linguistics Archives

Accents of the Caribbean: How vowel pronunciations pivot, shift and merge

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The team researches vowel mergers and shifts in the spoken English amongst the different communities of the island of Bequia.

Prof James Walker of the Department of Languages and Linguistics at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia, is a sociolinguistic expert who has conducted extensive research on the English language in various parts of the world, including North America and the Caribbean. Together with Prof Miriam Meyerhoff at the University of Oxford, UK, their research focuses on different vowel pronunciations […]

Birds prefer sound texture over sound order

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For zebra finches, the subtle nuances in sound texture or timbre are more important than the sequence of repeated sounds.

How exactly do birds ‘talk’ to one another? And might research into how birds listen to birdsong help us understand communication both in humans and birds? Dr Robert Dooling and his team, based at the University of Maryland, USA, showed that – for zebra finches at least – the subtle nuances in sound texture or timbre are more important than […]