Word: vowel
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Pinker told the audience about his research which shows that both memory and grammatical rules contribute to the expressive power of language. While his references to arcane events in grammatical history, such as the "Great Vowel Shift of the 15th Century," might have been lost on the audience, many students praised the professor for his incisive comments and analysis...
...central linguistic motif of some of his political poems became of use to him, as he noted in his lectures, when he approached the translation of Beowulf. A motif of his political poems is the conflict between the rich vowel sounds of the Irish language and the consonant-heavy word-clumps of the Anglo-Saxon. In approaching the Beowulf translation, Heaney faced a different problem--cramming what he called the "giant ingots" of the Anglo-Saxon tongue into the "itty bitty tiny" parameters of moden English, parameters Heaney has broken through with consummate skill in much of his own poetry...
...some ways the exaggerated, vowel-rich sounds of Parentese appear to resemble the choice morsels fed to hatchlings by adult birds. The University of Washington's Patricia Kuhl and her colleagues have conditioned dozens of newborns to turn their heads when they detect the ee sound emitted by American parents, vs. the eu favored by doting Swedes. Very young babies, says Kuhl, invariably perceive slight variations in pronunciation as totally different sounds. But by the age of six months, American babies no longer react when they hear variants of ee, and Swedish babies have become impervious to differences...
...producer Jimmy Bowen, yet another relic of the rockabilly years. Five years later, she was starring in Always, and transcending the kitsch format (a fan recalling her brushes with Patsy's greatness) by interpreting 18 Cline songs faithfully and imaginatively; she'd slow down the tempo, tease out the vowel sounds even further, add an Ozark twang that you won't hear on Patsy's records. Now an ancient 20, Barnett has her own, self-titled CD (Asylum). It stands as both a votive offering to her idol and a discreet declaration of independence...
...show, however, is not without flaws. For a sharp stand-up comic, O'Donnell makes some disconcertingly lame gags. Whenever she mispronounces anything, she comes back with a Wheel of Fortune joke: "I'd like to buy a vowel!" This was tired after just four days. And the formatted topical comedy, as it turns out, is too predictable. A joke about Julie Andrews declining a Tony nomination ended with Rosie claiming she'd turn down the Nobel Peace Prize. That's the sort of one-liner that people who have never even appeared on Star Search have been using around...