Phonetic Intensives
There are certain sounds and sound combinations that seem to be
associated with certain images or ideas in English. These sounds and
sound combinations are known as phonetic intensives. Look at the list
of words below, for example:
flame, flare, flash, flicker
glare, gleam, glint, glow, glisten
slippery, slick, slide, slime, slop, slobber, slushy
staunch, stalwart, stout, sturdy, stable, steady, stocky, stern,
strong, stubborn, steel
inch, imp, thin, slim, little, bit, chip, sliver, snip, wink, kid,
glimmer, flicker, miniature
moan, groan, woe, toll
doom, gloom, moody
flare, glare, stare, blare
spatter, scatter, shatter, chatter, rattle, clatter, batter
ripple, bubble, twinkle, sparkle, rumble, jingle
What do the words in each group have in common in terms of sound?
What do they have in common in terms of meaning?
Mel Brooks, a famous comedian, once said that the k sound is the
funniest sound in the English language. Edgar Allan Poe chose
"nevermore" as the word that his raven would say in "The Raven,"
because he thought that the -ore sound was the most despairing in the
English language (as in mourn, forlorn, tore, and deplore).
Certain sounds are associated with certain images or ideas in English.
>> My impression from reading this thread is that those who distinguish
>> between a "difference" and a "change", short for "change in the
>> language", do so on the basis that "the language" or "The Language" is
>> something that lasts for generations. They are using "difference" for a
>> word or usage that may be ephemeral.
> No, that is not what "we" were saying. How can _anyone_ linguistic
> scholar or naive layperson, know whether any particular mistake or
> difference is ephemeral or lasting?
> _All_ changes in language are not perceived by the layperson as
> changes in the language, but as mistakes (to be corrected) or
> differences (to be remarked upon). In recent years, it has become
> possible -- through very extensive diachronic and corpus investigation
> -- to discover where the changes come from (Labov divides the
> "factors" into three groups, covered in his three sizable volumes).
> A pervasive syntactic change of the last several decades, which I
> mentioned in this thread once, is the "double copula" with nominal
> clause complements: "What I meant is is that the moon looked really
> big on the horizon last night." No pause between the is's.
> I heard on a call-in radio program in 1989 [I can date it because I
> heard it in th car while commuting to Milwaukee, which I did once a
> week that winter quarter]:
> "My question is would have been 'Why did you take X out of the game at
> that point?'"
>> To older people new words or new meanings adopted by young people are
>> differences. These may be perceived by the older people to be
>> unnecessary and sometimes corruptions of existing words.
> Yes
>> Such differences don't become "Changes In The Language" unless they are
>> adopted and used more widely and survive to be used in the future as
>> accepted features of, at least some version of, the language.
> They are already changes in the language, but only linguistic scholars
> have the mental model to recognize that such a thing as "change in the
> language" can exist.
Let's forget about the linguistically unaware people. Quite naturally, even the trained Linguist can only observe changes that have already happened - they cannot look into the future. But in the case of lexical, grammatical, semantic changes, they can be observed without much research effort when they happened just very recently and are at the point of becoming accepted by a great part of the public and are expected to win eventually. Example: "Singular 'they'".
My claim is that is much more difficult for phonetic changes. Labov had to put enormous effort and to wait many years to arrive at his results on Martha's Vineyard. I personally am not aware of any phonetic change that may have happened in Germany in the last 200 years, but I am convinced that there must be some.
Phonological changes (like mergers of phonemes) are easier to detect, but here I can still only see differences between speakers and groups of speakers groups, no time gradient. If I am not mistaken, the examples named in this thread were all phonological, or sometimes even morphological disguised as phonological (like losses of final sounds).
A reason might be that for the first three kinds of changes we have the vast and old corpus of written texts (including usenet postings, private E-Mails and such) as materials. For the sounds, we have only recordings, which don't get so far back in time. Also, written texts are usually in formal standard language, while recordingsg often aren't. And even if there is a recording in formal standard language, there is still a degree of variation for phonetic and phonologic accents. (Maybe less so in RP English than in German?).
> On Sep 29, 4:29 pm, "benli...@ihug.co.nz" <benli...@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
>> On Sep 30, 1:30 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>>> On Sep 29, 1:04 am, Joachim Pense <s...@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:
>>>> Am 28.09.2012 23:07, schrieb Peter T. Daniels:
>>>>> On Sep 28, 3:14 pm, na...@mips.inka.de (Christian Weisgerber) wrote:
>>>>>> Joachim Pense <s...@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:
>>>>>>>> If people notice that "our" kids are talking like "them" (in ways "we"
>>>>>>>> never did), isn't that a recognition that "our" dialect is changing?
>>>>>>>> (Not all such borrowing may be long-term, of course, but short-term,
>>>>>>>> it's a change.)
>>>>>>> Yes, and I observe that for lexical, semantical, grammatical changes,
>>>>>>> but not for sound changes.
>>>>>> What sound changes are you thinking of that happened or are happening
>>>>>> without people noticing?
>>>>> All of them.
>>>>> People notice mistakes or (regional, i.e. accent) differences. They do
>>>>> not consider them changes or evidence of change.
>>>> You are talking about recognizable changes that people don't understand
>>>> as such - this happens for grammatical, semantic, lexical changes.
>>>> People do notice them, and they notice that the generations have
>>>> different usages, and they complain about decay (which is a form of
>>>> change). So they do notice that something is changing, even if they
>>>> don't like it.
>>> WE understand "decay" as a kind of change. They (regular people)
>>> don't.
>> One preposterous assertion after another!
>>> If a piece of bread gets moldy, do people say "The bread changed!"?
>>> No, they might say it decayed.
>> Peter, this is desperate. Go back to Grice, whom you're so fond of
>> quoting. Or Dixon on Australian abstractions. If people know what
>> specific type of change has taken place, they will say so, and not
>> talk in generalities.
> But THEY DO NOT KNOW WHAT SPECIFIC TYPE OF CHANGE HAS TAKEN PLACE.
> They are not aware that a change has taken place, only that the
> children are making mistakes and need to be corrected so that they
> will talk correctly henceforth.
Or they resign to the fact that the mistakes have become
too prevalent to be corrected, ever. Ergo, language
_standards_ have changed. For most people, that means
the language has changed.
Most people are not so egotistical to think that they
have the final word on what "their language" is, even
if it is their mother tongue and they have spoken it
all their lives.
In fact, there are probably more people in the world
who think they speak a corrupted form of a standard
language than people who think they have complete
mastery of their own language.
That their parents and friends and neighbors all speak
the exact same form does not disuade them from having
this notion.
Your attempt to redefine "change" to exclude "decay"
reminds me of DeFrancis's redefinition of "ideogram"
to exclude "logogram".
Tak
--
----------------------------------------------------------------+-----
Tak To ta...@alum.mit.eduxx
--------------------------------------------------------------------^^
[taode takto ~{LU5B~}] NB: trim the xx to get my real email addr
> Am 30.09.2012 15:04, schrieb Peter T. Daniels:
>> On Sep 30, 12:06 am, Joachim Pense <s...@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:
>>> Am 30.09.2012 03:41, schrieb Robert Bannister:
>>>> I'm sure that more "y"s were pronounced " " in the past. Today, most of
>>>> them seem to be "i" or "ie".
>>> There is only one such case that I am aware of, and that is not a sound
>>> change: The word for "Oxide" used to by "Oxyd" in Germany (derivation
>>> from Greek), but that was officially replaced by the artificially
>>> created "Oxid" in the seventies by the chemists, because they were
>>> re-organizing their terminology. The pronounciation was changed
>>> according to the spelling.
>> <y>s turned into <i>s throughout German toward the end of the 19th
>> century. I don't know whether there was an official reform, or perhaps
>> whether it was a byproduct of switching largely from Fraktur to
>> Antiqua.
> I think it was part of the 1903 spelling reform, but it was only the
> spelling, and only for those <y>s that were pronounced as an i anyway -
> the ones pronounced like ü remained <y>. (The <y>s in loanwords were
> kept as well).
A notable example is "sein" (meaning both "his" and "to be"), which used to be spelled with a <y> in one meaning and with an <i> in the other (I don't recall which stood for which), just to differentiate.
> On Sep 30, 8:39 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
["sprog"]
> > sounds just as rude as "snog" and "shag."
> PTD's linguistic dogmatist hat must have been off ("the attachment of
> meaning to sounds is arbitrary") that time.
There's something in that. Shakespeare used a verb "shog" (meaning to "go away") in some of his plays, e.g. "shall we shog?" I remember sniggering over that when I was at school even though it had no rude meaning in English. It just *sounded* rude.
> On Sat, 29 Sep 2012 17:26:43 +0100, Adam Funk
><a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote in
><news:33kjj9xe4n.ln2@news.ducksburg.com> in
> sci.lang,alt.religion.kibology,alt.usage.english:
> [...]
>> I don't see the point in borrowing French adjectival
>> gender inflection into English for one word only.
> For, 'naive' is the adjective and 'naïf' the noun (in
> English).
Oops. Is there any good reason for that, though?
>> The only other one I can think of is "blond(e)",
> 'Fiancé(e)'. There might be one or two more like that,
> though none comes to mind immediately.
Oops again.
>> & not many people switch that back & forth.
> I do, but I also used 'lemmata' in my dissertation, just
> because I could, so that doesn't mean much!
Sure, I like "lemmata" too.
-- ...the reason why so many professional artists drink a lot is not
necessarily very much to do with the artistic temperament, etc. It is
simply that they can afford to, because they can normally take a large
part of a day off to deal with the ravages. [Amis _On Drink_]
> Peter Duncanson [BrE] <m...@peterduncanson.net> wrote:
> [naif/naive]
>> >I don't see the point in borrowing French adjectival gender inflection
>> >into English for one word only. The only other one I can think of is
>> >"blond(e)", & not many people switch that back & forth.
>> "fiancé(e)"
> Presumably Adam didn't consider it an adjective. Another candidate
> is "né(e)", although MWo and AHD don't list the masculine form.
Actually I didn't think of either of those; the inflection question is
the same as for adjectives anyway.
-- XML is like violence: if it doesn't solve the problem,
use more.
On Sep 30, 9:49 am, Jerry Friedman <jerry_fried...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Sep 30, 7:24 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> ...
> > They are already changes in the language, but only linguistic scholars
> > have the mental model to recognize that such a thing as "change in the
> > language" can exist.
> ...
> That was one of thy best.
So show us where gen.pop. refers to language change per se.
> > > > What is a "sprog"? Context suggests it's a brooksism for 'heir to the
> > > > throne'.
> > > Slang term for "child".
> > sounds just as rude as "snog" and "shag."
> PTD's linguistic dogmatist hat must have been off ("the attachment of
> meaning to sounds is arbitrary") that time.
???
Where did you get that from????
You actually _know about_ what are usually called "expressives" (not
"phonetic intensives"), which occur in the lexicon in English and
other languages, but in Austroasiatic languages are grammaticalized,
and you can make the above statement??
> Phonetic Intensives
> There are certain sounds and sound combinations that seem to be
> associated with certain images or ideas in English. These sounds and
> sound combinations are known as phonetic intensives. Look at the list
> of words below, for example:
> flame, flare, flash, flicker
> glare, gleam, glint, glow, glisten
> slippery, slick, slide, slime, slop, slobber, slushy
> staunch, stalwart, stout, sturdy, stable, steady, stocky, stern,
> strong, stubborn, steel
> inch, imp, thin, slim, little, bit, chip, sliver, snip, wink, kid,
> glimmer, flicker, miniature
> moan, groan, woe, toll
> doom, gloom, moody
> flare, glare, stare, blare
> spatter, scatter, shatter, chatter, rattle, clatter, batter
> ripple, bubble, twinkle, sparkle, rumble, jingle
> What do the words in each group have in common in terms of sound?
> What do they have in common in terms of meaning?
> Mel Brooks, a famous comedian, once said that the k sound is the
> funniest sound in the English language. Edgar Allan Poe chose
> "nevermore" as the word that his raven would say in "The Raven,"
> because he thought that the -ore sound was the most despairing in the
> English language (as in mourn, forlorn, tore, and deplore).
> Certain sounds are associated with certain images or ideas in English.
> end quote.
Note, BTW, the attribution of "funny k" to Mel Brooks.
> > On Sep 30, 8:39 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> ["sprog"]
> > > sounds just as rude as "snog" and "shag."
> > PTD's linguistic dogmatist hat must have been off ("the attachment of
> > meaning to sounds is arbitrary") that time.
> There's something in that. Shakespeare used a verb "shog" (meaning to "go
> away") in some of his plays, e.g. "shall we shog?" I remember sniggering
> over that when I was at school even though it had no rude meaning in
> English. It just *sounded* rude.
> But why doesn't "snag" sound rude?
It certainly has negative connotations. "We hit a snag." "She got a
snag in her stocking."
On Sep 30, 12:48 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> On Sep 30, 9:49 am, Jerry Friedman <jerry_fried...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > On Sep 30, 7:24 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> > ...
> > > They are already changes in the language, but only linguistic scholars
> > > have the mental model to recognize that such a thing as "change in the
> > > language" can exist.
> > ...
> > That was one of thy best.
> So show us where gen.pop. refers to language change per se.
The impending loss of Tamil-Malayalam's signature sound (the retroflex
frictionless continuant) in Tamil country is noted by non-linguists
all the time. They have been talking about it for decades - but as of
now it is still present dialectally although the same speaker may
realize it correctly in a word and lenit it to plain retroflex l in
another a minute later. But I don't know if non-linguists regard it
as change - they certainly view it as something they know the language
has had for as long as they can imagine and is in danger of losing.
They say that Lithuanian lost the dual number only recently - I wonder
if that could have happened without non-linguists noticing it as it
was happening.
> >> My impression from reading this thread is that those who distinguish
> >> between a "difference" and a "change", short for "change in the
> >> language", do so on the basis that "the language" or "The Language" is
> >> something that lasts for generations. They are using "difference" for a
> >> word or usage that may be ephemeral.
> > No, that is not what "we" were saying. How can _anyone_ linguistic
> > scholar or naive layperson, know whether any particular mistake or
> > difference is ephemeral or lasting?
> > _All_ changes in language are not perceived by the layperson as
> > changes in the language, but as mistakes (to be corrected) or
> > differences (to be remarked upon). In recent years, it has become
> > possible -- through very extensive diachronic and corpus investigation
> > -- to discover where the changes come from (Labov divides the
> > "factors" into three groups, covered in his three sizable volumes).
> > A pervasive syntactic change of the last several decades, which I
> > mentioned in this thread once, is the "double copula" with nominal
> > clause complements: "What I meant is is that the moon looked really
> > big on the horizon last night." No pause between the is's.
> > I heard on a call-in radio program in 1989 [I can date it because I
> > heard it in th car while commuting to Milwaukee, which I did once a
> > week that winter quarter]:
> > "My question is would have been 'Why did you take X out of the game at
> > that point?'"
> >> To older people new words or new meanings adopted by young people are
> >> differences. These may be perceived by the older people to be
> >> unnecessary and sometimes corruptions of existing words.
> > Yes
> >> Such differences don't become "Changes In The Language" unless they are
> >> adopted and used more widely and survive to be used in the future as
> >> accepted features of, at least some version of, the language.
> > They are already changes in the language, but only linguistic scholars
> > have the mental model to recognize that such a thing as "change in the
> > language" can exist.
> Let's forget about the linguistically unaware people. Quite naturally,
> even the trained Linguist can only observe changes that have already
> happened - they cannot look into the future.
Maybe they can. If "children" and "book" have the same vowel in a
considerable population's speech, the phonemes could be in the process
of merging.
The literature is full of examples of "changes in progress."
> But in the case of lexical,
> grammatical, semantic changes, they can be observed without much
> research effort when they happened just very recently and are at the
> point of becoming accepted by a great part of the public and are
> expected to win eventually. Example: "Singular 'they'".
> My claim is that is much more difficult for phonetic changes. Labov had
> to put enormous effort and to wait many years to arrive at his results
> on Martha's Vineyard. I personally am not aware of any phonetic change
> that may have happened in Germany in the last 200 years, but I am
> convinced that there must be some.
Pronunciation of <er> as a form of shwa? That was not taught to us in
the mid 1960s, so it probably was not officially recognized at that
time.
> Phonological changes (like mergers of phonemes) are easier to detect,
> but here I can still only see differences between speakers and groups of
> speakers groups, no time gradient. If I am not mistaken, the examples
> named in this thread were all phonological, or sometimes even
> morphological disguised as phonological (like losses of final sounds).
> A reason might be that for the first three kinds of changes we have the
> vast and old corpus of written texts (including usenet postings, private
> E-Mails and such) as materials. For the sounds, we have only recordings,
> which don't get so far back in time. Also, written texts are usually in
> formal standard language, while recordingsg often aren't. And even if
> there is a recording in formal standard language, there is still a
> degree of variation for phonetic and phonologic accents. (Maybe less so
> in RP English than in German?).
Philologists use rhymes, spelling errors, and chance remarks as
evidence for phonetic realities. Things can even be said about
Akkadian phonetics! (Extinct since the 2nd or so century CE.)
> > On Sep 29, 4:29 pm, "benli...@ihug.co.nz" <benli...@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
> >> On Sep 30, 1:30 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> >>> On Sep 29, 1:04 am, Joachim Pense <s...@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:
> >>>> Am 28.09.2012 23:07, schrieb Peter T. Daniels:
> >>>>> On Sep 28, 3:14 pm, na...@mips.inka.de (Christian Weisgerber) wrote:
> >>>>>> Joachim Pense <s...@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:
> >>>>>>>> If people notice that "our" kids are talking like "them" (in ways "we"
> >>>>>>>> never did), isn't that a recognition that "our" dialect is changing?
> >>>>>>>> (Not all such borrowing may be long-term, of course, but short-term,
> >>>>>>>> it's a change.)
> >>>>>>> Yes, and I observe that for lexical, semantical, grammatical changes,
> >>>>>>> but not for sound changes.
> >>>>>> What sound changes are you thinking of that happened or are happening
> >>>>>> without people noticing?
> >>>>> All of them.
> >>>>> People notice mistakes or (regional, i.e. accent) differences. They do
> >>>>> not consider them changes or evidence of change.
> >>>> You are talking about recognizable changes that people don't understand
> >>>> as such - this happens for grammatical, semantic, lexical changes.
> >>>> People do notice them, and they notice that the generations have
> >>>> different usages, and they complain about decay (which is a form of
> >>>> change). So they do notice that something is changing, even if they
> >>>> don't like it.
> >>> WE understand "decay" as a kind of change. They (regular people)
> >>> don't.
> >> One preposterous assertion after another!
> >>> If a piece of bread gets moldy, do people say "The bread changed!"?
> >>> No, they might say it decayed.
> >> Peter, this is desperate. Go back to Grice, whom you're so fond of
> >> quoting. Or Dixon on Australian abstractions. If people know what
> >> specific type of change has taken place, they will say so, and not
> >> talk in generalities.
> > But THEY DO NOT KNOW WHAT SPECIFIC TYPE OF CHANGE HAS TAKEN PLACE.
> > They are not aware that a change has taken place, only that the
> > children are making mistakes and need to be corrected so that they
> > will talk correctly henceforth.
> Or they resign to the fact that the mistakes have become
> too prevalent to be corrected, ever. Ergo, language
> _standards_ have changed. For most people, that means
> the language has changed.
No. They don't go that far.
> Most people are not so egotistical to think that they
> have the final word on what "their language" is, even
> if it is their mother tongue and they have spoken it
> all their lives.
No, but they think that Samuel Johnson, or Noah Webster, or Wilson
Follett, or William Safire does. They accept linguistic authority
without question.
> In fact, there are probably more people in the world
> who think they speak a corrupted form of a standard
> language than people who think they have complete
> mastery of their own language.
> That their parents and friends and neighbors all speak
> the exact same form does not disuade them from having
> this notion.
> Your attempt to redefine "change" to exclude "decay"
> reminds me of DeFrancis's redefinition of "ideogram"
> to exclude "logogram".
Gelb, not DeFrancis.
They are two entirely different and necessary concepts.
> Am 30.09.2012 16:31, schrieb Joachim Pense:
> > Am 30.09.2012 15:04, schrieb Peter T. Daniels:
> >> On Sep 30, 12:06 am, Joachim Pense <s...@pense-mainz.eu> wrote:
> >>> Am 30.09.2012 03:41, schrieb Robert Bannister:
> >>>> I'm sure that more "y"s were pronounced " " in the past. Today, most of
> >>>> them seem to be "i" or "ie".
> >>> There is only one such case that I am aware of, and that is not a sound
> >>> change: The word for "Oxide" used to by "Oxyd" in Germany (derivation
> >>> from Greek), but that was officially replaced by the artificially
> >>> created "Oxid" in the seventies by the chemists, because they were
> >>> re-organizing their terminology. The pronounciation was changed
> >>> according to the spelling.
> >> <y>s turned into <i>s throughout German toward the end of the 19th
> >> century. I don't know whether there was an official reform, or perhaps
> >> whether it was a byproduct of switching largely from Fraktur to
> >> Antiqua.
> > I think it was part of the 1903 spelling reform, but it was only the
> > spelling, and only for those <y>s that were pronounced as an i anyway -
> > the ones pronounced like remained <y>. (The <y>s in loanwords were
> > kept as well).
> A notable example is "sein" (meaning both "his" and "to be"), which used
> to be spelled with a <y> in one meaning and with an <i> in the other (I
> don't recall which stood for which), just to differentiate.
I think <y> in the verb -- I never noticed that one was one way and
the other the other!
> Phonetic Intensives
> There are certain sounds and sound combinations that seem to be
> associated with certain images or ideas in English. These sounds and
> sound combinations are known as phonetic intensives. Look at the list
> of words below, for example:
> flame, flare, flash, flicker
> glare, gleam, glint, glow, glisten
> slippery, slick, slide, slime, slop, slobber, slushy
> staunch, stalwart, stout, sturdy, stable, steady, stocky, stern,
> strong, stubborn, steel
> inch, imp, thin, slim, little, bit, chip, sliver, snip, wink, kid,
> glimmer, flicker, miniature
> moan, groan, woe, toll
> doom, gloom, moody
> flare, glare, stare, blare
> spatter, scatter, shatter, chatter, rattle, clatter, batter
> ripple, bubble, twinkle, sparkle, rumble, jingle
> What do the words in each group have in common in terms of sound?
> What do they have in common in terms of meaning?
> Mel Brooks, a famous comedian, once said that the k sound is the
> funniest sound in the English language. Edgar Allan Poe chose
> "nevermore" as the word that his raven would say in "The Raven,"
> because he thought that the -ore sound was the most despairing in the
> English language (as in mourn, forlorn, tore, and deplore).
> Certain sounds are associated with certain images or ideas in English.
> end quote.
The OED has heard of the word "sprog" but says "compare sprag", which is "of obscure origin" but meant "A lively young fellow" in 1767 or various young fish from 1790.
"Sprog" itself is listed as "Services slang" for new recruit or trainee from 1941 or in 1945 as "slang (orig. Naut) for a youngster, child or baby."
I'm pretty sure that I recall its use by an English parent in the form "the sprog" for "my child" at least 40 years ago.
-- Jim Silverton (Potomac, MD)
> > > > On Sep 30, 10:07 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> > > > > On Sep 29, 4:57 pm, "benli...@ihug.co.nz" <benli...@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
> > > > > > On Sep 30, 1:32 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
> > > > > > > Does the Queen of Engliand notice that her grandsons "drop" their
> > > > > > > final consonants? Does she urge them to be more careful in their
> > > > > > > public appearances, at least? Evidently not.
> > > > > > "Evidently" here seems to be used in a sense completely divorced from
> > > > > > its cognate "evidence". It seems that PTD notices the grandsons
> > > > > > dropping consonants. I am pretty sure that people all over England
> > > > > > notice it (though it is so common among that generation of the upper
> > > > > > class that it's hardly mention-worthy any more).
> > > > > If it's so common, why would anyone notice?
> > > > People did indeed notice, long ago. This is a change that has been
> > > > happening over the last three decades or so. It's just that it's not
> > > > news any more.
> > > People -- perhaps not even only boys any more -- are sent to Eton to
> > > have that sort of thing beaten out of them.
> > They may have been at one time. Evidently it doesn't work so well any
> > more.
> > > Thirty years ago, the Princes were not speaking in public,
> > Who are we talking about here? 30 years ago William was a babe in
> > arms, and Harry was not yet born.
> Who was it set the parameter at "the last three decades or so"?
> > Prince Charles certainly did speak in public at that time.
> > so no one
> > > noticed the Royal Family doing it. I doubt Princess Diana did it in
> > > public. Certainly Prince Charles did not and does not do it (a coup[le
> > > of weeks ago we had an hour-long program of him describing home movies
> > > to some unseen listener, and in that informal setting he would have
> > > done so if he ever did).
> > Your point?
> Your claim that it's common for the Royal Family to talk like a
> commoner is false.
Rather, you have misunderstood my claim.
> > Perhaps you think I was referring above simply to the history of
> > English pronunciation in the Royal Family? No, they are simply an
> > indication of how widely, and how far up the social ladder, these once
> > stigmatized features have spread.-
> When did Eton stop beating their boys?
I have no idea, even of whether your presupposition is correct.
James Silverton <jim.silver...@verizon.net> writes:
> The OED has heard of the word "sprog" but says "compare sprag", which
> is "of obscure origin" but meant "A lively young fellow" in 1767 or
> various young fish from 1790.
> "Sprog" itself is listed as "Services slang" for new recruit or
> trainee from 1941 or in 1945 as "slang (orig. Naut) for a youngster,
> child or baby."
> I'm pretty sure that I recall its use by an English parent in the form
> "the sprog" for "my child" at least 40 years ago.
Should we tell him it's a verb as well, or would the outrage be too much
for him?
In article <1eff035c-aa5f-484e-9837-59796dfa6...@rj6g2000pbc.googlegroups.com>,
"benli...@ihug.co.nz" <benli...@ihug.co.nz> wrote:
> If Labov gives an explanation for (or even endorses) your peculiar
> views about awareness of language change, I'd be grateful for a
> reference slightly better than 'read three volumes'.
Don't expect a reference; Labov gives no such explanation or endorsement.
On Sun, 30 Sep 2012 16:03:26 +0100, Adam Funk
<a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote in
<news:ui3mj9xgsh.ln2@news.ducksburg.com> in
sci.lang,alt.religion.kibology,alt.usage.english:
> On 2012-09-29, Brian M. Scott wrote:
>> On Sat, 29 Sep 2012 17:26:43 +0100, Adam Funk
>><a24...@ducksburg.com> wrote in
>><news:33kjj9xe4n.ln2@news.ducksburg.com> in
>> sci.lang,alt.religion.kibology,alt.usage.english:
>> [...]
>>> I don't see the point in borrowing French adjectival
>>> gender inflection into English for one word only.
>> For [me], 'naive' is the adjective and 'naïf' the noun (in
>> English).
> Oops. Is there any good reason for that, though?
For my usage? It reflects the way that I've seen and heard
them used.
>> > On Sep 30, 8:39 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@verizon.net> wrote:
>> ["sprog"]
>> > > sounds just as rude as "snog" and "shag."
>> > PTD's linguistic dogmatist hat must have been off ("the attachment of
>> > meaning to sounds is arbitrary") that time.
>> There's something in that. Shakespeare used a verb "shog" (meaning to "go
>> away") in some of his plays, e.g. "shall we shog?" I remember sniggering
>> over that when I was at school even though it had no rude meaning in
>> English. It just *sounded* rude.
>> But why doesn't "snag" sound rude?
>It certainly has negative connotations. "We hit a snag." "She got a
>snag in her stocking."
On 30 Sep 2012 13:30:23 -0700, R H Draney
<dadoc...@spamcop.net> wrote in
<news:k4aa4v03kv@drn.newsguy.com> in
sci.lang,alt.religion.kibology,alt.usage.english:
> Adam Funk filted:
>>On 2012-09-29, Brian M. Scott wrote:
>>> I do, but I also used 'lemmata' in my dissertation, just
>>> because I could, so that doesn't mean much!
>>Sure, I like "lemmata" too.
> When life hands them to me, I make...[...]
> Note, BTW, the attribution of "funny k" to Mel Brooks.
First time I heard of the "funny k" was in a German translation of the piece "The Sunshine Boys" (written 1972 by Neil Simon) in a theatre in Wiesbaden in the early-to-mid seventies.
