Men with "front vowels" in their names -- sounds formed at the front of the mouth like the "a" in Matt -- were considered sexier than men with "back vowel" sounds like the "au" in Paul, she concluded.Not sure I agree with her analysis, which is presumably based on prior work that isn't cited:
Perfors said front vowels are often perceived as "smaller" than back vowels, so the difference could be a sign that women are seeking men that are sensitive or gentle, traits usually perceived as feminine.I don't know, I don't think of Matt as being a more feminine name than Paul. Do you?
The cure for what ails me. Yes, that's right; scientists have discovered a possible cure for procrastination. (Now I just have to wonder: do I really want to be a workaholic? Meh...I'll think about it later.)
Colin Powell, the cat, will meet on Friday with Colin Powell, the secretary of state. This is very important.
Colin Powell, the secretary of state, has agreed to a meeting in the State Department's Treaty Room on the seventh floor — for pictures, not dialogue....hence the name "Treaty Room". Duh. :P
The room has served lofty purposes through history, including the signing of important treaties.
Where our nation is headed. Someday, we will all be grafted to our couches, defecating on ourselves until we die horrible deaths. Thanks to Matt for alerting me to this lovely story, and to BoingBoing for the link to the expanded article.
And finally, people going to PAX are so lucky. Look at this awesome Spider-Man toy they get. Assholes!
9 comments:
The "a" sound in "Matt" and "ma ma" are not the same sound...at least, not where I live. The "a" in "ma ma" is the same as the "a" in "hall" and is almost equivalent to the "au" in "Paul" in my speech (whereas I know up north, the "au" gets morphed into something like an "ou" diphthong). The "a" in "Matt" is like the "a" in "cat", spoken in a different place in the mouth.
Vowels are extraordinarily hard to differentiate. I basically had to sit here and repeat words over and over to try and tell what my mouth was doing during the vowels :>
Okay, I don't understand your point at all, then. How is "Matt" like "ma ma" or suckling?
So any male name that begins with /m/ plus vowel? Or /m/ plus unrounded vowel?
What I'm getting at is this. Is "Matt" somehow similar to "ma ma" in ways that other male names beginning with /m/ are not? Or, are you making this correlation based on the fact that all news articles mentioned the name "Matt"? Is there some other reason?
In other words, do you have some logical reason for comparing "Matt" to "ma ma", or are you making the comparison purely because it's your name?
Okay.
I don't believe that the use of the name Matt in all the articles is enough evidence to lend plausibility to your hypothesis. The articles all probably copied off each other; that happens pretty regularly these days.
In order to prove a correlation in linguistics, you have to prove not only that a correlation is possible, but that other similar forms do not have a correlation. In other words, you have to define what the correlation is, in total. By examining other forms (if any) of the correlation, you discover the overall pattern (or whether or not it's a fluke).
That's why I was mentioning the vowels to begin with (a matching vowel would make a correlation far more plausible), and then other similar forms (is there any evidence, other than the use of the name "Matt" in the articles, that "Matt" is more attractive than the other names used in the study? This seems to be what you are implying).
You make two assertions. 1) "Matt" is similar to the sound of a baby calling for a breast. 2) Speech resembling the sound of a baby calling for a breast is attractive to women.
I don't see any convincing reasoning for 1. 2 is an interesting theory, and I'd like to be able to explore it, but unfortunately the only "evidence" for 2 is 1, which has not yet been proven.
I realize that this is more philosophical than anything, since to prove a correlation we would have to do a study, but I'm failing to see even the plausibility of the correlation.
We cannot, in other words, say that the reason "Matt" is an attractive name is because it is similar to the cry of a baby, because we have not shown how "Matt" is similar to the cry of a baby, nor have we shown that speech resembling a baby's cry is attractive to women.
A little more on the "Matt" being similar to a baby's cry thing...
"Matt" must somehow be differentiated from all other names beginning with /m/ (or /m/ + some kind of vowel) in order to make the claim that it is singularly similar to "ma ma" and that is why it is attractive. (If other names are similar to "ma ma" in the same way that "Matt" is, then why weren't they used in all the articles? For your argument not to break down, there has to be something that makes "Matt" unique.)
Discussions of other languages are interesting but provide no insight into this question, as we have no data on what names are attractive in those languages. There is nothing to prove that name cognates would remain semantically parallel (or even phonetically parallel), either.
I hope that makes sense...
Her hypothesis was not that frontal vowels are feminine and therefore women must be looking for feminine men. That was a tangent she went off on, as scientists are wont to do in the analysis section. That part of the project is typically what gets reported because it's the most interesting, but it's also the part that has the least amount to do with what was actually "proven" in the study.
As you surely noticed, I also expressed disdain for her grasping-at-straws conclusion.
If you were attempting to mock her seemingly random correlation with one of your own, then I apologize for taking you seriously.
I wasn't trying to upset you. I'm having a hard time understanding your argument. I'm beginning to think it's because I've studied linguistics, and I think like a person who's studied linguistics. I look for certain things in a hypothesis about linguistics, and I understand linguistic studies in a certain way. I'm not sure I can compartmentalize the linguistic scientific method any more than I already have, except to mention that all linguistics is built on prior work/assumptions. (All science is, but linguistics is unique in that it is a relatively new science; there's not much to go on.)
At any rate, I don't know if we're going to get to a point where we understand each other. I wish I was better at expressing how I analyze linguistics, and at understanding where you're coming from.
Apologies for all the trouble.
Linguistics is actually one of the four subsets of anthropology :) So you're right, the same general rules apply.
I'm afraid I'm unable to understand your position, despite your varied explanations. I may have misinterpreted your intent from the beginning. In any event, I'm happy to let it go. It's not important to me to prove you wrong anymore, because I'm not sure I even know what you were trying to say.
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