Welcome to the IPhOD Blog.
The goal of IPhOD Blog is to facilitate informal discussion, questions, and suggestions for the Irvine Phonotactic Online Dictionary (IPhOD). This will also be a good tool to communicate with IPhOD users, should new developments occur with any of the tools available on the website.
I will be moderating to be sure that this doesn't turn into something totally different; but please feel free to post your comments here. In particular, I would like to hear ideas about phonological measures that would be useful in psycholinguistic experiments. Or maybe there is an alternative to this database that IPhOD's audience should know about, I'd be happy to add that to this page or the main page. I welcome your comments.
And now for the IPhOD news:
1. I migrated servers from the original donated space to a far ritzier one. This was important for several reasons, but most importantly - I was able to bring back the online search utilities that originally made the site so appealing for psycholinguistic researchers. They are a lot more user-friendly than the downloadable PERL files and spreadsheets.
2. I reorganized the input screens to make them easier to manipulate and understand than the original search functions. I also corrected a very pesky output error that caused the search to fail to display unweighted neighborhood density, even if you clicked the button. If you used IPhOD 2-3 years ago, these changes will be immediately apparent. If not, you'll still like the changes, trust me.
3. I also programmed a new PHP-based online calculator that allows users to estimate unstressed neighborhood density and biphoneme probability for any transcripts (in CMUPD glyphs) that the subject enters. So if you have words or pseudowords that are not included in the IPhOD, then you may still be able to get the values that you need.
I loook forward to sharing the latest developments with IPhOD users and hearing from you!
Cheers,
Kenny Vaden
Department of Cognitive Sciences
University of California, Irvine
