Home

• Curriculum Vitae (pdf)

• Antarctica Photos

• Wedding Photos

• The University of Edinburgh

• Department of Linguistics & English Language

Other Links

• Philips Speech Processing - Speech Recognition Systems
  A company kind enough to offer me employment.

• Luath Press
  Well written books worth reading

• But n Ben A-Go-Go
  The first contemporary (sceince-fiction) novel written in Scots

• Fancy a pint? Try the
  Edinburgh and Leith Pub Guide.

• One click to save (parts of) the world:
  • The Hunger Site
    
  • The Rainforest Site
    
  • The Breast Cancer Site
  • The Animal Rescue Site

• Star Trek

• The X-Files

• The Looney Toons Sound Source

• Scottish Rugby Union

   

Aaron's Home Page

Hello, and welcome to my webpage. There isn't much to see. I mostly maintain this as a gateway to my c.v. and I encourage you to look at it, even if you are a friend of mine just wanting a few laughs.

Since this photo was taken, I have trimmed my beard to a goatee. It has grown back and been trimmed again. It tends to be seasonal. I trimmed it to a goatee when I was in Buenos Aires in December '98 because it was summer there. I haven't grown it out yet. Many of my friends would say this photo represents the quintessential me. I don't know if I agree with that. I'm not usually that maniacal.

Since this page is meant to take on a professional appearance, allow me to begin.

I am a PhD student here at the University of Edinburgh. I am primarily in the English Language Department but I spend a lot of time in the Linguistics Department, which is where I started off my postgraduate career.

My research topic started off as "Second Dialect Acquisition". However, I wanted to concentrate mostly on the phonology and the "in-between" dialect I notice in myself and many North Americans here in Britain. So, now the focus of my topic is "Interdialect Phonology". I originally became interested in the topic several years ago when I was at Edinburgh University for a year as an undergraduate.

My work has introduced me to a variety of subdisciplines in linguistics, but my interest lies mostly in:

• phonology and phonetics - mostly segmental phonology, but up to the level of the syllable
• dialectology
• sociolinguistics
• second language acquisition
• general linguistics - mostly because I tutor Linguistics 1

Recently, I finally finished doing a lot of phonetic transcription. You would not believe how tedious a chore that is. At least modern computers have made it slightly easier. Now I have to start analysing the data. Any hints on statistical analyses would be appreciated!

When I'm not busy transcribing the Mid-Atlantic dialect and trying to write down my ideas in a way that my advisor doesn't find to be total rubbish, I don't do a heck of a lot. That's because I'm too tired from work and too lazy to do anything else.

I do manage to do some weightlifting and excercise. It's not the most fun of things to do, but the adrenaline rush afterwards makes a morning cup of coffee unneccessary.... most of the time.

I spend far too much time watching television. I mostly watch Star Trek and X-Files, getting stuck with one- and two-year-old episodes. To supplement my televised science fiction, I read a lot of Star Trek and other sci-fi, as well as general fiction and fantasy. I hope to start reading something with more substance, but I'm not opitimistic.

I would like to watch a lot more Warner Bros. cartoons (does anybody else see an escapist tendancy here?), but they are on either when I'm asleep or when I'm at work. Instead, I have to hire a video, and the selection here is rather limited. I miss the daily dose at 3:30 after school, and a booster on Saturday mornings. Anyway, the wonderfully talented Mel Blanc, who was the voices of the the Warner Bros. cartoons, is my hero. He is one reason why I started studying the way people speak. In his honour, I point you to the Looney Toones SoundSource.

On top of all of this, I like watching international rugby union football, particularly the Five Nations Tournament. For obvious reasons, I support Scotland, but it's a good thing I learned to say "maybe next year" after so many years as a Green Bay Packer's fan.

I enjoy travelling, although on a student budget, I usually don't get to do it very often. In the past year or two, I have been incredibly lucky.

I was Hawaii in summer '97 and Tunisia in January '98. In April, I was Spain to give a paper at the 16th Conference of the Spanish Applied Linguistics Association, held at Logroño, La Rioja. You can guess what I had to drink while I was there. In December '98, I was lucky and fortunate enough to go to the Antarctic Peninsula, thanks to the generosity of my father. Afterwards, we spent a week in Buenos Aires. I could quite get used to spending December and January in Argentina.

Well, thank you for visiting. Stop by again in a few months to see if I've made any changes.