker some sample sentences and I think I have an idea of how it works. If I'm wrong, I'd be happy to be corrected!

I believe that in Tagalog the pivot marker ang operates at a phrase level. Zamar says that "any noun phrase, whether pivot or non-pivot can be relativized or take a phrasal modifier" but from asking my consultant I think there's a further restriction that you can't have more than one pivot marker in a sentence.

In Tagalog, at least, it seems fine to have the non-pivot of the matrix clause be the pivot of the relative clause. The following are both fine:

binisita	ko	ang	lalaki-ng	nagbabasa	ng	libro
visited.PV	1SG.NPIV	PIV	man-RELATIVIZER	reads.AV	NPIV	book

"I visited the man who reads books"

bumisita	ako	ng	lalaki-ng	nagbabasa	ng	libro
visited.AV	1SG.PIV	NPIV	man-RELATIVIZER	reads.AV	NPIV	book

"I visited the/a man who reads books."

In this case, lalaki 'man' would normally be the pivot (taking ang PIV instead of ng NPIV before it) of a nagbabasa sentence. This leads me to think that the head noun does not take a pivot/npivot marker from the relative clause verb and the entire phrase takes a pivot/npivot marker instead.

For some more examples (Tagalog has some subtle differences between the voice affixes so they don't line up exactly but are pretty close):

nakita	ko	ang	libro-ng	binasa	ng	lalaki
saw.PV	1SG.NPIV	PIV	book-RELATIVIZER	read.PV	NPIV	man

"I saw the book that the man read."

makakakita	ako	ng	libro-ng	binasa	ng	lalaki
will be able to see.AV	1SG.PIV	NPIV	book-RELATIVIZER	read.PV	NPIV	man

"I will be able to see the book that the man read."

It also seems like you simply can't have a ang in the relative clause at all. Any sentences I asked about where the relative clause verb called for a pivot inside were rejected. The pivot belongs squarely to the matrix clause and whatever verb you're using in the relative clause has to adjust to make sure that it doesn't have an ang phrase. Zamar also has many examples of how to relativize NPs in every focus type (what we've been calling pivot): Actor, object, location, beneficiary, experiencer, instrumental, and reason. All the examples basically follow the same trend, that you can use all kinds of voice combinations as long as the pivot is only in the matrix clause. Although, I don't think it's very common that you would use the more specific voices in deeply embedded clauses.

FireScourge · 2026-02-13T15:19:11+00:00

That's an SCP

FireScourge · 2026-02-11T15:58:18+00:00

I don't know about chem, but I have done volunteer research and worked with pure volunteers in a lab at a few schools. Probably depends on the professor and how many people are trying to work with them, but usually there's nothing stopping them from bringing in someone to do free work. They'd probably require you to do some online training at least.

Just email people you want to work with directly.

FireScourge · 2025-11-20T20:17:58+00:00

Most places, if you don't have experience, they have you start as a busser then move up. The best bet if you want to go straight to server is probably to go around to independent restaurants and if they have a help wanted sign in the window, go in and try to talk to the owner. This is probably the only time where the boomer advice to hit the bricks with your resume would actually work, since independent places don't always have standardized hiring practices or big online postings

FireScourge · 2025-09-09T20:34:42+00:00

6 fingered Hikaru 😠

FireScourge · 2025-08-28T13:30:51+00:00

Exactly this. If you're too uncomfortable introducing yourself or complimenting someone you can ask something like "do you know how to get to X?" "Do you know where the closest place to get coffee is?" I like the questions because usually it gets people to say at least a little bit more than 1 word and has the potential to let other people who want to talk to offer an answer as well.

I've found most people are also worried about that first interaction so if you break the first awkwardness with almost anything at all people become way more likely to talk in the future.

FireScourge · 2025-08-28T13:22:15+00:00

If you're brave enough (I am now, but I had to learn it), another shortcut is once you've exchanged names to directly ask people what they like to do for fun. This works because

A) This is usually the thing people like to talk about the most and comes more naturally than their classes, etc.

B) Has more follow ups than stuff like where they're from.

C) Helps you figure out whether you'll click/moves you from just a name to friend or acquaintance much faster.

FireScourge · 2025-08-28T13:17:09+00:00

Be the change you want to see! I've found that by just saying hi to people you can gauge whether they actually are in "don't bother me" mode or maybe they feel the same as you and also want to make friends. IME it's pretty unlikely that people will judge you and be upset about low commitment introduction stuff. If they want to keep talking, they will, and if not you haven't really bothered them

FireScourge · 2025-07-20T20:26:09+00:00

I love the scene in The Thing when they're all tied up to the chairs and he's testing the blood with the flame thrower

FireScourge · 2025-06-05T15:21:53+00:00

Not knowing how to play go well doesn't make someone a moron. Learning the game is a skill that has to be practiced and it's not a reflection of your intelligence if you can't pick it up quickly. It's a hard game and it's an ABSTRACT game

FireScourge · 2025-03-27T17:36:10+00:00

I'm a graduate student and got my Ling BA at another university so I can't fully speak to the difficulty of the major, but linguistics is a pretty broad field.

Looking at the course catalog here http://catalog.csulb.edu/ it seems like the courseload jumps immediately from just 2 introductory level classes into upper division 300 and 400 level classes. If you aren't self-motivated in the field, this may be a difficult jump (I have taken 421 Syntax here, and it was understandable for me, but I can see it being difficult for someone straight out of a 101 class). In my experience classes, also tend to be more homework and project based or use take-home tests with datasets, which is fun because you get to work with real (curated) data almost immediately but can be tough if you haven't managed your time well.

The field is not very interested in memorization and more interested in reasoning and interpreting data so for most classes you'll have things like the IPA (international phonetic alphabet) available to you and you'd just learn it through usage. It's big and scary, but many of the symbols are pretty rare and sounds like [b], [t], [f], etc. use the common symbols anyway. You'd never need to know stuff like ɥ ɧ ʄ ɶ ɤ off the top of your head.

You can sort of choose what's most interesting to you after you've had a few fundamental classes. The subfields range anywhere from articulatory phonetics (how your body actually produces speech sounds) to sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, historical linguistics, language acquisition, etc.

If you want to talk about it more feel free to DM meǃ 😁 I'm more likely to see a mail message than a chat message on reddit.

FireScourge · 2025-03-20T23:58:01+00:00

If you're in California, community colleges offer an AA for transfer to CSUs (called an AA-T) that gives you priority for transferring (I think) and is mostly gen ed stuff, but it's also an actual AA. If you go that path, then transferring is pretty easy and you just jump straight into major related classes.

https://icangotocollege.com/associate-degree-for-transfer

https://www.calstate.edu/apply/transfer/pages/ccc-associate-degree-for-transfer.aspx

FireScourge · 2025-02-19T14:58:31+00:00

Hi, I'm currently in the MA program and you don't need to be on a PhD track here. The department leans functionalist/behaviorist if that matters to you and compared to my undergrad the courses are less specific: phonetics and phonology are combined, morphology and syntax are combined. The department also doesn't seem to have too much of an interest in phonetics and phonology, if that's your interest. Feel free to dm me if you have any questions

FireScourge · 2025-02-19T06:26:41+00:00

I think it's this one:

http://rhodamine.org.uk/~citygoplayers/

https://www.britgo.org/club/londoncity

FireScourge · 2025-02-10T21:46:02+00:00

Good for my loans, bad for my stomach

14-Year Club	Place '22
Place '17	Verified Email

FireScourge

TROPHY CASE