Talk:William Labov

message: "He is widely regarded as the founder of the discipline of variationist sociolinguistics..." 86.132.138.57 03:56, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: A Google search will confirm that he is "widely" regarded as the founder of sociolinguistics; see e.g.  (under Nov 08, 2006);  (bottom of page); ;  (under 2.1);  (in sidebar). But I take your point. How would you recommend rewriting it? AJD 13:07, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: "Influential reliable source X has described him as the founder of sociolinguistics.Reference to influential reliable source". —Angr 15:21, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thing is, I'm not sure what counts as an "influential reliable source" on the question of whether Labov is the founder of sociolinguistics. In a case like this, it seems to me more telling that a wide variety of unrelated sources have given him that description that than any one particular "influential" source does. What kind of source would you recommend looking for? AJD 16:50, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, "influential" is debatable, but certainly a reliable source from someone who actually knows something about linguistics (i.e. not a newspaper reporter) and who is neither Labov himself nor one of his students. One example could be A Student's Dictionary of Language and Linguistics by the late R. L. Trask (a well known syntactician of Basque), where it is said that Labov is "an enormously original and influential figure who has created much of the methodology of the discipline [of sociolinguistics]". You could also look in books on the history of linguistics as well as sociolinguistics textbooks, but these tend to follow the principle of show, don't tell in that they show his importance by constantly referring to him and discussing his findings rather than saying in so many words "if it weren't for him, sociolinguistics as we know it probably wouldn't exist" (even though they all know that's true). —Angr 19:13, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That's not a bad quote right there; could you put into the article with citation? I've also found something from The Handbook of Language Variation and Change that I can add. AJD 21:52, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Weasel words? 

message: Although no further citation for the pronunciation of his name is necessary than the one given, it is confirmed by the audio interview at , where the reporter consistently pronounced the name . —Angr 16:54, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: For what it's worth, I did my dissertation under him, and I and pretty much everyone else who personally knows him pronounces it  or  (depending on whether we have monophthongal  or not).DBowie (talk) 01:00, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I am currently enrolled in one of his linguistics classes at the University of Pennsylvania, and on the first day of class he most certainly introduced himself as Bill . -User:Robearsn 20:08, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pronunciation of name 

message: Certainly somebody out there must have a photo of Labov. It would be nice to share it with the wider world. Pete unseth (talk) 19:40, 23 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Does anybody have a photo of Labov? 

message: Note that this may be a little off topic.  However, it is about one of Labov's works.
I was reading text from the ANAE(2006) that puzzled me.  The text is as follows:
:English short vowels cannot occur word-ﬁnally in stressed position, so there are no words of the phonetic form [bɪ, bɛ, ba, bo or bʊ].
I am a little confused why Labov et al. are referring to the vowel [o] as a short vowel.  Typically when they use brackets, they are addressing the vowels in IPA notation.  And in the IPA,  represents "roughly" the English long o.  Can anybody help me with this?  Thank you.LakeKayak (talk) 01:53, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Isn't his [o] IPA ? He's known to use non-IPA notation in some cases, e.g. [ay] instead of . Mr KEBAB (talk) 03:17, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
replies: text:  If the "o" were in slashes, then it would mean /ɒ/.  However, this is in square brackets.  When he puts symbols in square brackets, he typically is using the standard IPA notation.LakeKayak (talk) 03:53, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Well it must mean  anyway, because to say that  (=) doesn't occur word-finally in stressed position is pure ignorance (see go, no, low). I wouldn't accuse Labov of being that stupid (by 'stupid' I mean that it's phonology 101 and he must know this) ;) Plus,  is not considered a short vowel in English phonetics/phonology, unlike . Mr KEBAB (talk) 10:45, 15 January 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Question about ANAE 

message: Would it be helpful for the reader to add Labov studied English and Philosophy at Harvard? 
Kkanders55 (talk) 18:45, 24 September 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Education