DOCSLIB.ORG

The Sounds of Silence Asked for "More Biffs," the Child Picks out a Pair of Plastic Tongs

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Sounds of Silence Asked for ~ 152 <4-> The Language Instinct man and cop differ in formality.) No one really knows why languages are so stingy with words and profligate with meanings, but children seem to expect it (or perhaps it is this expectation that causes it!), and that helps them further with the gavagai problem. If a child already 6 knows a word for a kind of thing, then when another word is used for it, he or she does not take the easy but wrong way and treat it as a synonym. Instead, the child tries out some other possible concept~ + For example, Markman found that ifyou show a child a pair ofpewter tongs and call it bijf, the child interprets biff as meaning tongs ill general, showing the usual bias for middle-level objects, so when The sounds of Silence asked for "more biffs," the child picks out a pair of plastic tongs. But if you shOW the child a pewter cup and call it bijf, the child does not interpret biffas meaning "cup," because most children already know a word that means "cup," namely, cup. Loathing synonyms, the chil­ dren guess that biffmust mean something else, and the stuff the cup When I was a student I worked in a laboratory at McGill University is made of is the next most readily available concept. When asked for that studied auditory perception. Using a computer, I would synthe­ more bijfs, the child chooses a pewter spoon or pewter tongs. size trains of overlapping tones and determine whether they sounded Many other ingenious studies have shown how children home in like one rich sound or two pure ones. One Monday morning I had an on the correct meanings for different kinds of words. Once children odd experience: the tones suddenly turned into a chorus ofscreaming know some syntax, they can use it to sort out different kinds of mean· munchkins. Like this: (beep boop-boop) (beep boop-boop) (beep ing. For example, the psychologist Roger Brown showed children a boop-boop) HUMPTY-DUMPTY-HUMPTY-DUMPTY-HUMPTY­ picture ofhands kneading a mass oflittle squares in a bowl. Ifhe asked DUMPTY (beep boop-boop) (beep boop-boop) HUMPTY-DUMPTY­ them, "Can you see any sibbing?," the children pointed to the hands. HUMPTY-DUMPTY-HUMPTY-HUMPTY-DUMPTY-DUMPTY If instead he asked them, "Can you see a sib?," they point to the (beep boop-boop) (beep boop-boop) (beep boop-boop) HUMPTY­ bowl. And if he asked, "Can you see any sib?," they point to the stuff DUMPTY (beep boop-boop) HUMPTY-HUMPTY-HUMPTY­ inside the bowl. Other experiments have uncovered great sophistica­ DUMPTY (beep boop-boop). I checked the oscilloscope: two tion in children's understanding of how classes of words fit into sen­ streams of tones, as programmed. The effect had to be perceptual. tence structures and how they relate to concepts and kinds. With a bit of effort I could go back and forth, hearing the sound So what's in a name? The answer, we have seen, is, a great deal. as either beeps or munchkins. When a fellow student entered, I In the sense of a morphological product, a name is an intricate strW:­ recounted my discovery, mentioning that I couldn't wait to tell Pro­ ture, elegantly assembled by layers ofrules and lawful even at its quiJi.. fessor Bregman, who directed the laboratory. She offered some iest. And in the sense of a listeme, a name is a pure symbol, part of ~ advice: don't tell anyone, except perhaps Professor Poser (who cast of thousands, rapidly acquired because of a harmony between the directed the psychopathology program). mind of the child, the mind ofthe adult, and the texture of reality. Years later I discovered what I had discovered. The psychologists 154 '"*"' The Language Instinct The Sounds of Silence '"*"' 155 Roben Remez, David Pisoni, and their colleagues, braver men than making-an astonishing illusion with the pleasing name "McGurk I am, published an article in Science on "sine-wave speech." They effect," after one of its discoverers. synthesized three simultaneous wavering tones. Physically, the sound Actually, one does not need electronic wizardry to create a was nothing at all like speech, but the tones followed the same con­ speech illusion. All speech is an illusion. We hear speech as a string of tours as the bands ofenergy in the sentence. "Where were you a year separate words, but unlike the tree falling in the forest with no one to ago?" Volunteers described what they heard as "science fiction hear it, a word boundary with no one to hear it has no sound. In the sounds" or "computer bleeps." A second group of volunteers was speech sound wave, one word runs into the next seamlessly; there are told that the sounds had been generated by a bad speech synthesizer. no little silences between spoken words the way there are white spaces They were able to make out many ofthe words, and a quarter ofthem between written words. We simply hallucinate word boundaries when could write down the sentence perfectly. The brain can hear speech we reach the edge ofa stretch ofsound that matches some entry in our content in sounds that have only the remotest resemblance to speech. mental dictionary. This becomes apparent when we listen to speech in Indeed, sine-wave speech is how mynah birds fool us. They have a a foreign language: it is impossible to tell where one word ends and valve on each bronchial tube and can control them independently, the next begins. The seamlessness of speech is also apparent in "oro­ producing two wavering tones which we hear as speech. nyms," strings ofsound that can be carved into words in two different Our brains can flip between hearing something as a bleep and ways: hearing it as a word because phonetic perception is like a sixth sense. The good can decay many ways. When we listen to speech the actual sounds go in one ear and out the The good candy came anyways. other; what we perceive is language. Our experience of words and The stuffy nose can lead to problems. syllables, ofthe "b"-ness of b and the "ee"-ness of ee, is as separable The stuffhe knows can lead to problems. from our experience of pitch and loudness as lyrics are from a score. Sometimes, as in sine-wave speech, the senses ofhearing and phonet­ Some others I've seen. ics compete over which gets to interpret a sound, and our perception Some mothers I've seen. jumps back and forth. Sometimes the two senses simultaneously inter­ Oronyms are often used in songs and nursery rhymes: pret a single sound. If one takes a tape recording of da, electronically removes the initial chirplike portion that distinguishes the da from ga I scream, You scream, and ka, and plays the chirp to one ear and the residue to the other, We all scream what people hear is a chirp in one ear and da in the other~a single For ice cream. clip of sound is perceived simultaneously as d-ness and a chirp. And sometimes phonetic perception can transcend the auditory channel. If Mairzey doats and dozey doats you watch an English-subtitled movie in a language you know poorly, And little lamsey divey, after a few minutes you may feel as if you are actually understanding A kiddley-divey do, the speech. In the laboratory, researchers can dub a speech sound like Wouldn't you? ga onto a close-up video of a mouth articulating va, ba, tha, or da. Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear, Viewers literally hear a consonant like the one they see the mouth Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair. The Sounds of Silence .....e-. 157 156 ~ The Language Instinct first tried to develop reading machines for the blind in the 1940s, they Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn't fuzzy, devised a set ofnoises that corresponded to the letters ofthe alphabet. Was he? Even with heroic training, people could not recognize the sounds at In fir tar is, a rate faster than good Morse code operators, about three units a In oak none is. second. Real speech, somehow, is perceived an order of magnitude In mud eel is, faster: ten to fifteen phonemes per second for casual speech, twenty In clay none is. to thirty per second for the man in the late-night Veg-O-Matic ads, Goats eat ivy. and as many as forty to fifty per second for artificially sped-up speech. Mares eat oats. Given how the human auditory system works, this is almost unbeliev­ And some are discovered inadvertendy by teachers reading their stu­ able. When a sound like a click is repeated at a rate of twenty times a second or faster, we no longer hear it as a sequence ofseparate sounds dents' term papers and homework assignments: but as a low buzz. Ifwe can hear forty-five phonemes per second, the Jose can you see by the donzerly light? [Oh say can you see phonemes cannot possibly be consecutive bits ofsound; each moment by the dawn's early light?] of sound must have several phonemes packed into it that our brains It's a doggy-dog world. [dog-eat-dog] somehow unpack. As a result, speech is by far the fastest way ofgetting Eugene O'Neill won a Pullet Surprise. [Pulitzer Prize] information into the head through the ear. My mother comes from Pencil Vanea. [Pennsylvania] No human-made system can-match a human in decoding speech. He was a notor republic. [notary public] It is not for lack of need or trying.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Segmental Phonology and the Perception of Syntactic Structure
    JOURNAL OF VERBAL LEARNING AND VERBAL BEHAVIOR 23, 450-466 (1984) Segmental Phonology and the Perception of Syntactic Structure DONIA R. SCOTT University of Sussex AND ANNE CUTLER MRC Applied Psychology Unit, Cambridge Recent research in speech production has shown that syntactic structure is reflected in segmental phonology--the application of certain phonological rules of English (e.g., pala- talization and alveolar flapping) is inhibited across phrase boundaries. We examined whether such segmental effects can be used in speech perception as cues to syntactic structure, and the relation between the use of these segmental features as syntactic markers in production and perception. Speakers of American English (a dialect in which the above segmental effects occur) could indeed use the segmental cues in syntax perception; speakers of British English (in which the effects do not occur) were unable to make use of them, while speakers of British English who were long-term residents of the United States showed intermediate performance. Anyone who has had to make the sepa- dangerous") (Lehiste, 1973). But the fact rate meanings of an ambiguous sentence that listeners can successfully identify the clear to listeners will know that often the intended meaning even in the absence of a most efficient method is just to say the sen- disambiguating context suggests that tence in different ways. Of course, some speakers can exploit acoustic features to sentences will be more difficult to disam- highlight the distinction that is to be con- biguate in this manner than others; in gen- veyed to the listener. eral, surface structure ambiguities (e.g., In recent years, a number of studies on "The old men and women stayed at English speech perception have investi- home") prove easier than deep structure gated just what these acoustic correlates of ambiguities (e.g., "Flying planes can be syntactic structure are, and how useful they are to the listener.
    [Show full text]
  • Imperceptible Incomplete Neutralization
    Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect Lingua 152 (2014) 24--44 www.elsevier.com/locate/lingua Imperceptible incomplete neutralization: Production, non-identifiability, and non-discriminability in American English flapping Aaron Braver * Texas Tech University, Department of English, P.O. Box 43091, Lubbock, TX 79409-3091, United States Received 1 November 2012; received in revised form 6 September 2014; accepted 9 September 2014 Available online Abstract Flapping in American English has been put forward as a case of incomplete neutralization---in other words, /d/-flaps and /t/-flaps differ at the phonetic level. This paper first presents a production experiment which shows that, in line with previous work, flapping in American English is incompletely neutralizing: vowels before /d/-flaps are slightly longer than those before /t/-flaps---even in nonce words. Early studies on the perceptibility of this difference, almost exclusively identification tasks, have shown mixed results. However, recent identification experiments (including one reported here) show that listeners are unable to properly categorize /d/- and /t/-flaps. Listeners’ poor performance on identification tasks can be due to two factors: either (a) listeners’ grammars lacking the relevant phonological categories, or (b) an effect of the type of perception tasks employed. In a 2AFC discrimination task presented here, listeners were unable to distinguish between /d/- and /t/-flaps, suggesting that poor perception performance generalizes to multiple task types. © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Incomplete neutralization; Flapping; Phonetics; American English 1. Introduction In American English flapping, underlying /d/ and /t/ become [ɾ] in certain prosodic configurations (e.g., Kahn, 1980).
    [Show full text]
  • Ling 230/503: Articulatory Phonetics and Transcription English Vowels
    Ling 230/503: Articulatory Phonetics and Transcription Broad vs. narrow transcription. A narrow transcription is one in which the transcriber records much phonetic detail without attention to the way in which the sounds of the language form a system. A broad transcription omits those details of a narrow transcription which the transcriber feels are not worth recording. Normally these details will be aspects of the speech event which are: (1) predictable or (2) would not differentiate two token utterances of the same type in the judgment of speakers or (3) are presumed not to figure in the systematic phonology of the language. IPA vs. American transcription There are two commonly used systems of phonetic transcription, the International Phonetics Association or IPA system and the American system. In many cases these systems overlap, but in certain cases there are important distinctions. Students need to learn both systems and have to be flexible about the use of symbols. English Vowels Short vowels /ɪ ɛ æ ʊ ʌ ɝ/ ‘pit’ pɪt ‘put’ pʊt ‘pet’ pɛt ‘putt’ pʌt ‘pat’ pæt ‘pert’ pɝt (or pr̩t) Long vowels /i(ː), u(ː), ɑ(ː), ɔ(ː)/ ‘beat’ biːt (or bit) ‘boot’ buːt (or but) ‘(ro)bot’ bɑːt (or bɑt) ‘bought’ bɔːt (or bɔt) Diphthongs /eɪ, aɪ, aʊ, oʊ, ɔɪ, ju(ː)/ ‘bait’ beɪt ‘boat’ boʊt ‘bite’ bɑɪt (or baɪt) ‘bout’ bɑʊt (or baʊt) ‘Boyd’ bɔɪd (or boɪd) ‘cute’ kjuːt (or kjut) The property of length, denoted by [ː], can be predicted based on the quality of the vowel. For this reason it is quite common to omit the length mark [ː].
    [Show full text]
  • An Acoustic Account of the Allophonic Realization of /T/ Amber King St
    Linguistic Portfolios Volume 1 Article 12 2012 An Acoustic Account of the Allophonic Realization of /T/ Amber King St. Cloud State University Ettien Koffi St. Cloud State University Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.stcloudstate.edu/stcloud_ling Part of the Applied Linguistics Commons Recommended Citation King, Amber and Koffi, Ettien (2012) "An Acoustic Account of the Allophonic Realization of /T/," Linguistic Portfolios: Vol. 1 , Article 12. Available at: https://repository.stcloudstate.edu/stcloud_ling/vol1/iss1/12 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by theRepository at St. Cloud State. It has been accepted for inclusion in Linguistic Portfolios by an authorized editor of theRepository at St. Cloud State. For more information, please contact [email protected]. King and Koffi: An Acoustic Account of the Allophonic Realization of /T/ AN ACOUSTIC ACCOUNT OF THE ALLOPHONIC REALIZATIONS OF /T/ AMBER KING AND ETTIEN KOFFI 1.0 Introduction This paper is a laboratory phonology account of the different pronunciations of the phoneme /t/. Laboratory phonology is a relatively new analytical tool that is being used to validate and verify claims made by phonologists about the pronunciation of sounds. It is customary for phonologists to predict on the basis of auditory impressions and intuition alone that allophones exist for such and such phonemes. An allophone is defined as different realizations of the same phoneme based on the environments in which it occurs. For instance, it has been proposed that the phoneme /t/ has anywhere from four to eight allophones in General American English (GAE). To verify this claim Amber, one of the co-author of this paper recorded herself saying the words <still>, <Tim>, <kit>, <bitter>, <kitten>, <winter>, <fruition>, <furniture>, and <listen>.
    [Show full text]
  • UC Berkeley Phonlab Annual Report
    UC Berkeley UC Berkeley PhonLab Annual Report Title Strengthening, Weakening and Variability: The Articulatory Correlates of Hypo- and Hyper- articulation in the Production of English Dental Fricatives Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1hw2719n Journal UC Berkeley PhonLab Annual Report, 14(1) ISSN 2768-5047 Author Melguy, Yevgeniy Publication Date 2018 DOI 10.5070/P7141042482 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UC Berkeley Phonetics and Phonology Lab Annual Report (2018) Yevgeniy Melguy Susan Lin, Brian Smith M.A. Qualifying Paper 9 December 2018 Strengthening, weakening and variability: The articulatory correlates of hypo- and hyper- articulation in the production of English dental fricatives 1. INTRODUCTION A number of influential approaches to understanding phonetic and phonological variation in speech have highlighted the importance of functional factors (Blevins, 2004; Donegan & Stampe, 1979; Kiparsky, 1988; Kirchner, 1998; Lindblom, 1990). Under such approaches, speaker- and listener-oriented principles—ease of articulation vs. perceptual clarity—often work in opposite directions with respect to consonantal articulation. Minimization of effort is thought to drive a general “weakening” of consonants (resulting in decreased articulatory constriction and/or duration) which often makes them more articulatorily similar to surrounding sounds. This can result in assimilation, lenition, and ultimately deletion, and generally comes at the expense of clarity. By contrast, maximization of clarity drives consonantal “strengthening” processes (resulting in increased articulatory constriction and/or duration) that makes target segments more distinct from neighboring sounds, which can result in fortition. Clear speech generally involves more extreme or “forceful” articulations, and usually comes at the expense of requiring more articulatory effort from the speaker.
    [Show full text]
  • The American Intrusive L
    THE AMERICAN INTRUSIVE L BRYAN GICK University of British Columbia The well-known sandhi phenomenon known as intrusive r has been one of the longest-standing problems in English phonology. Recent work has brought to light a uniquely American contribution to this discussion: the intrusive l (as in draw[l]ing for drawing and bra[l] is for bra is in southern Pennsylvania, compared to draw[r]ing and bra[r] is, respectively, in British Received Pronunciation [RP]). In both instances of intrusion, a historically unattested liquid consonant (r or l) intervenes in the hiatus between a morpheme-final nonhigh vowel and a following vowel, either across or within words. Not surprisingly, this process interacts crucially with the well- known cases of /r/-vocalization (e.g., Kurath and McDavid 1961; Labov 1966; Labov, Yaeger, and Steiner 1972; Fowler 1986) and /l/-vocalization (e.g., Ash 1982a, 1982b), which have been identified as important markers of sociolinguistic stratification in New York City, Philadelphia, and else- where. However, previous discussion of the intrusive l (Gick 1999) has focused primarily on its phonological implications, with almost no attempt to describe its geographic, dialectal, and sociolinguistic context. This study marks such an attempt. In particular, it argues that the intrusive l is an instance of phonological change in progress. Descriptively, the intrusive l parallels the intrusive r in many respects. Intrusive r may be viewed simplistically as the extension by analogy of a historically attested final /r/ to words historically ending in a vowel (gener- ally this applies only to the set of non-glide-final vowels: /@, a, O/).
    [Show full text]
  • Guide to Preparation of Camera-Ready Manuscript
    Morphological effects on the darkness of English intervocalic /l/ Sang-Im Lee-Kim, Lisa Davidson, and Sangjin Hwang New York University To appear in Laboratory Phonology 4:2, October 2013. Abstract Articulatory and acoustic studies have provided evidence that in word-initial and word-final positions, English /l/ exhibits substantial differences in ‘darkness’: dark [ɫ] in word-final position is produced with a more retracted tongue dorsum and lowered tongue body than light [l] in word-initial position. The darkness of intervocalic /l/, however, is variable. While Sproat and Fujimura (1993) argue that /l/ darkness is on a continuum strongly affected by duration, Hayes (2000) maintains that the morphological status of intervocalic /l/s should affect whether they are produced as light or dark variants. In this study, ultrasound imaging is used to investigate whether the morphological affiliation of the /l/ affects the degree of tongue dorsum retraction and tongue body lowering and the acoustic characteristics of /l/ darkness. Six American English speakers produced three types of stimuli which were predicted to increase in darkness in the following order: (1) when /l/ corresponded with the onset of a suffix (e.g. flaw-less), (2) when /l/ corresponded with the final position of the stem word (e.g. tall-est), and (3) when /l/ was the final consonant of a stem word (e.g. tall). For both articulatory and acoustic measures, the predicted order was upheld. The strongest articulatory correlate of darkness was tongue body lowering, and acoustic differences were mainly manifested in F1 and normalized intensity. Phonological implications of these findings are discussed.
    [Show full text]
  • The Creative Life of 'Saturday Night Live' Which Season Was the Most Original? and Does It Matter?
    THE PAGES A sampling of the obsessive pop-culture coverage you’ll find at vulture.com ost snl viewers have no doubt THE CREATIVE LIFE OF ‘SATURDAY experienced Repetitive-Sketch Syndrome—that uncanny feeling NIGHT LIVE’ WHICH Mthat you’re watching a character or setup you’ve seen a zillion times SEASON WAS THE MOST ORIGINAL? before. As each new season unfolds, the AND DOES IT MATTER? sense of déjà vu progresses from being by john sellers 73.9% most percentage of inspired (A) original sketches season! (D) 06 (B) (G) 62.0% (F) (E) (H) (C) 01 1980–81 55.8% SEASON OF: Rocket Report, Vicki the Valley 51.9% (I) Girl. ANALYSIS: Enter 12 51.3% new producer Jean Doumanian, exit every 08 Conehead, Nerd, and 16 1975–76 sign of humor. The least- 1986–87 SEASON OF: Samurai, repetitive season ever, it SEASON OF: Church Killer Bees. ANALYSIS: taught us that if the only Lady, The Liar. Groundbreaking? breakout recurring ANALYSIS: Michaels Absolutely. Hilarious? returned in season 11, 1990–91 character is an unfunny 1982–83 Quite often. But man-child named Paulie dumped Billy Crystal SEASON OF: Wayne’s SEASON OF: Mr. Robinson’s unbridled nostalgia for Herman, you’ve got and Martin Short, and Neighborhood, The World, Hans and Franz. SNL’s debut season— problems that can only rebuilt with SNL’s ANALYSIS: Even though Whiners. ANALYSIS: Using the second-least- be fixed by, well, more broadest ensemble yet. seasons 4 and 6 as this is one of the most repetitive ever—must 32.0% Eddie Murphy.
    [Show full text]
  • Vowel Shifts in English John Goldsmith January 19, 2010
    Vowel shifts in English John Goldsmith January 19, 2010 English vowels English vowels may be divided into those that are found in stressed syllables, and those found in unstressed syllables. We will focus here on the vowels in stressed syllables, and the rest of this section is about stressed vowels when we do not explicitly mention stress. We may focus on monosyllabic words that are produced as a full utterance to guarantee that we are looking at a stressed syllable. Unstressed syllables allow two vowels, [@] and [i] (e.g., the second vowels of sofa and silly) (and probably one more: the final vowel in 1 motto). 1 That is perhaps controversial; one English vowels are divided into short and long vowels. reason to believe it is that flapping is possible in words such as motto and Among the short vowels, there are 3 front unround vowels, 2 tomato. back round vowels, and 2 back unround vowels. For the three front Short vowels Long vowels unround vowels, see Figure 1, where you see an example in stan- pit ˘i [I] by ¯i [aj] pet e˘ [E] Pete e¯ [ij] dard orthography, in typical dictionary form, and in the IPA sym- pat ˘a [æ] pate a¯ [ej] bols that we shall use (that linguists normally use). For the 4 back Figure 1: Front vowels short vowels, see Figure 2, left column. The vowels of putt and pot (in most dialects of the US) are unround. Short vowels Long vowels put oo˘ [U] boot oo¯ [uw] Please note: many of you (at least half of you) do not distinguish putt u˘ [2] bound ou [æw] between [a] and [O]: you pronounce cot and caught the same way.
    [Show full text]
  • Politics of Parody
    Bryant University Bryant Digital Repository English and Cultural Studies Faculty English and Cultural Studies Journal Articles Publications and Research Winter 2012 Live From New York, It's the Fake News! Saturday Night Live and the (Non)Politics of Parody Amber Day Bryant University Ethan Thompson Texas A & M University - Corpus Christi, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.bryant.edu/eng_jou Part of the Other Arts and Humanities Commons, Other Film and Media Studies Commons, and the Television Commons Recommended Citation Day, Amber and Thompson, Ethan, "Live From New York, It's the Fake News! Saturday Night Live and the (Non)Politics of Parody" (2012). English and Cultural Studies Journal Articles. Paper 44. https://digitalcommons.bryant.edu/eng_jou/44 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the English and Cultural Studies Faculty Publications and Research at Bryant Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in English and Cultural Studies Journal Articles by an authorized administrator of Bryant Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 1 Live from New York, It’s the Fake News! Saturday Night Live and the (Non)Politics of Parody Amber Day Assistant Professor English and Cultural Studies Bryant University 401-952-3933 [email protected] Ethan Thompson Associate Professor Department of Communication Texas A&M University - Corpus Christi 361-876-5200 [email protected] 2 Abstract Though Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update” has become one of the most iconic of fake news programs, it is remarkably unfocused on either satiric critique or parody of particular news conventions.
    [Show full text]
  • What's This I Hear About “Special Axes?”
    What’s this I hear about “special axes?” Posted by Brett Glass to Richard Bennett’s “Broadband Politics” blog at http://bennett.com/blog/2009/06/whats-this-i-hear-about-special-axes/ Those who follow tech policy have probably noticed that, as of this spring, an increasing hue and cry is being raised about the cost of those telecommunications services which are dubbed “special access.” Most people’s inclination, when they hear the term “special access,” is to dismiss the issue as unimportant. After all, if it’s something “special,” it’s probably rare… so how could it be of much concern? And if it’s “special,” doesn’t this mean that it’s a boutique item that really ought to cost more? Back in the 70’s, the late comedic actress Gilda Radner played a Saturday Night Live character named Emily Litella, who would rail on about some issue whose name and meaning she’d gotten wrong, such as “violins on TV” or the “deaf penalty.” (She probably would have misheard “special access” as “special axes;” hence the pun in the headline above.) When she suddenly realized that she had completely misunderstood what the issue was, she’d cut off her monologue with a quick “Never mind!” Likewise, most people — when they find out what “special access” is really about — agree that it’s misnamed and very much deserves attention. That’s the first thing folks need to understand about this issue: There’s nothing “special” at all about “special access.” It consists of the ordinary wholesale, high capacity, point-to-point data connections — often called the “middle mile” — which connect (among other things) cell phone towers to the telephone system and ISPs to the Internet backbone.
    [Show full text]
  • Suffolkk 1St Bum Unitopens at S B
    B;.^..~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~.,^ f" BeomAwre c m.adm a n ]ednesdayW No/ST .SERVNG THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK AT STONY BROOK AND ITS SURROUNDING COMMUNITIES Suffolkk 1st Bum UnitOpens at S B * . - By Howard Breuer A new burn center for University Hospital, which cost New York State $1.3 million to open was dedi- cated yesterday afternoon in the gallery of the Health Sciences Center. The dedication was attended by hundreds of people including hospital emplyees and administrators, local members of police and fire departments, as well as local senators, assemblymen and other legislators. University President John Marbuger opened the ce- remony. "We are the only (burn center) in Suffolk County" he said. "The center should be fully open by the end of 1985. By that time, we hope to hire a thou- sand more people onto the hospital's staff." "A million and three hundred thousand dollars- that's the same figure as the amount of people living in Suffolk County," said John Gallagher, chief deputy of the Suffolk County Executive's office. - With the new burn center, ambulance crews will A University Hospital nurse shows off the equipment for the new Burn Unit, the first of its kind in Suffolk County. save up to an hour, perhaps more, of critical transport The Burn Unit was dedicated in a formal ceremony yesterday attended by hospital employees, administrators, state senators and assemblymen, and others. time by no longer having to bring severely-burned Statesman/HowardSta»«sman/u r Breuerr» patients to burn centers in Nassau County and New members associated with its initial six-bed operation.
    [Show full text]