 Comment replies will be forthcoming soonish...
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Mar. 5th, 2009 @ 01:54 pm 
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So, I accidentally lost my previous draft of this, but:
So far it's a little hard to tell how well my new meds are working. I was getting a bit distracted from the article I was reading, but the article was somewhat tedious and annoying. It's probably worth noting that the time it took me to lose focus could be measured best in paragraphs/minutes, not words/seconds, and I was able to refocus my attention on what I'm doing fairly easily, without that internal-static sense of impossibility about it. I can do it. My difficulty with the article can quite possibly be ascribed to the part where it was tedious and annoying.
(Any article where I expostulate things like: "So you're arguing that because you're stupid, everyone is?" and "... You sexist bastard." is going to be be a little problematic. But seirously, he argued that a certain change was irrelevant because it barely affected men, and the population-wide percentage change was explained by it affectiong 40% of women.)
Pleasingly, I seem to have made a friend. D. is the woman with the toddler in my Linguistics class from last week. We chatted before class today and now we're sitting together for this lecture. When I turned on my laptop she admired the beauty of Mizushima Hiro on my desktop background. This is clearly a sign that we are meant to get on.
No, really so far I still get distractions tugging at my attention all the time, but it's something I can resist. It's a real improvement, even if it's not perfect yet.
Phonation types and non-pulmonic airstreams
Voicing is extremely common as a meaningful distinction.
Whispering is not known to be contrastive in any language, though it's paralinguistically significant.
Glottal stop ismeaningful.
Ordinary voicing, murmur/breathy or creaky voicing do distinguish.
Co-ordinating glottal and supra-glottal articulation
Ee, Aspiration. This is one of my favourite things in articulatory phonetics.
voice onset time - measured relative to the release of the supra-glottal constriction. VOT can be negative.
The really awesome thing about looking at articulatory phonetics is how insanely complicated it is, and how effortlessly we do it - and how brilliantly children learn it, without necessarily being taught.
Somehow I was previously unaware that aspiration is linked to a delay in VOT. I should have worked it out, but didn't. That extra puff of air will be a result of the open vocal folds.
What's also cool is that human comprehension can be making meaningful distinctions of variations between 10 and 50 milliseconds.
... huh, I just had no trouble distinguishing two things he expected us to have trouble distinguishing. May be an effect of having done phonetics some before, which gives me a more practice than most at distinguishing sounds.
Or I'm awesome.
Or, realistically, both.
Now I want to practice my VOT synching to get all postmodern about it.
Huh. Gaelic distinguishes between /p/ and /ph/.
Lecture ended, I made my way to the library - where, it turns out, SNAP is down so I have no internet. On the bright side, I suppose, I can get the work done I need to do today. On the down side, I have no internet, which means no googling things quickly that I either don't know or want to refresh my memory about, no e-mail, no WoW on study breaks, and this post threatens to become monster.
Interestingly, my anxiety problems seem to be a side-effect of ADHD. A little while ago I had a problem with my computer - no matter which way I flicked the switch that turns WLAN capabilty on and off, it kept reading as off. I couldn't work out how to fix it, and if my computer had somehow broken, that would be really quite a problem.
And I... didn't panic. Didn't even come close. I tried to fix it, failed, considered calling Chas, noted that he'd still be asleep and I didn't want to wake him for something that would be difficult to sort out by phone, and instead took my laptop over to SISO, where ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif) reaps fixed it in about ten seconds and explained to me what had gone wrong. (This was also where I was informed that SNAP isn't working, so I came back prepared not to be concerned that that wasn't going to work.)
Too easy, as they say. Taking dexamphetamines has made me feel really... calm.
We'll see how I go with rising levels of complexity in my reading for the day, and the ongoing question of concentration. I just thought of writing, as something I've been having trouble focussing on of late, but I realised immediately that I won't be able to focus on that at all, because I will have this relentless feeling of pressure that what I should be doing is my History work - which, coupled with the fact that what I want to do is my History work, means the only thing I'm likely to be able to do successfully is certain. (But will be left as an exercise for the astute reader.)
Also notable: Today is quite a good day for pain levels so far, although as my days have some variation it's too soon to ascribe it to the possibility that ADHD exacerbates chronic pain, even if the possibility seems real based on the physiological basis of ADHD essentially being over-exposed nerves.
I'm having trouble concentrating on this article still. I'm due to take more pills in twenty minutes, but also, this article still sucks. It is tedious, the arguments are rubbish, and the guy is way too impressed with himself, so possibly my minimal retention is based on the fact that I am, as I go, categorising a lot of what he says is rubbish. I can call to mind the salient (for want of a better word) points he's trying to make, which is an improvement, though, so yay for that.
By the way, I recommend the soundtrack to Charlotte's Web (which I bought on CD a while ago for reasons that elude me, since I haven't seen the movie) as background music to listen to while reading annoying things. Very soothing. (I wanted something more pleasant to listen to than people shuffling around with bags at the desks around me. Light music + canalphones is win.)
Hmm. On a better-written article - after taking my second dose of meds, but immediately after, so relevance is questionable - I read the whole thing on one go, only getting vaguely distracted a couple of times, and I was able to refocus quickly and easily.
Is this what it's like for normal people?!
Anyway, now going to take a break between articles to relax for a few with a game, because I have 50 more pages of course reader as target for today, plus another chapter of The Nature of History to get through before I want to go to the Scholars' Centre and get some more research done.
This may take me less time than it would have yesterday, but I also don't want to end the day with my shoulders locked up and serious eyestrain, so.
Yay, SNAP is back!Current Mood:  productive Current Location: Reid Library Current Music: Cold Fairyland - Shrove Tuesday
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