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Laurel MacKenzie

@laurelmack.bsky.social

135 followers 25 following 62 posts

Linguist & bird enthusiast. Associate Professor at NYU.

Posts Replies Media

Laurel MacKenzie @laurelmack.bsky.social · 09/12/2025

I treasure these -- have one too

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Laurel MacKenzie @laurelmack.bsky.social · 18/12/2024

Assignments in his classes tended to look like this.

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Laurel MacKenzie @laurelmack.bsky.social · 18/12/2024

HOW could I forget all the little Plotnik bells and whistles?! “This is the Plotnik lion, or maybe it’s supposed to be me.”

The Plotnik lion, or maybe it’s supposed to be William Labov.

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Laurel MacKenzie @laurelmack.bsky.social · 18/12/2024

I have to focus on the lighthearted moments in my six years studying with Bill to keep from feeling too sad. Here we are in 2009 at a ceremony at the Penn Museum where I received a teaching award. When I invited him: "I wouldn't miss it! I've already got it on my calendar." Classic Bill.

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Laurel MacKenzie @laurelmack.bsky.social · 17/12/2024

Maybe I was primed to see it, but this typo jumped out at me in a paper I was reading just now :)

Citation of D'Onofrio, Praat, & Van Hofwegen 2019

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Laurel MacKenzie @laurelmack.bsky.social · 24/10/2024

Found a good deal on an #nwav52 hotel!

"With the offer you are saving $39,918.24"

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Laurel MacKenzie @laurelmack.bsky.social · 09/10/2024

#tbt, from when Twitter was fun

Tweet from 2014 by @laurel_mack: "@JoFrhwld I feel like I get a Bingo when I find a noun pileup with 'scheme'. Spotted recently: Cycle Theft Victim Bike Loan Scheme Launch"

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Laurel MacKenzie @laurelmack.bsky.social · 09/10/2024

Sometimes I miss British English noun pileups and then I get an email with a subject line like this

Email subject line "FY26 Research Technology Needs Request Process Information Session"

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Laurel MacKenzie @laurelmack.bsky.social · 25/06/2024

Love seeing a counterexample to Labov 2012 (image 1) in today’s NYT (image 2)!

“In many areas of culture or technology, some older people will embrace and welcome the new. But in thousands of sociolinguistic interviews, no one has ever been heard to say, “I really like the way that young people talk today; it’s so much better than the way we talked when I was young.” Most of us adhere to what one may call the Golden Age Syndrome: the belief that language once existed in a state of perfection, and any change is a decline from that state, to be resisted.” (p. viii)

“My son has always been generous with me, and I’ve found the slang of his generation to be so much better and more useful than any that I’ve ever used.”

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Laurel MacKenzie @laurelmack.bsky.social · 27/03/2024

Me too! And yet this “y axis is where x=0” definition actually seems to be pretty common

Screenshot of Google search results showing two highlighted definitions of “y-axis” both of which define it as where x=0

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Laurel MacKenzie @laurelmack.bsky.social · 27/03/2024

Very basic math q! See screenshot: we teach that the y-axis is at x=0, but in Fig. 4.2b, what I'd call "the y-axis" (the vertical line labeled "Response") is at x = -2. So like... what do we call that line at x = -2? Is the line at x=0 the true y-axis, and the one at x = -2 just a cosmetic one?