Hello, World!

A few years back I read that sea squirts digest their own brains and nervous systems once they find a place to affix. Daniel Wolpert, a neuroscientist who works on movement control, once joked that the sea squirt’s post-affixation life is an analogy for tenure. After being on the job market as a non-tenure track faculty for 10 years (2009–2019), all of them at MSU, I landed a tenure-track gig at MSU in 2019, and I was awarded tenure this summer.¹ So, it looks like I have joined the sea squirt in its mind/brain-free existence.

An issue that’s long been on my mind is that while I have read plenty of acknowledgements/thank yous as part of dissertations, and as farewells from academia (quit lit), I don’t think I have ever seen one after getting an academic job or after getting tenure. Maybe, it is for fear of being perceived as rude or insensitive to the plight of all those other equally (or more) capable researchers who didn’t get the fortuitous die-roll that one did. Or maybe, it is “not professional”… a thing that is simply not done. However, I couldn’t have made it to this new stage of my academic career without an incredible amount of support and encouragement, and not having a public acknowledgement would mean not giving credit to all those who were instrumental in helping me get here. So, I thought I would write a short one to kick off this blog.

I’ll start with my family and close friends, who were there through thick and thin, and never let me waver from what I knew I always wanted. Beyond my family, Alan Beretta, Suzanne Wagner, Deo Ngonyani, Yen-Hwei Lin, Sue Gass, Jimin Kahng, Arild Hestvik, Arsalan Kahnemuyipour, and perhaps most importantly, Bill Idsardi were without doubt the ones I have to thank the most! Of course, there were many colleagues², collaborators³, and many graduate and undergraduate students, whose conversations, questions, jokes, and insults :) kept me in the game.

Furthermore, to be honest, I just could not see myself do anything else. Primarily because I was convinced that I was barely passable at Linguisticking, but definitely horrible at everything else; so life gave me little choice!⁴ It seems both a long way away and simultaneously a short hop away from my dissertation days when I almost quit, but Peter Cole and Bill Idsardi strongly encouraged me to finish; again, Bill’s opinions, teaching and advice were instrumental there.⁵

A second issue that’s been on my mind is that there is no venue for real discussion, at least for those interested in Phonetics and Phonology. One would think conferences and journals fulfil that role. However, my own experience with conferences is that most people (including me) present their work and the audience asks a few polite questions, or they listen to talks (quietly), or they hang out with old friends after-hours⁶, but there is really little serious debate or discussion (even with panels). And journal articles often have researchers pursuing their interests and viewpoints, with what appears to me to be insufficient discussion of foundations and more focus on “accounting for data”⁷. But, serious and careful debates about topics important to the field, particularly, foundational ones, are often missing from them; at least, that’s my own opinion.

I hope to use this blog to discuss some of the issues that I think are important to the field: theoretical foundations related to Phonology and Phonetics, empirical arguments for various positions, and methodology. I also hope to occasionally talk about student concerns, academic governance, and other things. I hope those of you⁸ who read this blog will contribute to it freely so as to create a community where we can discuss issues that are more difficult to discuss in other venues. I should note a few things:

1. The views expressed on this blog are not necessarily those of my employer.
2. I am likely to be slow to upload new posts, largely because I have a yearling to take care of.
3. I hope those who do comment will be civil towards other commenters.

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1. You are welcome to look at my tenure application paperwork at this link.↩︎

2. Particularly, Silvina Bongiovanni and Jason Merrill.↩︎

3. Particularly, Scott Nelson, Naiyan Du, Jason Shaw, and Elliot Selkirk.↩︎

4. Note, this imposter syndrome did push me to read more and learn more stuff. So, I am thankful to have it.↩︎

5. Here, thanks also go to Uri Tadmor who gave me the idea to look at “funny nasals” or pre-/post-nasalised stops in Sumatra that became the backbone of my dissertation research, and Irene Vogel for teaching me how to write! Those of you who’ve read my papers — if you think they are horrible now, you have no idea how much worse they were before Irene helped me. :)↩︎

6. This third thing is actually my favourite part of conferencing.↩︎

7. This is a phrase I will return to in a later blog post.↩︎

8. Henceforth labelled the “the unfortunates”.↩︎