How to Turn Interior Monologues Inside Out: Epistemologies, Methods, and Research Tools in the Long Twentieth Century

This paper addresses the interior monologue as a “sonic thing” whose elusive nature prompted a wide range of research initiatives in the long twentieth century. Neurophysiologists, developmental psychologists, psychoanalysts, and linguists shared an increasing interest in what humans hear when talking and listening to themselves. From diverse disciplinary perspectives, they agreed that “interior monologues” or related phenomena such as “inner speech” are crucial to human cognition, the psyche, and the faculty of speech. And all of them saw these phenomena as constituting important theorems in their own disciplines. In order to investigate interior monologues, the scholars and scientists presented here attempted to turn them inside out, making creative use of a great variety of research tools. A pivotal figure in this respect was the Stanford-based linguist Ruth Hirsch Weir, who, in 1962, produced magnetic tape recordings of her son’s “crib talk”. Interpreting the infant monologue as a precursor of the interior monologues of adults, Hirsch Weir brought together seemingly irreconcilable work on “inner language” by Lev Vygotsky, Sigmund Freud, and Roman Jakobson. In turn, her study inspired a series of further research initiatives – among them Jacques Lacan’s work on the “autonomous play of speech” in children and adults.Peer Reviewe

High Rate Performance of Drift Tubes

This article describes calculations and measurements of space charge effects due to high rate irradiation in high resolution drift tubes. Two main items are studied: the reduction of the gas gain and changes of the drift time. Whereas the gain reduction is similar for all gases and unavoidable, the drift time changes depend on the kind of gas that is used. The loss in resolution due to high particle rate can be minimized with a suitable gas. This behaviour is calculable, allowing predictions for new gas mixtures.Comment: 20 pages, submitted to Nuclear Instruments and Methods

Introduction: Language, Sound, and the Humanities

Presenting the joint historical and methodological framework of the theme issue “Sounds of Language—Languages of Sound,” this introduction situates the individual contributions within a broader history of the humanities. The eight contributions address the period between approximately 1890 and 1970—from the modern disciplinary formation of knowledge about sound and the rise of the social sciences and humanities to the beginnings of computerized sound research. During this period, disciplines as diverse as linguistics, musicology, history, sociology, law, and theology all aspired to give scholarly attention to sound, and in particular to the spoken word. Starting from the observation that late nineteenth-century scholars of language turned from expert readers of historical texts into expert listeners to living languages, we trace the dual use of language as an object and a tool of knowledge production. As a research theme, language often broke through frontiers between the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences, as well as between academic and nonacademic domains of knowledge. At the same time, new languages and modes of speaking arose as tools to examine, represent, and utilize sonic phenomena—whether in speech, music, or other sonic environments. The theme issue’s three claims are, first, that sound both enabled and necessitated new alliances between otherwise divergent fields of knowledge; second, that sound and language motivated humanities scholars to reconsider or even reinvent their methodologies; and, third, that research on sound and language was deeply permeated by issues of power and politics

Linear and nonlinear optical properties of ZnO/PMMA nanocomposite films

The nanoscale crystals (NCs) of ZnO were embedded into polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) polymeric matrix and nanocomposite films were prepared by modified spin coating method. The surface of the ZnO/PMMA nanocomposite films has been investigated using atomic force and scanning electron microscopy. The prepared films are highly transparent, the ultraviolet-visible spectra show their high optical quality. The second and third harmonic generation (SHG and THG) studies of ZnO/PMMA nanocomposite films with different concentrations of ZnO NCs were carried out at λ=1.064 μm and the effective values of the second and third order nonlinear susceptibilities were estimated to be higher than that of ZnO bulk for the films at low concentration of ZnO NCs. This could indicate that surface effects in ZnO/PMMA nanocomposite films have a dominant role over bulk effects for the SHG and THG processes