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Darin Flynn

@phono-logical.bsky.social
420 followers 237 following 4K posts

assoc. prof. linguistics @ucalgary.bsky.social

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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 19h
@becauselanguage.com quickly and kindly suggested a better analysis (thanks!), which I've bastardized in the trees below. He doesn’t use strict X-bar theory with 1st-y students, so he's able to use a ternary branching NP which spares him a major flaw in my tree-analysis—that ‘more‘ dominates ‘than’
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 21h
Roughly, I adapted Larson’s ’88 analysis of adjectival comparatives, except that I follow the course textbook (Contemporary Linguistic Analysis) in placing Deg in the specifier position
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 23h
I’m a phonologist teaching syntactic ambiguity this week. Most cases are pretty easy to explain to my first-year students, but this one is tricky. I only teach NPs, not DPs or DegPs, so I can only share basic analyses in class. Syntax gurus: do you think these trees are reasonable enough to share?
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Nivaĉle lacks /l/ but it has the lateral fricative /ɬ/as well as a laterally-released dorsal stop /k͡l/, e.g. /k͡loʔp/ ‘winter’ [k͡ló̰p]. The lateral component isn’t transcribed [ʟ], so I assume it’s coronal [l]. If so, /k͡l/ is a complex segment in Nivaĉle [niβak͡lé ~ niβaq͡lé].
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
«Desarrollo de interacciones entre glotal y sonantes en lenguas mataguayas: el caso nivaĉle» por Analía Guttiérrez (Sep. ’26) www.researchgate.net/profile/Anal...
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Someone just reminded me of ‘registrar’
static.klipy.com
DJ Khaled: Another One
ALT: DJ Khaled: Another One
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Bangla Sign Language sites.google.com/view/banglas...
sites.google.com
Bangla SL | বাংলা ইঃভাঃ
বাংলা ইশারা ভাষাটা কী? What is Bangla SL?
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Reposted by Darin Flynn
Lisa Carey @msleedy.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Genuinely concerned about what's happening to the space-time continuum in this toilet.
A toilet door with a sign saying "Temporally Out Of Order"
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
I’m starting to feel bad for bringing up this phonotactic ;)
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Not specific to Utah English but exciting to see /t/ → [ʔ] documented not only immediately before /n/, but also across a vowel (“at a distance”), as in ‘buttons’ below. Also great that they document the glottal stop dissipating into creaky voice, as in ‘mountains’, or into vocal fry, as in ‘carton’:
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Go big or go home, I guess: “How does the human brain accommodate 6,500 languages?” by David Kemmerer and Adolfo M. García (Sep. ’26) www.annualreviews.org/docserver/fu...
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
“What [ju] know about that?: Changing patterns of glide deletion in memphis African American English” by Nikolai A. Schwarz-Acosta, Rhosean Asmah and Nicole Holliday (Aug. ’26) pubs.aip.org/asa/jasa/art...
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
This varies in Western Canada, too. My eldest pronounces ‘button’ as [ˈb̥ʌʔn̩]. My second-eldest pronounces it [ˈb̥ʌɾn̩]. My second-youngest says [ˈb̥əʔə̆n], and my youngest says [ˈb̥əɾə̆n].
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
“Glottalization and hyperarticulation of /t/ in the Wasatch Front variety of English” by Mykel Loren Brinkerhoff and Richard A. Wright (Sep. ’26) pubs.aip.org/asa/poma/art...
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
in the same vein: bsky.app/profile/phon...
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Btw, Clark and Hillenbrand show that in American English “the pre-/r/ vowels are acoustically intermediate between their tense and lax neighbors but resemble /i/ and /e/ more closely than /ɪ/ and /ε/” www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
cambridge.org
Quality of American English front vowels before /r/ | Journal of the International Phonetic Association | Cambridge Core
Quality of American English front vowels before /r/ - Volume 33 Issue 1
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Proposed typology of metrical representation levels, with four attested language types
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
“Prosodic prominence and phrasal intonation in Amharic” by Jackson Kellogg (Sep. ’26) open.bu.edu/items/6bdaee...
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
The program is now available for the Annual Meeting on Phonology (AMP) 2026, which will be held in-person later this week at the University of Maryland, College Park. Below are the abstracts of the invited talks by profs. K. Hitczenko, H. Goad, and M. Baese-Berk drive.google.com/file/d/18p3U...
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Reposted by Darin Flynn
Ben Lang @benebular.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Had a wonderful time at #SNL2026 spreading the word about perceiving linguistic sources of creaky voice. Thanks to everyone that stopped by my poster and stay tuned for more! @snlmtg.bsky.social
Ben is seen presenting and gesturing in front of a scientific poster on the cortical dynamics of creaky voice during a poster session.
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
ha, love this
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
I gather that the phonotactic is not active, pace Clements & Keyser (1983), Davis (1988), Cairns (1988), Davis & Baertsch (2011), Walker & Proctor (2019), etc.
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Thanks for all this Dominic and @moxfyre.bsky.social
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Nice! I’ll try those on my students too
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Btw this one through me for a loop :) bsky.app/profile/phon...
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Yes quite possible. For what it’s worth, I have an excrescent schwa in flail and I think of brer as a contraction of brother. bsky.app/profile/phon...
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Cool, I didn’t know that
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Thanks; agreed! We also had a local grad student called Sarah Greer. I have a long /iː/ in that one, bc Can Eng. Someone suggested that the phonotactic (if real) may be weaker with longer vowels, citing ‘flail’ and ‘drawer’ ucalgary.scholaris.ca/items/5f486601…
ucalgary.scholaris.ca
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Yes, from brother! Also prayer, which I guess our minds think still derives from pray-er somehow? Or, the phonotactic is just dead ;)
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
These nice contrasts were the highlight of Prof. Toivonen’s talk, at least for me:
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
More rarely, I’ve encountered some names that end in /mʃ/, e.g. Devamsh, Sudamsh, Anjanamsh,
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
I expect that the English discomfort with syllable-final clusters like /kʃ/ and /nʃ/ (pace Yiddish ‘mensch’) will also subside in Canadian English as (boy) names like these are increasingly common: Aksh, Ansh, Daksh, Shivansh, Trayaksh, Vedansh, Naksh, Reyansh, Jaksh, Devansh, etc.
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
The phonotactic against CɹVɹ and ClVl in English is mentioned by Halle & Clements (1983), Davis (1988) and Cairns (1988), and more recently by Walker and Proctor (2019):
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
English phonology has long forbidden syllables with the same liquid in coda and complex onset (*plɪl, *flɪlf, *kɹɪɹ, etc). But Punjabi English allows /bɹɑɹ/, apparently. I imagine that in time this phonotactic will disappear from Canadian English, too.
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
My colleague Diego Krivochen mentioned this kind of conjunction today, which is apparently possible for some speakers—but not for me! Maybe ‘it’ is not semantically empty for those speakers?? Or maybe they think ‘it snowed’ introduces an implicit, unpronounced nominal subject ‘snow’ for ‘covered’?!?
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
It *appears* to get it when given the preceding context, but ironically, it misinterprets the preceding phrase, which is supposed to mean “that I will love (someone)”
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
hm
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
@etymologynerd.bsky.social response youtube.com/shorts/NwddJ...
youtube.com
Responding to Language Jones
YouTube video by Etymology Nerd
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
I also discovered through him that the regular omission of « ne » creates ambiguity and misunderstanding. For instance, he misunderstood « j’aurai plus de soucis » as “I’ll have more worries”
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
My son is reading Zone by Marcel Dubé and has fun questions about the grammar. E.g., he asked why they use « que » in questions. I tried and failed to explain that the complementizer preempts the overly formal inversion of the subject-verb order. Anyhow, I hadn’t noticed this about French before
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
“Not another case of final voicing? Laryngeal Realism, Late Middle English delaryngealisation and impossible phonological change” by Patrick Honeybone (Sep. ’26) phoneybone.ppls.ed.ac.uk/ell-delaryng...
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Reposted by Darin Flynn
Dahlem Center for Linguistics @dclberlin.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
#OTD 343 years ago, Elizabeth Elstob (1683–1756) was born 🥳 A translator and pioneer of Old English studies, she authored "The Rudiments of Grammar for the English-Saxon Tongue", the first Old English grammar written in English. #WomenInLinguistics #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Huh: “you’m”
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
“The myth of phonetic erosion” by Fae Hicks and Patrick Honeybone (Sep. ’26) phoneybone.ppls.ed.ac.uk/phn-erosion....
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
“Categorical perception of Mandarin tones in Jingpo native speakers” by Binghao Wang, Xinyuan Li and Yao Lu (Sep. ’26) www.researchgate.net/profile/Yao-...
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Oops, I meant to write 4-5 syllable-final consonants for Nuuchahnulth. They’re quite impressive clusters but I don’t think they’re appendices because they occur in word-medial syllables, and arguably in foot-medial syllables too. OTOH its obligatory syllab onsets are restricted to a single consonant
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
far-away Salish languages allow similar-size consonant clusters in initial position, but Pat Shaw has argued convincingly that at most two consonants are permitted in their syllable onsets, i.e. the rest are appendices, and again, syllables generally have vowel nuclei—schwa is esp. common in Salish
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Well maybe just a small areal effect; it’s not widely shared. The other surrounding related and unrelated languages tend to have vowel-headed syllables. Much further south, Nuuchahnulth (a distant relative of Oowekyala) allows 4-5 syllable-consonants but every syllable has a vowel, and some …
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Ooh: “Prominence in Lio: an experimental investigation of word stress” by Michelle Mayro (Aug. ’26) search.proquest.com/openview/5be...
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Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
“Diné Bizaad, a descriptive sketch” by Jennifer Reyes Morgan (Sep. ’26) search.proquest.com/openview/e83...
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