Science journalism FAIL, or, Don't Make False Linguistic Claims

In My Humble Opinion
1

As I’ve mentioned before here on SDMB, I was raised as a linguist, but I’m not practicing. :smiley:

But the linguist instincts are still there. Today I saw a journalistic error so egregious, so epic in its failure, that I had to get on my language soap box about it. I don’t think there’s enough vitriol here for a Pit thread, so here it goes into IMHO.

Jennifer Viegas, of Discovery News, in penning an article on a lame-brained, short-sighted study on the (supposed) correlation between human male voices and these men’s “fighting ability” (anyone even remotely familiar with scientific research will, upon reading this article, immediately recognize some ENORMOUS foundational and methodological flaws the researchers committed, but that’s not my point here), made a completely groundless and utterly false claim. She wrote that the following sentence “includes every sound in the English language” :

Umm…NO. :mad:

I was able to identify at least SEVEN natural* English phonemes that are not found in this sentence. I prefer to believe that the false assertion was made by Viegas herself in writing the cited article, and not by the researchers. 'Cause if it WAS the researchers who made this very basic error, hoo boy…they’re even worse as scientists, than I thought!

No matter…

Without further adieu, the seven AWOL phonemes:

/g/ voiced velar plosive: as in get a clue, Viegas!

/v/ voiced labiodental fricative: as in very annoying mistake

/θ/ voiceless dental fricative: as in think before you write, Viegas!

/ʒ/ voiced post-alveolar fricative: as in I take no pleasure in false linguistic claims

/ʃ / voiceless post-alveolar fricative: as in pop science bullshit

/tʃ/ voiceless post-alveolar affricate: as in check your facts!!!

/dʒ/ voiced post-alveolar affricate: as in bad journalism

*Note that the voiceless velar fricative /x/ (like the -ch- in Scottish LOCH, or as sounded by Arabic letter -khaa’-) doesn’t appear either, but I’ve cut Viegas a break here, because this is not a native English sound. Scots yes, English no.

2

I too, am outraged by this atrocity.
(not really. But good work soldier)

3

Stupid mistake indeed. Can you think of a good sentence that DOES contain all the 44 phonemes? I occasionally help people learning English and it might come in handy.

4

Ado. A-DO! Not goodbye!

It’s a thread about language, I’m allowed to nitpick on spellin’ :stuck_out_tongue:

5

Irony.

6

Actually that’s not ironic, merely coincidental.

7

Yeah, like having too many spoons when all you needed was a fork.

8

An improper use of language in a rant about improper use of language isn’t ironic?

9

What was the definition of “every sound”? While it’s clear that said sentence does not include those phonemes listed, perhaps the researchers in some way decided that they could reconstruct or interpolate the sounds of some phonemes based on the sounds of others. I’m talking out of my ass on that, but the distinction remains.

10

NOTHING’S ironic. Hypercorrection has removed all meaning from the word.

11

Hmm… come up with a sentence that has all 44 English phonemes? I think I might have a project…

12

We can tell, otherwise you would have typed “practising” :). Unless this was also intentional irony, in which case I apologise for doubting you.

Anyway, I agree that’s sloppy journalism (shock!). To miss one or two may have been forgivable, but seven is just ridiculous.

13

I googled the sentence and found several references to its use in speech pathology. The problem appears to be that the sentence is just part of a longer passage. Specifically:

[When the sunlight strikes raindrops in the air, they act like a prism and form a rainbow. A rainbow is the division of white light into many beautiful colors. These take the shape of a large, round arch, with its path high above and its two ends apparently beyond the horizon.

There is, according to legend, a boiling pot of gold at one end. People look but no one ever finds it. When a man looks for something beyond his reach, his friends say he is looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.](http://www.d.umn.edu/~cspiller/readingpassages.html)

I’m guessing this longer passage contains all your missing fricatives, affricates, and plosives. So, somewhat sloppy journalism, but essentially something got lost in the translation.

14

Cyningablog being a yank, ‘practicing’ is perfectly fine, in his neck of the woods.

15

What’s the difference between the th in think and the th in they?

16

I’m suspecting innocence on the part of the journalist, and a sub-editor with a mandate to cut 12 lines out of the article in half an hour who picked out this paragraph as a soft target.

17

Think sounds like Thin. They sounds like The.

Another way of putting it - random ethnic accents will turn “think” into “tink” and “they” into “dey”. Other than that I’d have to make an mp3 and I don’t know how to do that. (That, other, and than all sound like they and not like think, btw).

18

I would submit that English is a living, changing language, and Ms. Morrisette’s song sufficiently popularized a definition of “irony” synonymous with “perverse coincidence” or “cruel happenstance” that such usage is now acceptable in everyday use of the language.

/sings/ Now THAT … is … IRONY!

19

IANA Linguist, so I can’t give a proper explanation.

‘Th’ in ‘think’ is unvoiced. The sound is made by putting the tongue against the teeth and blowing air past it. ‘Th’ in ‘the’ has less air passing between the tongue and the teeth, and includes sound from the vocal cords.

20

We produce and perceive these sounds so automatically that we are unaware how perfectly ordinary it is for us to make distinctions of this kind. Here’s something that will illuminate the distinction:

Thigh - thy
Teeth - teethe

These are what they call ‘minimal pairs.’ The only difference between the words of these pairs is the voiced/unvoiced quality of the ‘th’ production. But we know which word is meant when we hear it on the air. Place your fingers on your throat as you enunciate the word pairs. When you feel the vibration while pronouncing a consonant, that consonant is voiced.

(Also not a linguist, but I’ve got, you know, hobbies.)