Here at LinguisticMystic, I do my best to post things of interest to everybody, not just linguists. So, in the interest of wider public appeal, I’d like show off one of the stranger things to ever come out of research in Phonetics and Psycholinguistics: The McGurk effect.

Before I talk any further, you should get a demonstration. Watch the following short video, with your sound turned on. First, watch it a few times, and decide what the man is saying. Then, shut your eyes and re-play the video a few more times, with your eyes closed through the whole movie.

The Video: The McGurk Effect Demonstration (Quicktime required, rehosted from http://www.media.uio.no/personer/arntm/McGurk_english.html).

Kinda freaky, huh? When you watched it with your eyes open, you likely heard “Da Da” (or something similar). However, when you shut your eyes, he was clearly saying “Ba Ba”.

This effect is caused by the fact that in conversation, we frequently watch the other participants’ mouths moving, just to reinforce what’s being said. Generally, this works relatively well (just ask somebody who can read lips), but here, the makers of the video are messing with us a bit. The sound is a recording of the speaker saying “Ba Ba”, but the video shows him making the mouth and lip movements for “Ga Ga”. When presented with this conflicting data, some strange little loop in the brain of 98% of adults merges the two, giving us the final perception of “Da da”. This effect was first described in a paper called “Hearing lips and seeing voices”, by Harry McGurk and John MacDonald.

Truthfully, I don’t quite understand how this works, and I’m sure there’s a whole bevy of psycholinguists working on that as we speak. However, it’s a really cool effect, and it underscores the idea that what we perceive can be affected by other factors beyond our control.

So, really, I don’t have to post any interesting content here. I’ll just post boring stuff, and then make it look like it’s REALLY cool. That way, your brain will average it out. Or, you know, not. Yeah, probably not. Worth a try, though.
For more information on the McGurk effect, visit:

http://epsych.msstate.edu/descriptive/Hearing/mcgurk/mcgurk_desc.html

http://www.media.uio.no/personer/arntm/McGurk_english.html (Includes Higher resolution versions of the above video)
http://homepage.ntu.edu.tw/~karchung/Phonetics%20II%20page%20seventeen.htm

Hiya everybody. Ever since my recent conversion/unconversion, I’ve been especially mindful of the different software available on OS X. Well, here’s my guide to the best of the best, the software that I can’t (or don’t want to) live without. For today, the free stuff!

Free or Open-Source Software for OS X:

Adium X (http://www.adiumx.com)

Free and Open Source, this is the best IM client for OSX, period. Unlike iChat, it supports AIM, Jabber, Yahoo, MSN, and even more services you’ve never heard of, and the interface is much nicer. A gem of the Open Source Mac community.

The Charis SIL Font (http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=CharisSILfont)

A free, beautiful, and complete International Phonetic Alphabet (and more) font. Good stuff.

Firefox 2.0 (http://mozilla.com)

It might not be the fastest browser available, or the most OSX-like, but it’s still my pick. Combine it with extensions like CookieCuller, AdBlock Plus, and DownThemAll, and you’ve got a great, vastly compatible browser.

Freemind (http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page)

A good piece of mind mapping software. It takes some getting used to, but once you do, you’re golden.

IPA-SIL Keyboard Layout for OSX (http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&item_id=ipa-sil_keyboard)

A free keyboard layout for OSX that allows you to type in the International Phonetic Alphabet. Very good stuff.

iStumbler (http://www.istumbler.net/)

Software for finding open wireless networks. Not that you’d ever do that.

MplayerOSX (http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/18580)

Mplayer is a great piece of software on Linux, and the OSX port isn’t bad either. It’s necessary for playing most .avi files and some exotic Mpeg files. Not perfect, but free and necessary. Pair it with VLC and Flip4Mac to be able to open damned near any movies you come across. Make sure to use Version 1.0x as opposed to 2.x. These are two different versions of the software, and 1.x is far more recent and updated. It’s also universal.

NeoOffice (http://neooffice.com)

Repeat after me: “I do not need Office for Mac”. This is great FOSS software, a port of OpenOffice.org that really takes advantage of OS X’s features. I’ve not had a copy of Office installed for at least 5 years, and I’ve never been happier.

Onyx (http://www.titanium.free.fr/pgs2/english/onyx.html)

Free, easy system maintenance software for OSX.

Praat (http://www.praat.org)

Phonetics software, with a very functional OSX port. It’s even universal. A bit niche, but if you’re analyzing speech, there’s none better.

Tofu (http://amarsagoo.info/tofu/index.shtml)

Sooner or later, everybody stumbles upon a 500 page plaintext document that they really want to read. Tofu is designed to do just that. It formats the text in a nice font of your choosing, on the “paper color” of your choosing, with single or multi-column display. It even replicates page turning. It’s a niche tool, but it does a great job of it. 2.0 (coming soon) will be universal.

TinkerTool (http://www.bresink.de/osx/TinkerTool.html)

Tinkertool lets you change little hidden preferences within OS X, some of which can be handy. Font size, finder prefs, etc. Ever wanted to have your dock in the lower right or lower left corner of your screen? This is the way to do it. Just don’t go crazy with it.

UnRarX (http://www.unrarx.com/)

This is a great little piece of software that opens RAR archives, and does it damned well. Support for multi-part files, password protected RAR’s, and lots of other little small things. Most importantly, though, it makes the overzealous and buggy Stuffit Expander even less necessary.

Vienna (http://www.opencommunity.co.uk/vienna2.php)

A FOSS RSS reader. RSS (Really simple syndication) is a way to let people watch your site, without visiting it manually. Vienna is a free reader for the RSS format, and is already a great piece of software that can only get better from here.

Conclusion!

So, check out these programs if it sounds like you’ve got a need. If you’re looking for something else, check out OpenSourceMac. In a few days, I’ll post my list of commercial software that’s worth paying for on OS X. In the mean time, enjoy the free world, and have a good day!

So, the good people at XKCD.com, in addition to ripping on Computational Linguists, make some very funny comics. Today, I’d like to briefly discuss one of my favorites (Re-Hosted here, as to not steal bandwidth. Click for Full-Size!):

This is purely magnificent, and it has some analogues in human language. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the joke, here’s a brief explanation.

“sudo” in Unix-based computer systems stands for “Superuser Do”. When you’re using a Unix system, lots of files have complex permissions (so that people can’t do things that they’re not supposed to), and your everyday user account isn’t be able to edit all the files on the computer. If you need to run a command, but don’t have permission, you type sudo , and then enter the computer administrator’s password (if you have it), and then it’ll do the command. This is a double-edged sword, because the computer will let you do ANYTHING, even things that will break, hurt, or destroy your operating system. So, the whole operation will look like this:

$ touch /bin/newcommand
touch: /bin/newcommand: Permission denied
$ sudo touch /bin/newcommand
Password: adminpassword
$

So, sudo is just a way of saying “I have the authority to do whatever I please, so DO IT!”. (See, I told you the comic was funny). However, it’s also a bit closer to human language than one might initially think.

The assertion of authority through speech is a pretty common act, and I’ll bet that several Sociolinguists are quivering with joy at the mere idea of discussing it (and they’re welcome to email me something to post, if they’d like). Just think about how frequently somebody “changes your mind” based simply on intimidation, or a reminder of their authority in your life. Take, for example, this interaction:

Mom: Honey, could you clean your room?
Son: No, I want to play nintendo!
Mom: I’m your mother, do as I say, Jimmy!
Son: (starts cleaning)

If that’s not a “sudo clean /rooms/jimmy”, what is? However, it can be even more subtle:

BOSS: Carol, would you write up a quick report for me on the Jenkins account?
CAROL: Well, I just clocked out.
BOSS: Oh, alright, but I think that doing this report might be helpful for your end-of-year report.
CAROL:.. Did I say “clocked out”? I meant “admired your hair”

See, “sudo write ~/thereport”. However, very, very seldom (outside the military or a gun-to-the-head situation) will the authority of one person in an interaction be absolute as in the Unix example. Generally, people retain much more free will and will question obviously bad commands (Boss: Carol, light me on fire or I’ll dismiss you), so there’s not the same degree of mindless obedience.

Finally, just like in Unix, it’s a bad habit to append “sudo” to everything, even if you are an administrator. In computers, it’s usually unnecessary (the average person won’t need to do this), and it’s very easy to make a typo as a superuser and erase/mess up things you didn’t mean to. If you’re not sudo’ed, the computer will stop you before you do too much damage. As the message says the first time you run sudo, “with great power comes great responsibility”.

In human interaction, “sudo-ing” a conversation is something you never want to do unless it’s unnecessary. Imagine “Carol, give me 3 sheets of copy paper or I’ll fire you right now” as an initial request? Sure, it’d work, but really, pulling rank like that is damaging to your interpersonal relationships, so you should save it for when you really, really need to.

So, I hope you enjoyed this post, and will come back to read again. If that doesn’t work, sudo read -again linguisticmystic.

I knew you’d see things my way.