we (a couple of researchers from the linguistics department at Stanford University) are looking for a participants in an online study on English questions. Only NATIVE SPEAKERs of ENGLISH can participate (if you're not a native speaker, pls refrain from participating).
We are interested in your native speaker intuitions (not prescriptive rules of grammar) regarding certain types of questions and statements. This is an exploratory study, so unfortunately we cannot afford to offer any funding.
If you nevertheless would like to help us (and the progress of science ;-), please send us an email at:
suvresearch_prin2n3@yahoo.com
We will then point you to our online experiment,
Thx a lot for your interest!
WH-research group, Linguistics Department, Stanford University
boy ;-), actually a friend of mine who is quite active in this list recommended posting on this list to me, since people here would be interested in language in general.
If that is not the case, I apologize for spaming this list. In any case, if you ARE interested in language, maybe you will find our experiments interesting.
Guys, calm down (but thx for the publicity, hehe). I explained to wordwind why we use a yahoo address (it's a shared account for all researchers working on this project).
If you look me up on the Stanford pages, you will find Florian Jaeger, Linguistics department, etc.
Whoever is interested in participating in our experiment (native speakers only!) will hear from us over the next couple of days,
yup, you have to assume one of two things; either the native is American or the english is American. or that you can ascertain the origin of the post.
one of three things? two of three things?? just another example of why you should never assume!?
or that America is coextensive with the USA (to wit, does not include Canada and/or Mexico), or that all of the above are included, or not disincluded, by the original post, or...)
If you had been born into an English-speaking family who lived in a non-English-speaking country, you'd still be considered to be a native speaker of English if that was your natural language.
It reminds me of musicians I've heard speaking of their 'natural' instrument, meaning the one on which they'd first learned to play--that is, if they'd learned primarily on one instument in the beginning of their work. When I studied violin late in life, I automatically *saw and *heard things pianistically, and it took a long while before I began to *see and *hear thing violinistically.
Hi, Florian. I'll be most happy to participate. Back in my yeut, I worked on similar surveys for LAGS (sorta like DARE but southern). And, any Stanford-connected linguist is a friend of mine! (-:
lol, American, British, Canadian, and even NZ English is most welcome ;-). You will be asked to name where you have grown up anyway (this is important for our analysis later).
lol, American, British, Canadian, and even NZ English is most welcome ;-). You will be asked to name where you have grown up anyway (this is important for our analysis later).
I wasn't asked where I grew up. The instructions email said that I would be asked where I acquired my idiolect, but I was not. I also had to say that "I am a native speaker of American English" on the consent form in order to participate. The project itself was interesting, but those were black marks against it, in my opinion. I hope that that the research itself is managed better than the implementation of the survey was.
We already talked about this. The instructions (if read carefully =), tell you that you should enter where you grew up into the field "Region" once the experiment starts. BTW, we tried to improve the instruction a bit more. so, maybe it's clearer now.
Aye, that post is from some time back (sorry, for not having checked back earlier). Thx for participating (to you and everyone else in this forum!). So far, approximately 50 people (including several from this forum) have participated in one of our experiments.
That means, we are almost done - I will post one more call for our second experiment here in second for those brave souls among you who simply can't get enough of our lovely Java applets ;-).
Believe it or not, but you'll have yet another chance to participate in our studies on questions and statements in English (yes, any kind of English - even Australian English, as long as you are a native speaker of it [I'm afraid, just being native and a speaker but not a native speaker won't be enough]).
So, hoping that you don't mind my occasional stopping by too much, I give you another yahoo address to which you can express you interest (just send us a message with the subject line "interested in study"):
some of you have already participated in that experiment. If you want to help us anyway you can participate in whatever experiment you did not already participate in (the email address for the other experiment is suvresearch_prin2n3@yahoo.com).
Thank you again for all your help.
Florian WH-Research Group, Linguistics Department, Stanford University
Just fyi, tilfo: maybe I'm paranoid, but I haven't signed up to participate because I just don't like the idea of having to send in my e-mail first. If I could just click onto the site, I'd feel much more comfortable. Something akin to why I refuse to register with certain newspapers in order to read them on-line, maybe. I think it's more to do with the feeling that, once I've sent my e-mail address, it will no longer be my choice whether to paricipate or not. Just my 2¢.
More than once on this site, people have offered workarounds, such as http://www.bugmenot.com, why not use them? Or get a throw-away email address specfically for such online use? Asking for an email first is a simple device that helps reduce the rate of bogus or automated participants. There are so many practical steps that can be taken to accoommodate this perfectly reasonable request, without resorting to plaintive hand-wringing.
Vernon, re: your first suggestion--I had completely forgotten the existence of such. Thank you for the reminder. As to your second, I couldn't be bothered. Plus, I have this inherent/intrinsic trait that makes me struggle furiously against the restraints of being forced to do something. I want to at least have the option of doing things my way.
Thx for your honest reply. We do not post the link in order to make sure that people don't just "click and try" (one of the disadvantages of web experiments is that people may just want to check out how it looks). Having lots of aborted experiment trials doesn't look good if one has to write up the results.
I assure you that your email address will not be not be given to others or used for anything but emailing you the link to the experiment (like all experiments involving people, we are monitored by the human subject board of our university [as you will see in case you decide to participate]).
Also, you don't HAVE to participate after you send us an email - nobody is monitoring that. We just prefer to know where our participants heard from us (that's why we ask you to email us first before we give you the link).
I hope that answers your questions, which I very much understand (I have similar doubts about most cases where somebody wants my email address),
I once was an over-qualified member of a group called Mensa whose founder said that its members were those who, "wanted to have their heads examined" which they had demonstrated no doubt by the very act of having taken 'IQ' tests. Heh heh.
Well though more modest, this seems similar. They are simply looking for those who wish to have their linguistic intuitions examined. If they can't pay in coin of the realm though, perhaps they could offer a linguistic intuition measure in lieu of payment in filthy lucre.
Are you a native English speaker? I am a Native American English speaker (at least as West Indian as Ward Churchill).
But maybe that was something else. I used to work with a programmer who started to speak only in the first letters of words. He started with simple greetings. The frightening thing is that I grew to understand him over 50 percent of the time!
I was born and raised in Chicago. Dunno if that counts as native English. The particular intialism in question, however, arose from the other side of the Great Pond, in what we like to call Pomerania.
Or at least what *some of us like to call Pomerania.
I've never been able to work out why only Corgis are allowed to be gas fitters. Our Keeshond can out-flatulate any Corgi ever born, and she's not allowed to touch the pipes! Wouldn't let her near the central heating, but.
Wull. Corgis are little squat thangs, only about half as high as keeshonds, mehbe two-thirds at most. Ya gots be little like that if you're gonna go crawling around under the house where all them gas pipes are. Besides, the cleanup on the keeshond after all that crawling around in the dirt would be a real nightmare. The corgi's got mostly relatively short hair. Ya gots ta look at the big picture, Pfranz. Jeesh!
Wouldn't this be an appropriate moment to note that a couple of weeks ago we were in on "flatulopetic"? So I guess that would describe them Corgis (or Keeshonds).
I find it strange that someone who suposedly studies linguistics does not use proper English himself. Look at his abreviations, and the capitolazation is all over the place.
Quote: I find it strange that someone who suposedly studies linguistics does not use proper English himself. Look at his abreviations, and the capitolazation is all over the place.
capitolazation
I find it interesting that an anonymous poster digs up something from a long long time ago. Which was a legitimate post, all CAPS aside.
(Lost but trying not to sound pompous) Was it about the one that had --?:
" NATIVE SPEAKERs of ENGLISH
yup, you have to assume one of two things; either the native is American or the english is American. or that you can ascertain the origin of the post. "
Well, Aramis, you lost me on that one. I did finally catch your change in subject title, but even so I was lost. So I ran scruffy-looking through the Google directory for movies. The first response was for The French Witch Project. As I am of French descent, I am wondering whether I should be insulted. wink e
Certainly not! Shirley, no poster here ever thought 'Jackie' and 'scruffy' belonged in the same sentence, regardless of ancestry. Perhaps looking up "I gotta bad feeling about this" and "Laugh it up, fuzzball" would be more enlightening. Those are pretty old movies now but still have one of the most inspiring characters ever.
My favorite line from that same movie, though, is: "Boring conversation anyway.." Actually that sequence that leads up to it makes that the punchline.
I was there, in 1977, standing on line at the Lowe's Astor Plaza in New York; among the first to see Star Wars . That was long before it became a "sensation". A group of us, who were fans of the director from his earlier work (he was an unknown to the general public) had read about the movie being made in American Cinematographer magazine and made a long drive from Southern New Jersey to see the opening. Not yet a Blockbuster. We stayed in the theater to see it a second time (you were able to do that back in the 70's). And Movie theaters in America were not the shoeboxes of today.
</reminiscing>
"I am certain there is too much certainty in the world" -Michael Crichton
It's also over four years old. I think the study is all done, wrapped up with a pretty pink bow, and moldering somewhere in some locked file cabinet in Inner Academia. The bit bucket the webpage went into was emptied a long time ago.
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Who's scruffy-looking??
here ever thought 'Jackie' and 'scruffy' belonged in the same sentence, regardless of ancestry. Perhaps looking up "I gotta bad feeling about this" and "Laugh it up, fuzzball" would be more enlightening. Those are pretty old movies now but still have one of the most inspiring characters ever.
