Language Creatures

Many American speakers seem to easily recognize if someone is from the New York City Metro area . This includes the five boroughs (Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island), Long Island and parts of New Jersey. Why is the New York accent so recognizable? Well, the traditional New York English has special features that make it different from other American dialects. Consider these two examples. First, a very "New York" feature is the "aw" vowel . In many American dialects, the word "coffee" sounds [kɔfi]. In other American dialects, the same word sounds [kɑfi]. In the traditional New York English, the word sounds [koəfi], with a diphthong! This is why this vowel is also called the "cawfee" vowel . You can hear this vowel in words like "thought" ,  "broad" , "office" , "bought" , "talk" , and a large etc. How do you pronounce these words? Second, another recognizable featu

This is a wug! A wug is one of the most recognizable symbols of Linguistics , the science that studies the language faculty, the different languages of the world, and the language creatures (humans using languages!). This wug was used by Dr. Jean Berko Gleason in a 1958 experiment now called the "Wug Test". Children were given a brand new word (like "wug") and were asked to provide, for instance, the plural of such new word. Here's the transcription of the original prompt: This is a WUG. Now there is another one. There are two of them. There are two ____. English-speaking adults will agree that the plural of "wug" is "wugs", where the plural marker ("s") is pronounced with a vibration of the vocal folds (put your fingers over your throat and feel the vibration! It sounds [z]!). Children, however, will provide different answers depending on their age. Currently, among linguists, any linguistic experiment using made-up w