My family's ecolect
Juuitchan
- a minivan can be a "car"
- a closed door can be "open" as long as it is unlocked
I don't get out much. Are these peculiar?
For the record, I live in the northeastern US.
Salvatore Volatile
> In my family's ecolect:
>
> - a minivan can be a "car"
>
> - a closed door can be "open" as long as it is unlocked
>
> I don't get out much. Are these peculiar?
The first one seems normal to me. Regardless of how a vehicle (= SparkE
/vihIk@l/) is classified by regulatory authorities or industrial actors, a
minivan intended for noncommercial use is described and thought of as a
kind of "car".
The second one sounds peculiar, since there are clear and significant
cases in which a door can be closed but unlocked.
> For the record, I live in the northeastern US.
Me too, but on the Coast.
--
Salvatore Volatile
Percival P. Cassidy
I don't know about "car" for a minivan, but I'm sure that if someone I'm
expecting arrives, and I can't be bothered to get up and let him or her
in, and I know that I left the door unlocked (but closed), I might well
say, "Come on in; it's open."
Perce
jerry_f...@yahoo.com
I've been known to say that too, especially with car doors. However,
as Sal says, sometimes you need to make the distinction between "open"
and "unlocked" (and between "closed" and "locked"), and in those cases
I think I'm careful.
I believe some people around here would say a door that was closed but
unlocked is "wide open" to emphasize the supposed danger of leaving it
that way.
--
Jerry Friedman
jerry_f...@yahoo.com
> Percival P. Cassidy wrote:
> > On 04/25/06 03:00 pm Juuitchan wrote:
> >
> > > In my family's ecolect:
> > >
> > > - a minivan can be a "car"
> > >
> > > - a closed door can be "open" as long as it is unlocked
> > >
> > > I don't get out much. Are these peculiar?
> > >
> > > For the record, I live in the northeastern US.
> I believe some people around here would say a door that was closed but
> unlocked is "wide open" to emphasize the supposed danger of leaving it
> that way.
...
"...was...was..." or "...is...is..."
--
Jerry Friedman
Tony Cooper
wrote:
>In my family's ecolect:
>
>- a minivan can be a "car"
As an unspecific description, that perfectly ordinary. The comment
"There are lot of cars on the road today" includes just about any type
of four-wheeled vehicle. Pulling into a rest stop off an interstate,
there are usually lanes for "Cars" and "Trucks". You'd not use the
"Trucks" lane if you had less than 18 wheels.
>- a closed door can be "open" as long as it is unlocked
Right. "Come on in. The door's open." just means the door is not
locked or barred.
>I don't get out much. Are these peculiar?
>
>For the record, I live in the northeastern US.
--
Tony Cooper
Orlando, FL
Skitt
That brings to mind a Seinfeld sketch where his TV was stolen.
Kramer: "Wide open!"
He *did* mean "wide open", though.
--
Skitt (in Hayward, California)
http://www.geocities.com/opus731/
Bob Cunningham
<m...@privacy.net> said:
> vehicle (= SparkE /vihIk@l/
Readers please note that Richard is using phonemic notation
(slashes) to say how someone pronounces a word. That is a
mistake. He should have used phonetic notation (square
brackets).
Also, if by chance he's using "SparkE" to refer to my
pronunciation, he doesn't have it quite right. My
pronunciation of "vehicle" is ['vi:,hIk@l]. (I don't
remember ever hearing it pronounced any other way, but I see
now that Merriam-Webster has it with and without the "h"
pronunciation.)
R H Draney
>
>there are usually lanes for "Cars" and "Trucks". You'd not use the
>"Trucks" lane if you had less than 18 wheels.
Oy! ^^^^
Haven't done one of those in a long time....r
--
I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth.
Maybe it's behind the sofa.
R J Valentine
} On Tue, 25 Apr 2006 18:38:14 +0000 (UTC), Salvatore Volatile
} <m...@privacy.net> said:
}
}> vehicle (= SparkE /vihIk@l/
}
} Readers please note that Richard is using phonemic notation
} (slashes) to say how someone pronounces a word. That is a
} mistake. He should have used phonetic notation (square
} brackets).
I beg to differ. I suggest that he is correctly using phonemic notation
to contrast it with /vijIk@l/, and the other details don't matter much.
} Also, if by chance he's using "SparkE" to refer to my
By chance! That Sparky's a caution!
} pronunciation, he doesn't have it quite right. My
} pronunciation of "vehicle" is ['vi:,hIk@l]. (I don't
} remember ever hearing it pronounced any other way, but I see
} now that Merriam-Webster has it with and without the "h"
} pronunciation.)
But it's not a phonetic notation (though Mr. Cunningham would be quite
right if it were). Mr. Cunningham is generally very good at representing
his own pronunciation. He can also do a masterful "aw" and "ah" (for
which hear his recording of "People call me Bob" somewhere at
http://www.alt-usage-english.org in the audio archives or somewhere).
(His descendants are mighty talented, also.)
--
R. J. Valentine <mailto:r...@theWorld.com>
(Now that Smart.Net is pulling the plug on dial-in shell accounts.)
Juuitchan
In cases such as this, "less than" _is_ acceptable modern English.
THE Entity
wrought:
It may be idiomatic. It may even be widespread. Neither of those
features, however, makes it acceptable.
--
THE Entity
THE Entity
<exw...@earthlink.net> wrought:
I can't speak for others, but I have never understood SparkE to be an
attempt to reflect Robert E. "Sparky" Cunningham's actual speech. To
me, it's synonymous with what I recently referred to as "the
Sparko-Brokeback Vulgate" -- that highly attractive dialect now seldom
heard except in scratchy RKO westerns shown on cheap cable channels at
4 a.m. (Would Mr Volatile agree that Walter Brennan is as good a
choice as any as the paradigmatic SparkE speaker?)
No, Sparky doesn't really speak SparkE. If he did, rather than with
references to "officious pests", wouldn't Published Authors be
dismissed by being called "meddlin' varmints"? Isn't "officious" a far
too upper-register (= SparkE: "book-larnin'") word for proper SparkE?
So who, then, speaks SparkE, now that Mr Brennan is no longer with us?
Well, I think we've mentioned before that Dubya sometimes likes to
drop bits of the Sparko-Brokeback Vulgate into his speech, probably in
an attempt to bond with the red-statier portions of his voter base. He
certainly says "VEE-hickle", anyway. (Or at least he does when he's at
his Crawford "ranch". I somehow suspect he managed to eschew it while
he was at Yale.)
--
THE Entity
Seán O'Leathlóbhair
Juuitchan wrote:
> In my family's ecolect:
>
> - a minivan can be a "car"
>From my BrE point of view, I prefer it. To me, a van is a commercial
vehicle only and typically would have no seats or windows in the back.
The size of a car or only slightly larger but otherwise more like a
small lorry (AmE truck).
When we feel the need to distinguish the types, the most common phrase
seems to be "people carrier" but with their increasing popularity as
family vehicles, they are very commonly just called cars. Some cars
have 2 seats, some 4 / 5, and some 7 but they are all cars. The trend
may be encouraged by some of the newer models that look more like
normal cars and have clever seats so that they can convert into
something rather like estate cars (AmE station wagons).
There are minibuses but they are larger, typically has 12 or so seats,
and look like small buses. Unlike real buses, they can be driven with
a regular license. I think that they are designed to be as large as it
is possible to drive with a regular license.
> - a closed door can be "open" as long as it is unlocked
In a suitable context, I am happy with this. If the door is obviously
shut then I would interpret "open" to mean unlocked. I am not sure but
I probably say it myself sometimes.
> I don't get out much. Are these peculiar?
>
> For the record, I live in the northeastern US.
--
Seán O'Leathlóbhair
THE Entity
<jwla...@yahoo.com> wrought:
>
>Juuitchan wrote:
>> In my family's ecolect:
>>
>> - a minivan can be a "car"
>
>>From my BrE point of view, I prefer it. To me, a van is a commercial
>vehicle only and typically would have no seats or windows in the back.
>The size of a car or only slightly larger but otherwise more like a
>small lorry (AmE truck).
>
>When we feel the need to distinguish the types, the most common phrase
>seems to be "people carrier" but with their increasing popularity as
>family vehicles, they are very commonly just called cars.
I'm no longer resident in the UKm so I sometimes have difficulties
keeping up, but has "SUV" caught on in BrE? If not, what are the damn
things called in t' mawtuh trade? Both "4x4" and "4WD" imply jeepier
efforts, whereas a proper "SUV" tends to be just a semi-luxury car
hiked up on jocking great wheels.
--
THE Entity
Seán O'Leathlóbhair
Not as far as I have noticed. When I first encountered "SUV" in the US
a few years ago, I did not know what it meant. Since then, I have
watched for its use here. Until recently, I never heard it. Very
recently, I have heard it a few times but I would not say that it is
catching on.
I cannot give a very good translation of SUV. I think that it has to
be 4x4 or jeep even if luxurious. If you want to emphasise the luxury,
you may need to name the model e.g. Range Rover. Pejorative names are
common: e.g. tank and Chelsea tractor.
--
Seán O'Leathlóbhair
Tony Cooper
wrote:
>So who, then, speaks SparkE, now that Mr Brennan is no longer with us?
Wilfred Brumley?
THE Entity
<tony_co...@earthlink.net> wrought:
>On Wed, 26 Apr 2006 10:50:01 +0200, THE Entity <ggu...@yahoo.com>
>wrote:
>
>>So who, then, speaks SparkE, now that Mr Brennan is no longer with us?
>
>Wilfred Brumley?
John Lennon's granddad in *A Hard Day's Night* spoke SparkE?
Ah, sorry, I see from a quick Google that you must mean the old guy in
*Cocoon* (who apparently also has some kind of mysterious porridge
fixation). Isn't there anyone a bit better known beyond your own
shores (= SparkE: "them thar hills")? If possible, with mp3s available
online -- I can't find any for Mr Brumley.
--
THE Entity
Tony Cooper
wrote:
>On Wed, 26 Apr 2006 12:47:49 GMT, Tony Cooper
><tony_co...@earthlink.net> wrought:
>
>>On Wed, 26 Apr 2006 10:50:01 +0200, THE Entity <ggu...@yahoo.com>
>>wrote:
>>
>>>So who, then, speaks SparkE, now that Mr Brennan is no longer with us?
>>
>>Wilfred Brumley?
>
>John Lennon's granddad in *A Hard Day's Night* spoke SparkE?
>
>Ah, sorry, I see from a quick Google that you must mean the old guy in
>*Cocoon* (who apparently also has some kind of mysterious porridge
>fixation).
We are constantly exposed to Brimley (my spelling corrected) in
television advertisements. He's currently viewable on a commercial
for a supplier of diabetes testing kits. In the commercial, he's
sitting on a horse in semi-Western wear and talking to us. I have yet
to determine the connection between diabetes and a man on a horse.
The man, yes, because he has diabetes, but not the horse.
http://www.diabeteshealth.com/read,1038,4135.html
Mike Lyle
THE Entity wrote:
[...]
> I'm no longer resident in the UKm so I sometimes have difficulties
> keeping up, but has "SUV" caught on in BrE? If not, what are the damn
> things called in t' mawtuh trade? Both "4x4" and "4WD" imply jeepier
> efforts, whereas a proper "SUV" tends to be just a semi-luxury car
> hiked up on jocking great wheels.
"SUV" is in general Br use. As, to a lesser extent, is "Chelsea
tractor".
--
Mike.
Seán O'Leathlóbhair
We move in different circles. I have heard it only once or twice here.
However, luxurious they are, I call them jeeps or something even more
offensive. I will listen more carefully. I may try to use it and see
if those around me understand.
--
Seán O'Leathlóbhair
Evan Kirshenbaum
> On Tue, 25 Apr 2006 18:38:14 +0000 (UTC), Salvatore Volatile
> <m...@privacy.net> said:
>
>> vehicle (= SparkE /vihIk@l/
>
> Readers please note that Richard is using phonemic notation
> (slashes) to say how someone pronounces a word. That is a
> mistake. He should have used phonetic notation (square
> brackets).
Not always, and I believe not here. It's only a mistake if it implies
a phonemic contrast or change that doesn't exist in the speaker's
dialect. For example, if discussing the word "schedule", I would
certainly write that British speakers pronounce it as /SEdjul/ rather
than /skEdjul/. They make a contrast between /S/ and /sk/ and so the
pronunciation difference really is phonemic. Indeed, If I read that
they pronounce the word [SEdjul] (and I thought that the writer knew
what the delimieters meant), I'd get a strong implication that the
writer meant that their /sk/ was realized as [S].
In this case, I presume that Richard means that the /h/ is phonemic
here in this imagined dialect, that speakers perceive themselves as
pronouncing it, and that they hear those who pronounce it /viIk@l/ as
leaving it out. Had he written [vihIk@l], the implication would be
that an epenthetic [h] was being inserted between the vowels as part
of a phonetic process, but that the word was still perceived as
/viIk@l/.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |This isn't good. I've seen good,
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |and it didn't look anything like
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |this.
| MST3K
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com
(650)857-7572
THE Entity
<tony_co...@earthlink.net> wrought:
>On Wed, 26 Apr 2006 15:01:44 +0200, THE Entity <ggu...@yahoo.com>
>wrote:
>
>>On Wed, 26 Apr 2006 12:47:49 GMT, Tony Cooper
>><tony_co...@earthlink.net> wrought:
>>
>>>On Wed, 26 Apr 2006 10:50:01 +0200, THE Entity <ggu...@yahoo.com>
>>>wrote:
>>>
>>>>So who, then, speaks SparkE, now that Mr Brennan is no longer with us?
>>>
>>>Wilfred Brumley?
>>
>>John Lennon's granddad in *A Hard Day's Night* spoke SparkE?
>>
>>Ah, sorry, I see from a quick Google that you must mean the old guy in
>>*Cocoon* (who apparently also has some kind of mysterious porridge
>>fixation).
>
>We are constantly exposed to Brimley (my spelling corrected) in
>television advertisements. He's currently viewable on a commercial
>for a supplier of diabetes testing kits. In the commercial, he's
>sitting on a horse in semi-Western wear and talking to us. I have yet
>to determine the connection between diabetes and a man on a horse.
>The man, yes, because he has diabetes, but not the horse.
>
>http://www.diabeteshealth.com/read,1038,4135.html
I followed that link and a couple of others. Thank you, because at
least I now know who he is. And, yes, he does look very promising as a
possible keynote SparkE AKA Sparko-Brokeback Vulgate speaker. He
started strongly, by being born and raised in Utah -- just like Sparky
himself, but ten years after (hi, Alvin!). He was also a rodeo rider,
which is as good a Sparko-Brokeback connection as we could wish for.
Then he worked as a bodyguard for Howard Hughes, which brings us
neatly to post-war Los Angeles (with the added plus of a minor Martin
Scorsese connection to keep Sal interested).
I wish I could find an mp3 or video clip of him speaking, though. In
order to be generally acknowledged the True New Brennan, he'd need to
have the same characteristic "old timer" wheezy tenor kind of voice,
wouldn't he?
If Brimley doesn't talk like that, then as a temporary replacement
pending further headhunting I'd propose the now-the-right-age (75)
Robert Duvall, not only for his ur-SparkE roles in a clutch of
watchable westerns (*Lonesome Dove*, *Open Range*, and even *True
Grit*, in which he had the honour to play none other than the very
sumvabitch the Duke instructed to fill his hands), but also for his
much-loved Mac Sledge in *Tender Mercies* and Colonel Kilgore in
*Apocalypse Now*, both of whom were fundamentally Sparko-Brokeback
characters, even if the former was a country singer rather than a
cowboy and the latter was <shudder> a surfer.
On the down side, I see that Duvall was born in San Diego, so his
on-screen incursions into the SparkE world may be <shudder> just
acting. Back on the up side, though, he's a direct descendant of
Robert E. Lee.
Whaddyall think?
--
THE Entity
Stewart Gordon
<snip>
> Readers please note that Richard is using phonemic notation
> (slashes) to say how someone pronounces a word. That is a
> mistake. He should have used phonetic notation (square
> brackets).
Can someone not describe how someone pronounces a word in terms of
phonemes rather than precise sounds?
> Also, if by chance he's using "SparkE" to refer to my
> pronunciation, he doesn't have it quite right. My
> pronunciation of "vehicle" is ['vi:,hIk@l].
<snip>
I guess he isn't then.
FTR, the usual (IMX) BrE pronunciation is /'vi@k<sup>@</sup>l/.
Stewart.
Stewart Gordon
> In my family's ecolect:
"Ecolect". New one on me. I wonder if it started off in one....
> - a minivan can be a "car"
"Minivan" is something I had to look up too. I see it's basically what
we Brits would call a people carrier or MPV. Some OneLook hits refer to
it as a kind of van, but it isn't what I'd call a van. And I've known
such a thing being referred to as a car before. It's probably common in
large families that regularly use it as one.
> - a closed door can be "open" as long as it is unlocked
<snip>
If you want to clarify that it's open as in not closed, what term do you
use? Again, it's probably quite common, but not a use I'd agree with.
(Of course, a public establishment can be "open" or "closed", but that's
another matter.)
Stewart.
HVS
> Juuitchan wrote:
>> In my family's ecolect:
>
> "Ecolect". New one on me. I wonder if it started off in
> one....
>
>> - a minivan can be a "car"
>
> "Minivan" is something I had to look up too. I see it's
> basically what we Brits would call a people carrier or MPV.
?? My wife's work here in England (north Hampshire) used to involve
driving residents around in one of these things; I'm pretty
certain the staff all referred to it as "the minivan".
--
Cheers, Harvey
Canadian and British English, indiscriminately mixed
For e-mail, change harvey.news to harvey.van
Juuitchan
> >In cases such as this, "less than" _is_ acceptable modern English.
>
> It may be idiomatic. It may even be widespread. Neither of those
> features, however, makes it acceptable.
Then, what exactly _would_ make it acceptable?
Language changes, and this is one of the changes. Or would you have us
all talk like Shakespeare, or like Chaucer?
THE Entity
wrought:
>
>> >In cases such as this, "less than" _is_ acceptable modern English.
>>
>> It may be idiomatic. It may even be widespread. Neither of those
>> features, however, makes it acceptable.
>
>Then, what exactly _would_ make it acceptable?
Easy -- a majority of editors changing their minds.
--
THE Entity
Bob Cunningham
<ggu...@yahoo.com> said:
[...]
> by being born and raised in Utah > -- just like Sparky
> himself,
If by "Sparky" you mean me, it's not accurate to say I was
born and raised in Utah. I was born there, but during the
years I was being raised I lived in other places (Nevada,
Washington, and California) about as much as I lived in
Utah.
For the purpose of discussing dialect acquisition, I suppose
the most significant period of one's life would be the
"formative" years. I've wondered from time to time what
years to regard as formative, but now I see that someone
named "D. Arkell" is quoted in the _New Shorter Oxford_ as
saying
The formative years of his life, between the ages of
five and twelve.
Assuming that writer is using "between" in the inclusive
sense, he or she is implying there are eight formative
years.
I lived about three of those years in Seattle, about two in
Boulder City and Las Vegas, Nevada, and about three in Utah.
From the point of view of dialect acquisition, Boulder City
in the 1930s was more than just a town in Nevada. Men had
come, bringing their families, from many parts of the
country--to work on the construction of Boulder Dam--so I
was exposed to a mixture of dialects.
THE Entity
<exw...@earthlink.net> wrought:
>On Wed, 26 Apr 2006 18:05:30 +0200, THE Entity
><ggu...@yahoo.com> said:
>
>[...]
>
>> by being born and raised in Utah > -- just like Sparky
>> himself,
>
>If by "Sparky" you mean me,
Yes, I did. I had already used it with your full name (middle initial
included) in another post earlier today, so I didn't think any
repetition was necessary.
>it's not accurate to say I was
>born and raised in Utah. I was born there, but during the
>years I was being raised I lived in other places (Nevada,
>Washington, and California) about as much as I lived in
>Utah.
Correction noted. Sorry about that. Still, this new (to me)
information only makes California-raised Robert Duvall an even
stronger-looking candidate to play you in the *AUE: The Motion Picture
(=BrE: Film)*, er, I mean serve our purposes as a well-known living
represention of SparkE in action.
(By the way, I'm assuming you've twigged by now that these mentions of
"SparkE" are no more about the real you than "ErkE " is about the real
Evan or "TCE" is about . . . ah, forget that last one.)
--
THE Entity
Salvatore Volatile
> On Wed, 26 Apr 2006 10:50:01 +0200, THE Entity <ggu...@yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
>>So who, then, speaks SparkE, now that Mr Brennan is no longer with us?
>
> Wilfred Brumley?
(Brimley). Good choice, Coop. Brimley's career seems to have paralleled
Sparky's: IIRC, Brimley grew up in Utah but later moved to California.
--
Salvatore Volatile
Salvatore Volatile
> On the down side, I see that Duvall was born in San Diego, so his
> on-screen incursions into the SparkE world may be <shudder> just
> acting. Back on the up side, though, he's a direct descendant of
> Robert E. Lee.
Who was Robert Elwood Lee, BTW.
--
Salvatore Volatile
Bob Cunningham
Again, if by Sparky you mean me, it's far from correct to
say that I grew up in Utah. I was still growing when I
first left there at age five, and I was still growing when I
left there at age eleven. But when I left there for good
when I was 19, I had probably finished growing--physically,
anyway.
R H Draney
>
>Juuitchan wrote:
>> In my family's ecolect:
>
>
>use? Again, it's probably quite common, but not a use I'd agree with.
>(Of course, a public establishment can be "open" or "closed", but that's
>another matter.)
A door is closed iff it contains all its limit points....r
R H Draney
>
>Language changes, and this is one of the changes. Or would you have us
>all talk like Shakespeare, or like Chaucer?
We could set aside a day for each; does anyone have a strong preference?...19
September is, of course, already taken by "Talk Like a Pirate Day"....r
THE Entity
<m...@privacy.net> wrought:
That's it, then. Decided.
--
THE Entity
CDB
[tour de force]
> Whaddyall think?
I think I thought "Ross Howard" was supposed to be British.
HVS
-snip-
> We are constantly exposed to Brimley (my spelling corrected)
> in television advertisements. He's currently viewable on a
> commercial for a supplier of diabetes testing kits. In the
> commercial, he's sitting on a horse in semi-Western wear and
> talking to us. I have yet to determine the connection between
> diabetes and a man on a horse.
It's a hidden causative effect -- like the way that women have a
sudden urge to rollerskate wearing white shorts when they get their
period.
jerry_f...@yahoo.com
He's actually from Parma, Ohio, and as he moved to Santander (but he
says it's Cadiz) before the NCVS, he pronounces "Ross" as "Rawss".
--
Jerry Friedman does too.
Peter Moylan
"4WD" is still the dominant Australian term, but I think everyone
understands if you refer to a "Suburban Assault Vehicle".
--
Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org
Please note the changed e-mail and web addresses. The domain
eepjm.newcastle.edu.au no longer exists, and I can no longer
reliably receive mail at my newcastle.edu.au addresses.
The optusnet address still has about 3 months of life left.
CDB
Me too. Just like "caught" and "cot". How come he says "bollocks",
then? Kind of thing TC gets oyed for.
Al in Dallas
wrote:
>Stewart Gordon filted:
>>
>>Juuitchan wrote:
>>> In my family's ecolect:
>>
>>> - a closed door can be "open" as long as it is unlocked
>>
>>If you want to clarify that it's open as in not closed, what term do you
>>use? Again, it's probably quite common, but not a use I'd agree with.
>>(Of course, a public establishment can be "open" or "closed", but that's
>>another matter.)
>
>A door is closed iff it contains all its limit points....r
Nice.
--
Al in St. Lou
Stewart Gordon
<snip>
> ?? My wife's work here in England (north Hampshire) used to involve
> driving residents around in one of these things; I'm pretty
> certain the staff all referred to it as "the minivan".
I guess that company has an ecolect too then.
There was some strange language going round in most of the places where
I've been educated. A lot of it to do with mealtimes - for example, a
bowl was called a "plate" and to "stack the table" was to stack the
stuff that's on the table (a similar construction was "dismiss the
refectory" (pronounced /'rEfIktri/ there). And in another place, the
kitchen staff called broccoli "brock eye".
Stewart.
Bob Cunningham
<exw...@earthlink.net> said:
> On Wed, 26 Apr 2006 17:05:30 +0000 (UTC), Salvatore Volatile
> <m...@privacy.net> said:
[...]
> > (Brimley). Good choice, Coop. Brimley's career seems to have paralleled
> > Sparky's: IIRC, Brimley grew up in Utah but later moved to California.
> Again, if by Sparky you mean me, it's far from correct to
> say that I grew up in Utah. I was still growing when I
> first left there at age five,
I shouldn't have said "first". The first time I left Utah,
when the family came to live in Los Angeles for a while, I'm
not sure how old I was, but from one picture I've seen I
would guess somewhere between one and three. I was old
enough to stand by myself at the steering wheel of a Model T
and pretend that I was driving it. I wasn't old enough that
I remember it at all, but I do remember a few little things
that happened when I was four and we were back in Salt Lake
City.
I've intended to find out over what period of time the
Biltmore Hotel was built in Los Angeles, but I haven't tried
that yet. I know we were here during that time, because my
father has told me about him and some of his brothers laying
brick on that job.
Bob Cunningham
<kirsh...@hpl.hp.com> said:
> [...] For example, if discussing the word "schedule", I would
> certainly write that British speakers pronounce it as /SEdjul/ rather
> than /skEdjul/. They make a contrast between /S/ and /sk/ and so the
> pronunciation difference really is phonemic.
I can't square that statement with what I've learned about
contrastive distribution. The pronunciation difference
should be phonemic if substituting one sound for another in
a word changes the meaning of the word.
I fail to see how a speaker pronouncing the same word with
the same meaning but with two different pronunciations can
show that the "pronunciation difference really is phonemic".
To show that [S] and [sk] are phonemically different, you
need a contrastive pair like "ship" and "skip". Having
two different ways of pronouncing "schedule" doesn't help.
Evan Kirshenbaum
Perhaps I was unclear. By "They make a contrast between /S/ and
/sk/", what I meant is precisely that they have minimal pairs like
"ship" and "skip". Once that has been established, saying that they
pronounce the word /SEdjul/ means that they use (and think of
themselves as using and hear other speakers of their dialect as using)
the phoneme that they use in "ship", not the phoneme cluster they use
in "skip". Writing (to an audience that had the word as /skEdjul/)
that they pronounce "schedule" as [SEdjul] carries a strong
implication that the writer means that this [S] is their reflex for
/sk/ in this context and that they hear others' [S] here as /sk/.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |If I may digress momentarily from
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |the mainstream of this evening's
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |symposium, I'd like to sing a song
|which is completely pointless.
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com | Tom Lehrer
(650)857-7572
Bob Cunningham
On Fri, 05 May 2006 15:11:42 -0700, Evan Kirshenbaum
<kirsh...@hpl.hp.com> said:
I'm sorry, but your clarification didn't clarify anything
for me. I'm sure you know what you're talking about; I just
don't know what point you're making or what issue you have
in mind. Could you state in a few words just what the point
is you set out to demonstrate?
I'm wondering incidentally why you would say "they pronounce
the word /SEdjul/". Since you're explicitly saying how they
pronounce the word, shouldn't you use square brackets
instead of slashes?
Aaron J. Dinkin
> I'm wondering incidentally why you would say "they pronounce
> the word /SEdjul/". Since you're explicitly saying how they
> pronounce the word, shouldn't you use square brackets
> instead of slashes?
I think the answer is that you're begging the question here. If he _were_
explicitly saying how they pronounce the word, he would use square
brackets. As it is, he is _implicitly_ saying how they pronounce the word.
That is to say: For some (transdialectal) pronunciation differences, what
is interesting is that between two dialects, the same string of phonemes
produces a different actual phonetic pronunciation. When this is the
case, you should describe the difference in terms of phonetic
transcription, in square brackets.
For instance: I say "cat" [k<h>&t], but someone from Cleveland would say
[k<h>e@t], and someone from Knoxville would say [k<h>&j@t].
On the other hand, in some cases, the interesting part is that the two
dialects have different strings of phonemes for the same word. In this
case, to describe the difference only in phonetic terms obscures the
point one is trying to make. For instance, if I say that someone from New
York would pronounce "sad" [se@d] and someone from Philadelphia would say
[s&d], that falsely gives the impression that New York [I@] and Philadelphia
[&] correspond to the same phoneme in the two dialects - but that is not
the case. It's more useful to actually state the difference in terms of
phonemes, since that's the important parts of the point being made.
-Aaron J. Dinkin
Dr. Whom
Evan Kirshenbaum
> On Fri, 05 May 2006 15:11:42 -0700, Evan Kirshenbaum
> <kirsh...@hpl.hp.com> said:
>
>> Perhaps I was unclear. By "They make a contrast between /S/ and
>> /sk/", what I meant is precisely that they have minimal pairs like
>> "ship" and "skip". Once that has been established, saying that
>> they pronounce the word /SEdjul/ means that they use (and think of
>> themselves as using and hear other speakers of their dialect as
>> using) the phoneme that they use in "ship", not the phoneme cluster
>> they use in "skip". Writing (to an audience that had the word as
>> /skEdjul/) that they pronounce "schedule" as [SEdjul] carries a
>> strong implication that the writer means that this [S] is their
>> reflex for /sk/ in this context and that they hear others' [S] here
>> as /sk/.
>
> I'm sorry, but your clarification didn't clarify anything for me.
> I'm sure you know what you're talking about; I just don't know what
> point you're making or what issue you have in mind. Could you state
> in a few words just what the point is you set out to demonstrate?
I'm not sure how to make it much clearer. Both British English and
American English speakers have a phonemic distinction between /S/ and
/sk/. The pronunciation of the word "schedule" is different at the
phonemic level. If Alice is British and Bob is American, they will
think of themselves as using different phonemes and each will hear the
other as using a phoneme they don't use in that word. It will sound
like a different word rather than the same word in a different accent.
> I'm wondering incidentally why you would say "they pronounce the
> word /SEdjul/". Since you're explicitly saying how they pronounce
> the word, shouldn't you use square brackets instead of slashes?
No. You use square brackets when what you're focusing on is "this is
how the word is realized". You use slashes when you're focusing on
"this is how speakers and hearers think of the word". /SEdjul/ for
"schedule" isn't part of a speaker's accent, it's a part of their
dialect, a consciously different pronunciation of the word.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |The mystery of government is not how
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |Washington works, but how to make it
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |stop.
| P.J. O'Rourke
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com
(650)857-7572
Al in Dallas
<kirsh...@hpl.hp.com> wrote:
>Bob Cunningham <exw...@earthlink.net> writes:
>
>> On Fri, 05 May 2006 15:11:42 -0700, Evan Kirshenbaum
>> <kirsh...@hpl.hp.com> said:
>>
>>> Perhaps I was unclear. By "They make a contrast between /S/ and
>>> /sk/", what I meant is precisely that they have minimal pairs like
>>> "ship" and "skip". Once that has been established, saying that
>>> they pronounce the word /SEdjul/ means that they use (and think of
>>> themselves as using and hear other speakers of their dialect as
>>> using) the phoneme that they use in "ship", not the phoneme cluster
>>> they use in "skip". Writing (to an audience that had the word as
>>> /skEdjul/) that they pronounce "schedule" as [SEdjul] carries a
>>> strong implication that the writer means that this [S] is their
>>> reflex for /sk/ in this context and that they hear others' [S] here
>>> as /sk/.
>>
>> I'm sorry, but your clarification didn't clarify anything for me.
>> I'm sure you know what you're talking about; I just don't know what
>> point you're making or what issue you have in mind. Could you state
>> in a few words just what the point is you set out to demonstrate?
>
>I'm not sure how to make it much clearer.
And yet you succeeded admirably in my estimation.
[snip concise clarification]
Al in Dallas
Long, long time, no see. Welcome back.
Bob Cunningham
On Sun, 07 May 2006 08:38:35 -0700, Evan Kirshenbaum
<kirsh...@hpl.hp.com> said:
I can't help feeling that you may be wrong in what you're
saying about this topic. You seem to be contriving a
phonemic aspect of a case that involves only a simple
phonetic difference. It makes me want to get more opinions.
Incidentally, somewhere in this thread you referred to my
pronunciation of the "h" in "vehicle" as epenthetic. The
"h" is there and I pronounce it. I think it's more accurate
to refer to its omission as an occurrence of syncope.
(I wanted to say its omission is syncopetic, but I don't
find any precedent for using "syncopetic" to describe an
occurrence of syncope.)
To me, saying "vee ick l" is akin to saying "'e 'auled the
'ose 'ome and it's 'ere in 'is 'ouse".
Aaron J. Dinkin
> On Sun, 07 May 2006 08:38:35 -0700, Evan Kirshenbaum
><kirsh...@hpl.hp.com> said:
>
>> No. You use square brackets when what you're focusing on is "this is
>> how the word is realized". You use slashes when you're focusing on
>> "this is how speakers and hearers think of the word". /SEdjul/ for
>> "schedule" isn't part of a speaker's accent, it's a part of their
>> dialect, a consciously different pronunciation of the word.
>
> I can't help feeling that you may be wrong in what you're
> saying about this topic.
He is not.
> You seem to be contriving a phonemic aspect of a case that involves
> only a simple phonetic difference.
No, exactly not. For it to be only a simple phonetic difference with no
phonemic aspect would imply that the phoneme string /sk/ is realized
phonetically as [sk] in American English and as [S] in British English.
This is not the case: American [skIp], British [skIp]; American [skarf],
British [skA:f]; American [skuL], British [skuL]; and so on. When there
is no phonemic difference between American and British /sk/, there is
also no phonetic difference. However, "schedule" has [sk] in American
English but [S] in British English. How is this possible? Only if the
word has different phonemes in American English than it does in British
English.
> It makes me want to get more opinions.
Hello!
> Incidentally, somewhere in this thread you referred to my
> pronunciation of the "h" in "vehicle" as epenthetic. The
> "h" is there and I pronounce it.
I _think_ he said that to describe your pronunciation of a [h] in vehicle
as merely a phonetic difference fromdialects that do not pronounce it
would be to say that it is epenthetic. Since it's not epenthetic, it must
be a phonemic difference, not a phonetic one.
Evan Kirshenbaum
> Bob Cunningham <exw...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>> Incidentally, somewhere in this thread you referred to my
>> pronunciation of the "h" in "vehicle" as epenthetic. The "h" is
>> there and I pronounce it.
>
> I _think_ he said that to describe your pronunciation of a [h] in
> vehicle as merely a phonetic difference fromdialects that do not
> pronounce it would be to say that it is epenthetic. Since it's not
> epenthetic, it must be a phonemic difference, not a phonetic one.
Precisely. Since I presume that it isn't epenthetic, it is misleading
to show the difference in square brackets. The difference is
phonemic; it should be put in slashes.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |A handgun is like a Lawyer. You
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |don't want it lying around where
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |the children might be exposed to
|it, but when you need one, you need
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com |it RIGHT NOW, and nothing else will
(650)857-7572 |do.
| Bill McNutt
http://www.kirshenbaum.net/
Bob Cunningham
<exw...@earthlink.net> said:
> On Thu, 11 May 2006 18:42:19 -0700, Evan Kirshenbaum
> <kirsh...@hpl.hp.com> said:
> > "Aaron J. Dinkin" <din...@babel.ling.upenn.edu> writes:
> > > Bob Cunningham <exw...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> > >> Incidentally, somewhere in this thread you referred to my
> > >> pronunciation of the "h" in "vehicle" as epenthetic. The "h" is
> > >> there and I pronounce it.
> > > I _think_ he said that to describe your pronunciation of a [h] in
> > > vehicle as merely a phonetic difference fromdialects that do not
> > > pronounce it would be to say that it is epenthetic. Since it's not
> > > epenthetic, it must be a phonemic difference, not a phonetic one.
> > Precisely. Since I presume that it isn't epenthetic, it is misleading
> > to show the difference in square brackets. The difference is
> > phonemic; it should be put in slashes.
Epenthesis is leaving a sound out of the middle of a word.
Why do you two not think that leaving the "h" sound out of
"vehicle" is epenthesis?
['vi:@kl-] and ['vi:,hIkl-] are phonetic representations of
two common pronunciations of "vehicle"*. The first
pronunciation is essentially the second with the "h" sound
omitted, so it's epenthetic with respect to the second.
* I'm taking people's word for it that ['vi:@kl-] is a
common pronunciation. I don't remember ever hearing the
"h"-less version.
Salvatore Volatile
> ['vi:@kl-] and ['vi:,hIkl-] are phonetic representations of
> two common pronunciations of "vehicle"*. The first
> pronunciation is essentially the second with the "h" sound
> omitted, so it's epenthetic with respect to the second.
>
> * I'm taking people's word for it that ['vi:@kl-] is a
> common pronunciation. I don't remember ever hearing the
> "h"-less version.
It's the only one native to New York (LCIA), but don't think that the "h"
version doesn't exist in the East -- I've heard people from Danbury
(Western Connecticut) use it.
--
Salvatore Volatile
Evan Kirshenbaum
> On Thu, 11 May 2006 23:18:07 -0700, Bob Cunningham
> <exw...@earthlink.net> said:
>
>> On Thu, 11 May 2006 18:42:19 -0700, Evan Kirshenbaum
>> <kirsh...@hpl.hp.com> said:
>
>> > "Aaron J. Dinkin" <din...@babel.ling.upenn.edu> writes:
>
>> > > Bob Cunningham <exw...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>> > >> Incidentally, somewhere in this thread you referred to my
>> > >> pronunciation of the "h" in "vehicle" as epenthetic. The "h"
>> > >> is there and I pronounce it.
>
>> > > I _think_ he said that to describe your pronunciation of a [h]
>> > > in vehicle as merely a phonetic difference fromdialects that do
>> > > not pronounce it would be to say that it is epenthetic. Since
>> > > it's not epenthetic, it must be a phonemic difference, not a
>> > > phonetic one.
>
>> > Precisely. Since I presume that it isn't epenthetic, it is
>> > misleading to show the difference in square brackets. The
>> > difference is phonemic; it should be put in slashes.
>
> Epenthesis is leaving a sound out of the middle of a word. Why do
> you two not think that leaving the "h" sound out of "vehicle" is
> epenthesis?
Epenthesis is *inserting* a sound:
Main Entry: epenæš—heæ–°is
Date: 1543
: the insertion or development of a sound or letter in the body of
a word (as \@\ in \&-T@-lit\ _athlete_)
I forget what dropping a sound is called.
> ['vi:@kl-] and ['vi:,hIkl-] are phonetic representations of
> two common pronunciations of "vehicle"*.
Right. Those pronunciations are /'vi@k@l/ and /'vi,hIk@l/.
> The first pronunciation is essentially the second with the "h" sound
> omitted, so it's epenthetic with respect to the second.
No. Epenthesis, at least as I understand it is a phonetic process.
So if the word is perceived as being pronounced differently, the
difference is phonemic.
> * I'm taking people's word for it that ['vi:@kl-] is a common
> pronunciation. I don't remember ever hearing the "h"-less version.
It's the way I pronounce it. In Chicago, /vihIk@l/ was one of the
standard pronunciations used to parody "hick" speakers. (Not, of
course, that the description fits all dialects that include it.)
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |_Bauplan_ is just the German word
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |for blueprint. Typically, one
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |switches languages to indicate
|profundity.
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com | Richard Dawkins
(650)857-7572
Bob Cunningham
<kirsh...@hpl.hp.com> said:
[...]
> [BC said:]
>> Epenthesis is leaving a sound out of the middle of
>> a word. Why do you two not think that leaving the
>> "h" sound out of "vehicle" is epenthesis?
> Epenthesis is *inserting* a sound
Oh, yeah. Sorry.
> I forget what dropping a sound is called.
At the end of a word, "apocope".
In the middle of a word, "syncope".
At the beginning of a word, "aphaeresis".
From _Silva rhetoricae_ (
http://humanities.byu.edu/rhetoric/silva.htm ):
[Metaplasm] is alteration of the letters or
syllables in single words, including
additions, omissions, inversions, and
substitutions
There's a fairly long list of links to various forms of
metaplasm, including "apocope", "syncope", and "aphaeresis",
at _Silva rhetoricae_, clicking on "metaplasm".
Bob Cunningham
On Sun, 7 May 2006 14:54:05 +0000 (UTC), "Aaron J. Dinkin"
<din...@babel.ling.upenn.edu> said:
[...]
> For instance: I say "cat" [k<h>&t], but someone from Cleveland would say
> [k<h>e@t], and someone from Knoxville would say [k<h>&j@t].
Do you know of any English words beginning with a "k" sound
in which the [k] is not aspirated? If not, I see no need
for your "<h>"s. I like the practice of eschewing
diacritics with sounds that are pronounced no other way in
the language and in the position in the word being
discussed. If I remember right, Ladefoged discusses and
uses that approach in his piece on American English in the
_Handbook of the International Phonetic Association_.
Father Ignatius
Bob Cunningham <exw...@earthlink.net> typed:
> On Sun, 7 May 2006 14:54:05 +0000 (UTC), "Aaron J. Dinkin"
> <din...@babel.ling.upenn.edu> said:
>
> [...]
>
>> For instance: I say "cat" [k<h>&t], but someone from Cleveland would
>> say [k<h>e@t], and someone from Knoxville would say [k<h>&j@t].
>
> Do you know of any English words beginning with a "k" sound
> in which the [k] is not aspirated?
knock
--
Nat
http://www.pclips.com/index.php?id=1418
Bob Cunningham
<FatherI...@ANTISPAMananzi.co.za> said:
> In news:jlae62pa3qude3t65...@4ax.com,
> Bob Cunningham <exw...@earthlink.net> typed:
[...]
> > Do you know of any English words beginning with a "k" sound
> > in which the [k] is not aspirated?
> knock
So now we know [n] is a "k" sound.
Remember, you redd it here first.
T.H. Entity
>In news:jlae62pa3qude3t65...@4ax.com,
>Bob Cunningham <exw...@earthlink.net> typed:
>> On Sun, 7 May 2006 14:54:05 +0000 (UTC), "Aaron J. Dinkin"
>> <din...@babel.ling.upenn.edu> said:
>>
>> [...]
>>
>>> For instance: I say "cat" [k<h>&t], but someone from Cleveland would
>>> say [k<h>e@t], and someone from Knoxville would say [k<h>&j@t].
>>
>> Do you know of any English words beginning with a "k" sound
>> in which the [k] is not aspirated?
"Climb", "crime" -- any word in which the "k" is the first element in
k<h>onsonant kluster, surely.
--
THE
Peter Moylan
>
> On Sun, 7 May 2006 14:54:05 +0000 (UTC), "Aaron J. Dinkin"
> <din...@babel.ling.upenn.edu> said:
>
> [...]
>
>> For instance: I say "cat" [k<h>&t], but someone from Cleveland
>> would say [k<h>e@t], and someone from Knoxville would say
>> [k<h>&j@t].
>
> Do you know of any English words beginning with a "k" sound in which
> the [k] is not aspirated?
Corn.
It depends on the following vowel, doesn't it? That's why English
speakers took a while to work out how to pronounce "Qatar" when it was
in the news - because we normally aspirate the "ka" combination - while
we've always managed a "Quran" which is a reasonable approximation of
the Arabic.
But then you might say that "corn" starts with a "q" sound rather than a
"k" sound. I could accept that, but I suspect that most English
speakers would say they're the same sound.
Robert Lieblich
Yes, I readed it here first.
--
Bob Lieblich
This is fun!
Father Ignatius
Bob Cunningham <exw...@earthlink.net> typed:
Sit-t-t! Give! Give! /Good/ boy! <pat, pat>
R J Valentine
Insofar as "cl" and "cr" can be considered consonant clusters, at least.
I suspect that a phonetician wouldn't consider them consonant clusters and
that Sparky could find aspiration in Praat [q.g.]. The thing is that
there seems to be aspiration in the plosive, but not in the stop (except
in BrE+ and PSSE, which don't know from stops). The way erkAPA jams
sounds together except when the optional space [= OOHDLAPA "."] is used,
the aspiration mainly distinguishes between the stop and plosive [k]'s.
I'd suggest that the "." character that is otherwise wasted on vowels for
rounding be given aspiration significance after consonants to save the
space used for angle brackets (already way overused for e-mail addresses,
message-IDs, HTML tags, mathematical expressions, and even less-defensible
purposes).
--
rjv
Aaron J. Dinkin
> On Sun, 7 May 2006 14:54:05 +0000 (UTC), "Aaron J. Dinkin"
><din...@babel.ling.upenn.edu> said:
>
>> For instance: I say "cat" [k<h>&t], but someone from Cleveland would say
>> [k<h>e@t], and someone from Knoxville would say [k<h>&j@t].
>
> Do you know of any English words beginning with a "k" sound
> in which the [k] is not aspirated?
There are none; it's a phonological or phonetic rule of English.
(Studying for a phonetics exam, I am beginning to suffer from some
uncertainty about which kind of rule this in particular is.)
> If not, I see no need for your "<h>"s. I like the practice of eschewing
> diacritics with sounds that are pronounced no other way in
> the language and in the position in the word being
> discussed.
...So you prefer phonemic transcriptions?
All right, there is a difference (though a small one) between phonemic
and broadly phonetic notation. But I chose a somewhat narrower
transcription than might have been strictly necessary in order to
emphasize the fact that I was writing phonetically, not phonemically.
Aaron J. Dinkin
>>In news:jlae62pa3qude3t65...@4ax.com,
>>Bob Cunningham <exw...@earthlink.net> typed:
>>
>>> Do you know of any English words beginning with a "k" sound
>>> in which the [k] is not aspirated?
>
> "Climb", "crime" -- any word in which the "k" is the first element in
> k<h>onsonant kluster, surely.
Well, in that case the effect is to devoice the following sonorant. What
aspiration basically consists of is a lengthy voice-onset time - that is,
there's a long gap between the end of a stop and the beginning of
voicing. So if a stop is followed by a devoiced sonorant, that means it's
got a long VOT - which is essentially the same as aspiration.
T.H. Entity
<din...@babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrought:
I don't know from devoiced sonorants and VOTs, but I do know that when
I put my hand in front of my mouth and say "can" I feel a rush of air
in my palm; when I say "clan" I don't. If that isn't what linguists
call "aspiration", shouldn't it be?
--
THE
R J Valentine
...
} I don't know from devoiced sonorants and VOTs, but I do know that when
} I put my hand in front of my mouth and say "can" I feel a rush of air
} in my palm; when I say "clan" I don't. If that isn't what linguists
} call "aspiration", shouldn't it be?
Could it just be because [= TBE "be just because"] your tongue is in the
way?
--
rjv
T.H. Entity
<r...@TheWorld.com> wrought:
Nope. Same thing happens with "cam"/"cram".
--
THE
Aaron J. Dinkin
> I don't know from devoiced sonorants and VOTs, but I do know that when
> I put my hand in front of my mouth and say "can" I feel a rush of air
> in my palm; when I say "clan" I don't. If that isn't what linguists
> call "aspiration", shouldn't it be?
The short answer is, just because you can't feel it with your palm
doesn't mean it isn't there.
Mike Lyle
Peter Moylan wrote:
> Bob Cunningham wrote:
> >
> > On Sun, 7 May 2006 14:54:05 +0000 (UTC), "Aaron J. Dinkin"
> > <din...@babel.ling.upenn.edu> said:
> >
> > [...]
> >
> >> For instance: I say "cat" [k<h>&t], but someone from Cleveland
> >> would say [k<h>e@t], and someone from Knoxville would say
> >> [k<h>&j@t].
> >
> > Do you know of any English words beginning with a "k" sound in which
> > the [k] is not aspirated?
>
> Corn.
>
> It depends on the following vowel, doesn't it? That's why English
> speakers took a while to work out how to pronounce "Qatar" when it was
> in the news - because we normally aspirate the "ka" combination - while
> we've always managed a "Quran" which is a reasonable approximation of
> the Arabic.
>
> But then you might say that "corn" starts with a "q" sound rather than a
> "k" sound. I could accept that, but I suspect that most English
> speakers would say they're the same sound.
>
neither Entity-RP, nor Howard-Manc, nor Moylan-Oz: the palm of my
hand's getting puffs of air all over the bloody place. Maybe I'm a
rootless Flying Dotchman or something -- no, thatsh an aqshent oi qon't
do. I can do the Arabic segmental sounds like a good 'un, though.
--
Mike.
Linz
Your dialect may vary. In the north-east of England, it is not uncommon for
words beginning (or containing) the "k" sound to be unaspirated. For
instance, the fact that I didn't aspirate the [k] in computer is how a
dialectitian worked out part of my background.
m.j.m...@bradford.ac.uk
>
> - a closed door can be "open" as long as it is unlocked
>
Makes perfect sense to me. We sometimes leave a door "on the latch"
(i.e. closed, but unlocked) and if someone starts getting their key
out, I might say "Don't bother, it's open".
Mike M
Bob Cunningham
<din...@babel.ling.upenn.edu> said:
> On Sun, 14 May 2006 13:07:03 GMT, Bob Cunningham <exw...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> > On Sun, 7 May 2006 14:54:05 +0000 (UTC), "Aaron J. Dinkin"
> ><din...@babel.ling.upenn.edu> said:
> >> For instance: I say "cat" [k<h>&t], but someone from Cleveland would say
> >> [k<h>e@t], and someone from Knoxville would say [k<h>&j@t].
> > Do you know of any English words beginning with a "k" sound
> > in which the [k] is not aspirated?
> There are none; it's a phonological or phonetic rule of English.
> (Studying for a phonetics exam, I am beginning to suffer from some
> uncertainty about which kind of rule this in particular is.)
> > If not, I see no need for your "<h>"s. I like the practice of eschewing
> > diacritics with sounds that are pronounced no other way in
> > the language and in the position in the word being
> > discussed.
> ...So you prefer phonemic transcriptions?
God no! I abhor phonemic transcriptions.
> All right, there is a difference (though a small one) between phonemic
> and broadly phonetic notation.
There seems to be a huge difference. Phonetic
representation should correspond to how something is
pronounced. Phonemic, given the meaning of "phoneme", shows
no particular pronunciation, and can suggest in general a
different particular pronunciation for each reader. But the
perception of that particular pronunciation wouldn't be
being shared with others, so there would be no communication
of it among readers.
If I write /pak/, it can cover all vowel sounds that I
perceive to be in the same phoneme as [a], so it wouldn't
matter whether I wrote /pak/ or /p&k/, the only difference
being what I choose to call that phoneme, and I would
transcribe "pack" also as /pak/ or /p&k/. But if I write
[pak], my intent is to refer to the way I think Bostonians
pronounce "park", while if I write [p&k], the reference is
to the way I pronounce "pack" and I think speakers who
distinguish "pack" and "park" pronounce "pack".
Some of us in alt.usage.english had a very practical
experience with this difference a number of years ago. It
occurred to me that it would be interesting to exchange
postings written entirely in ASCII IPA. A few others also
thought it would be interesting, and we started doing it..
A British reader, Neil Coffey, responded to one of my
postings to say something like "I didn't realize you talked
like that". From the vowel symbols I was using, it was
apparent that my speech was greatly different from that of
other parts of America.
That had been my idea, to show each other how we talked.
But a poster from Boston insisted on using phonemic
transcription, with the result that the coverage of his
symbols would for the most part show no difference between,
for example, his speech and mine. That defeated the
purpose of the scheme, so the ASCII IPA postings soon ended.
I tried to persuade him to use phonetic transcription and to
use symbols that corresponded to his actual pronunciations.
He responded something like, "If I used phonetic
transcription, it would be full of diacritics". I wish I
had at that time seen Ladefoged's discussion of his American
speech transcription in the _Handbook of the International
Phonetic Association_. It would have agreed with my point
of view, and it would have been nice to have Ladefoged to
back me up.
If Ladefoged had used phonemic transcription in the
_Handbook_, his article wouldn't have shown usefully how the
California speech he was describing differed from American
speech in any other part of the country.
Incidentally, the demise of the ASCII IPA exchanges was
speeded to some extent by one poster who decided he had
defined a set of vowel pronunciations that were typical of
all varieties of American speech and who tried to persuade
the rest of us to conform to it.
I continue to conceive of no way in which phonemic
transcription can be useful to people who want to show how
they versus others pronounce things.
We might say that, in a sense, phonemic transcription would
pertain in one fell swoop to how they *and* others
pronounce things.
Using phonemic transcription is akin to saying things like,
"People in Boston pronounce 'park' the way people in Boston
pronounce 'park', while people in Califonria pronounce
'park' the way people in California pronounce 'park'".
Aaron J. Dinkin
> I continue to conceive of no way in which phonemic
> transcription can be useful to people who want to show how
> they versus others pronounce things.
The answer is of course that they are both necessary. For instance:
"In a Southern accent, /&/ is pronounced as something like [&j@],
whereas in a Northern Cities accent, /&/ is something like [e@]."
"Necessary" is an exaggeration, since of course it can be done without
phonemic notation, at the cost of some precision:
"In a southern accent, the vowel in 'cat' is pronounced as something
like [&j@]..."
but no more than it can be done without phonetic notation:
"...whereas in a Northern Cities accent, /&/ has moved up to mid-high
front position and developed an inglide."
*Also*, it is important not to mistake discussions in which people want
to show each other what phonemes they and others use in various words for
discussions in which they want to show how they and others pronounce things.
Bob Cunningham
<din...@babel.ling.upenn.edu> said:
> *Also*, it is important not to mistake discussions in which people want
> to show each other what phonemes they and others use in various words for
> discussions in which they want to show how they and others pronounce things.
If I ever feel an urge to tell someone what phonemes I use
in a word, maybe I'll come to see some need for phonemic
transcription. Meanwhile, I'll continue to use phonetic
notation to discuss how I and others pronounce words.
Do you, Aaron, recognize "broad phonetic" as a valid
descriptor that is distinct from both phonemic and detailed
phonetic?
I've seen the term "broad phonetic", but when I mentioned it
once in sci.lang, someone ridiculed it. By me, phonetic
representation, whether broad or narrow, is used to discuss
how words are pronounced, while phonemic representation is
something linguists use in the analysis of languages.
I've been long content to assume that some alt.usage.english
posters who used slashes really had broad-phonetic
description in mind rather than phonemic, and so should have
been using square brackets.
There was a time when I thought it would be a good idea to
use slashes for phonemic transcription, square brackets for
narrow phonetic, and vertical bars for broad. I still think
it may not be a bad idea.
Mesa Mike
> understands if you refer to a "Suburban Assault Vehicle".
So THAT's it, huh? I thought it was just the favorite radio station of
everyone who drives such vehicles...
Aaron J. Dinkin
> On Sat, 20 May 2006 14:24:10 +0000 (UTC), "Aaron J. Dinkin"
><din...@babel.ling.upenn.edu> said:
>
>> *Also*, it is important not to mistake discussions in which people want
>> to show each other what phonemes they and others use in various words for
>> discussions in which they want to show how they and others pronounce things.
>
> If I ever feel an urge to tell someone what phonemes I use
> in a word, maybe I'll come to see some need for phonemic
> transcription.
You mean like the fact that you have a /h/ in "vehicle" and a /sk/ in
"schedule"?
> Do you, Aaron, recognize "broad phonetic" as a valid
> descriptor that is distinct from both phonemic and detailed
> phonetic?
Yes, but the boundaries are fuzzy on both sides. How far from the actual
phonetic values can you get before a given transcription stops being a
broad phonetic transcription and starts being, well, a false phonetic
description? For example, most speakers of American English have, as
their allophone of /u:/ in most environments, a vowel or diphthong with an
approximately central nucleus. Are they transcribing broadly, or just
wrongly, if they write "food" as [fu:d] instead of [fu":d] or [fu"wd]?
What if their actual pronunciation is closer to [fI.wd]?
The problem is that anyone who hasn't had special training (as well as
some people who have) tends to be a pretty poor judge of the phonetic
value of (their own and others') utterances - precisely because the
phonemic identity of the segments gets in the way. I mean, clearly someone
who pronounces "plan" with something like [e@] for the vowel, as most
Americans do, is simply wrong if they write it as [pl&n], however broad
their transcription is. But the fact is that they're unlikely to be aware
of the fact that they pronounce "plan" with a different segment than the
[&] which they associate with "pat" until it's pointed out to them. So
when you write this:
> I've been long content to assume that some alt.usage.english
> posters who used slashes really had broad-phonetic
> description in mind rather than phonemic, and so should have
> been using square brackets.
...what I suspect is that the reverse is closer to true. What most people
actually are consciously aware of is approximately the phonemes they use,
not anything even as detailed as a broad phonetic transcription. And so
when they try to write down the sounds that they believe themselves to be
making, what they're actually putting down is a record of the phonemes
they have, in some notation.
> By me, phonetic representation, whether broad or narrow, is used to discuss
> how words are pronounced, while phonemic representation is something
> linguists use in the analysis of languages.
But you're wrong.
For most people, most of the time, what they want to know when they want
to know how a word is pronounced is which phonemes make it up, not a
phonetic representation of it at any level. In a.u.e., exceptionally, we
often talk about pronunciation differences between various dialects of
English, for which phonetic transcriptions are usually (not always)
appropriate, because most dialect differences are at the phonetic level.
But that is not the extent of the aspects of pronunciation that can be
discussed - phonemic questions are often more relevant.
Al in Dallas
<din...@babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
>On Sat, 20 May 2006 16:01:48 GMT, Bob Cunningham <exw...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>> On Sat, 20 May 2006 14:24:10 +0000 (UTC), "Aaron J. Dinkin"
>><din...@babel.ling.upenn.edu> said:
[snip]
>The problem is that anyone who hasn't had special training (as well as
>some people who have) tends to be a pretty poor judge of the phonetic
>value of (their own and others') utterances - precisely because the
>phonemic identity of the segments gets in the way. I mean, clearly someone
>who pronounces "plan" with something like [e@] for the vowel, as most
>Americans do, is simply wrong if they write it as [pl&n], however broad
>their transcription is. But the fact is that they're unlikely to be aware
>of the fact that they pronounce "plan" with a different segment than the
>[&] which they associate with "pat" until it's pointed out to them.
Well, "pant" and "paint" are not homophones for me. I'm fairly certain
that the latter is [peint]. So, does that make the former something
like [pe~nt] or [pe~@~nt]?
>So
>when you write this:
>
>> I've been long content to assume that some alt.usage.english
>> posters who used slashes really had broad-phonetic
>> description in mind rather than phonemic, and so should have
>> been using square brackets.
>
>...what I suspect is that the reverse is closer to true. What most people
>actually are consciously aware of is approximately the phonemes they use,
>not anything even as detailed as a broad phonetic transcription. And so
>when they try to write down the sounds that they believe themselves to be
>making, what they're actually putting down is a record of the phonemes
>they have, in some notation.
Or have I succumbed to what we may call the Cunningham fallacy in my
question above?
[snip]
--
Al in St. Lou
Aaron J. Dinkin
> On Sun, 21 May 2006 00:55:52 +0000 (UTC), "Aaron J. Dinkin"
><din...@babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote:
>
>>I mean, clearly someone who pronounces "plan" with something like [e@]
>>for the vowel, as most Americans do, is simply wrong if they write it
>>as [pl&n], however broad their transcription is. But the fact is that
>>they're unlikely to be aware of the fact that they pronounce "plan"
>>with a different segment than the [&] which they associate with "pat"
>>until it's pointed out to them.
>
> Well, "pant" and "paint" are not homophones for me. I'm fairly certain
> that the latter is [peint]. So, does that make the former something
> like [pe~nt] or [pe~@~nt]?
It's very likely, though I can't really say so without hearing you,
obviously. It's certainly the case for the way I say "paint" and "pant".
Bob Cunningham
<din...@babel.ling.upenn.edu> said:
> On Sat, 20 May 2006 16:01:48 GMT, Bob Cunningham <exw...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> > On Sat, 20 May 2006 14:24:10 +0000 (UTC), "Aaron J. Dinkin"
> ><din...@babel.ling.upenn.edu> said:
> >> *Also*, it is important not to mistake discussions in which people want
> >> to show each other what phonemes they and others use in various words for
> >> discussions in which they want to show how they and others pronounce things.
> > If I ever feel an urge to tell someone what phonemes I use
> > in a word, maybe I'll come to see some need for phonemic
> > transcription.
> You mean like the fact that you have a /h/ in "vehicle" and a /sk/ in
> "schedule"?
I have [h] in "vehicle" and [sk] in "schedule". Some people
have no [h] in "vehicle" and have [S] in "schedule". I like
to be able to say "You have [S] in schedule while I have
[sk]", not "We both have /S/ in "schedule" but our
pronunciations of it are radically different".
I don't believe it can be valid to say that [S] and [sk] are
in the same phoneme, because the contrastive pair "ship and
skip" proves that they're not. I can hardly believe that
both you and Evan seem to believe that they are. Do you
really believe there are people who perceive no difference
between "skip" and "ship", "Scot" and "shot", or "scoot" and
"shoot"?
> > Do you, Aaron, recognize "broad phonetic" as a valid
> > descriptor that is distinct from both phonemic and detailed
> > phonetic?
> Yes, but the boundaries are fuzzy on both sides. How far from the actual
> phonetic values can you get before a given transcription stops being a
> broad phonetic transcription and starts being, well, a false phonetic
> description? For example, most speakers of American English have, as
> their allophone of /u:/ in most environments, a vowel or diphthong with an
> approximately central nucleus. Are they transcribing broadly, or just
> wrongly, if they write "food" as [fu:d] instead of [fu":d] or [fu"wd]?
> What if their actual pronunciation is closer to [fI.wd]?
If I say "cat" is pronounced [k&t], but the [&] symbol
doesn't quite fit my sound, the error is in my perception of
my sound, not in using square brackets to transcribe what I
think is my sound.
I continue to believe that if I say "cat" is pronounced
/k&t/ I haven't said anything useful, because it doesn't
even tell anyone how I *think* I pronounce "cat". It can
make some people think that I may pronounce it using a sound
they know of but I've never heard.
Two sounds are in the same phoneme if a hearer perceives
them to be the same sound. Since different people will
perceive differently, the content of one person's phoneme
will not in general be the same as another person's. So
phonemic transcription can't be a reliable medium for
exchanging information about pronunciation.
> The problem is that anyone who hasn't had special training (as well as
> some people who have) tends to be a pretty poor judge of the phonetic
> value of (their own and others') utterances - precisely because the
> phonemic identity of the segments gets in the way. I mean, clearly someone
> who pronounces "plan" with something like [e@] for the vowel, as most
> Americans do, is simply wrong if they write it as [pl&n], however broad
> their transcription is. But the fact is that they're unlikely to be aware
> of the fact that they pronounce "plan" with a different segment than the
> [&] which they associate with "pat" until it's pointed out to them. So
> when you write this:
> > I've been long content to assume that some alt.usage.english
> > posters who used slashes really had broad-phonetic
> > description in mind rather than phonemic, and so should have
> > been using square brackets.
> ...what I suspect is that the reverse is closer to true. What most people
> actually are consciously aware of is approximately the phonemes they use,
> not anything even as detailed as a broad phonetic transcription. And so
> when they try to write down the sounds that they believe themselves to be
> making, what they're actually putting down is a record of the phonemes
> they have, in some notation.
That wouldn't tell anyone anything useful, because in
general my phoneme doesn't contain the same sounds as
another speaker's.
> > By me, phonetic representation, whether broad or narrow, is used to discuss
> > how words are pronounced, while phonemic representation is something
> > linguists use in the analysis of languages.
> But you're wrong.
I'm sorry, but I will have to reserve judgment on whether or
not you're wrong in saying I'm wrong. Meanwhile, I'll
continue to think I'm right.
> For most people, most of the time, what they want to know when they want
> to know how a word is pronounced is which phonemes make it up, not a
> phonetic representation of it at any level. In a.u.e., exceptionally, we
> often talk about pronunciation differences between various dialects of
> English, for which phonetic transcriptions are usually (not always)
> appropriate, because most dialect differences are at the phonetic level.
> But that is not the extent of the aspects of pronunciation that can be
> discussed - phonemic questions are often more relevant.
Maybe some day I'll see an example of a pronunciation
discussion in which phonemic questions seem relevant.
R J Valentine
...
} Maybe some day I'll see an example of a pronunciation
} discussion in which phonemic questions seem relevant.
Dictionaries. Dictionaries should give phonemic pronunciations that can
be rendered into predefined sets of phonetic pronunciations selectable by
the user. It'd be technically easy nowadays. Some linguist could get
rich by hacking the path to it.
There's just no excuse for having Oxford's family of dictionaries give a
phonetic pronunciation for an accent that only Ron still uses. They
should call an "o" an /o/ and let the accent plug-ins render it as [oU] or
[wu] or [@OiV] or whatever.
Dictionaries used to do that by having hint words down the bottom, so they
coud distinguish between "ah" and "aw" and allow the Sparkies of the world
to merge them if they want to.
--
rjv
Salvatore Volatile
> There's just no excuse for having Oxford's family of dictionaries give a
> phonetic pronunciation for an accent that only Ron still uses.
Say, where is ...?
> Dictionaries used to do that by having hint words down the bottom, so they
> coud distinguish between "ah" and "aw" and allow the Sparkies of the world
> to merge them if they want to.
Right. SparkE (including StrictSparkE as well as GeneralizedSparkE) is
probably the easiest dialect of English to learn, because of its
radically reduced vowel inventory. But dictionaries intended for
native speakers should (if they don't do what we hope Young Aaron
will someday have them do) assume a hypothetical speaker with as full a
vowel inventory as possible, within reasonable limits (e.g., maybe we
don't have to consider rarities like horse/hoarse separators).
Come to think of it, TCE might be easier than SparkE. TCE features the
pin/pen merger, while I don't believe that SparkE does (= BrE "does do").
--
Salvatore Volatile
Aaron J. Dinkin
> On Sun, 21 May 2006 00:55:52 +0000 (UTC), "Aaron J. Dinkin"
><din...@babel.ling.upenn.edu> said:
>
>> On Sat, 20 May 2006 16:01:48 GMT, Bob Cunningham <exw...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>> > If I ever feel an urge to tell someone what phonemes I use
>> > in a word, maybe I'll come to see some need for phonemic
>> > transcription.
>
>> You mean like the fact that you have a /h/ in "vehicle" and a /sk/ in
>> "schedule"?
>
> I have [h] in "vehicle" and [sk] in "schedule". Some people
> have no [h] in "vehicle" and have [S] in "schedule". I like
> to be able to say "You have [S] in schedule while I have
> [sk]", not "We both have /S/ in "schedule" but our
> pronunciations of it are radically different".
But what you _should_ say is "You have /S/ in 'schedule' while I have /sk/."
Some differences between dialects are phonetic; other differences are
phonemic. That is, some differences, like /skEdZul/ versus /SEdjul/ for
"schedule", are differences in what phonemes are used in individual words.
Other differences, like [k&t] versus [ke@t] for "cat", are differences in
the phonetic pronunciations of phonemes. To describe a phonemic difference
as merely a phonetic one, as you would do, is misleading.
> I don't believe it can be valid to say that [S] and [sk] are
> in the same phoneme, because the contrastive pair "ship and
> skip" proves that they're not. I can hardly believe that
> both you and Evan seem to believe that they are.
It is good that you can't believe that we believe that, since we don't.
Indeed, we have both said the exact opposite.
We have also said that to write "I have [sk] in 'schedule' while you have
[S]," as you would do, carries the *false implication* that those [sk] and
[S] are associated with the same phoneme.
> If I say "cat" is pronounced [k&t], but the [&] symbol
> doesn't quite fit my sound, the error is in my perception of
> my sound, not in using square brackets to transcribe what I
> think is my sound.
Well, kind of. The reason I think that using phonetic transcriptions in a
forum like this is less useful than you think it is is because I think
those transcriptions are likely to be in error. But in particular, the
direction in which they're likely to be in error is in the direction of
phonemicization - that is, the error is that what you (generic "you")'ve
written is more accurate as a phonemic representation than as a phonetic
representation.
> I continue to believe that if I say "cat" is pronounced
> /k&t/ I haven't said anything useful, because it doesn't
> even tell anyone how I *think* I pronounce "cat".
That's true - saying that "cat" is pronounced /k&t/ isn't useful.
However, is someone said that they pronounced "pasta" as /'p&st@/, that
_would_ be useful. Why? Because, they're not *trying* to tell you exactly
how they pronounce it; they're trying to tell you where in the pattern the
word fits. It tells you that they pronounce it with the same vowel as
"cat" - unlike those of us who pronounce it with the same vowel as
"father". From that, if you want to, you can figure out how they actually
pronounce "pasta", based on your knowledge from other sources and educated
guesses about how they're likely to pronounce /&/. But - more importantly
- it tells you that that they put the word in a different category than
you do. Though they may have exactly the same sound as you do in "father",
"spa", "cart", and so on, the pattern isn't true for "pasta".
Saying "I pronounce 'pasta' as /'p&sta/'" is in many respects more like
saying "I call a soft drink 'pop'" than like saying "I pronounce 'cat' as
[k&t]."
>> ...what I suspect is that the reverse is closer to true. What most people
>> actually are consciously aware of is approximately the phonemes they use,
>> not anything even as detailed as a broad phonetic transcription. And so
>> when they try to write down the sounds that they believe themselves to be
>> making, what they're actually putting down is a record of the phonemes
>> they have, in some notation.
>
> That wouldn't tell anyone anything useful, because in
> general my phoneme doesn't contain the same sounds as
> another speaker's.
That doesn't mean it's not what they're doing, though.
> Maybe some day I'll see an example of a pronunciation
> discussion in which phonemic questions seem relevant.
RJ's example is a good one: in dictionary pronunciation guides. In
general, if you encounter a word that you don't know, and you ask someone
(in a text medium) how you should pronounce it, their response is only
useful if it's in terms of phonemic representation. They can't give you a
reliably useful phonetic transcription because they don't know how you
actually pronounce things. But they can give you a phonemic
representation to which you can apply your own knowledge of your own
pronunciation.
T.H. Entity
<m...@privacy.net> wrought:
>Come to think of it, TCE might be easier than SparkE. TCE features the
>pin/pen merger, while I don't believe that SparkE does (= BrE "does do").
(=BibbacyE: "diz dee").
--
THE
Bob Cunningham
On Sun, 21 May 2006 19:04:28 +0000 (UTC), "Aaron J. Dinkin"
<din...@babel.ling.upenn.edu> said:
[...]
> In general, if you encounter a word that you don't know,
> and you ask someone (in a text medium) how you should
> pronounce it, their response is only useful if it's in
> terms of phonemic representation.
I wouldn't presume to tell people how they should pronounce
a word. I would only tell them how I think I pronounce it,
or how I think someone else pronounces it, and that takes
phonetic notation.
> They can't give you a reliably useful phonetic
> transcription because they don't know how you actually
> pronounce things. But they can give you a phonemic
> representation to which you can apply your own knowledge
> of your own pronunciation.
I don't think of dictionaries as telling people how to
pronounce words. I think of them as giving typical examples
of how the words are pronounced. For that, phonetic
notation is appropriate.
JF
<exw...@earthlink.net> writes
>I don't think of dictionaries as telling people how to
>pronounce words. I think of them as giving typical examples
>of how the words are pronounced. For that, phonetic
>notation is appropriate.
Dictionaries on CD-ROMs have changed all that. On the CD-ROM for COD/11,
it seems that the woman gets to say most of the rude words.
Bob Cunningham
<exw...@earthlink.net> said:
> On Wed, 31 May 2006 08:23:11 +0100, JF
> <j...@NOSPAMmarage.demon.co.uk> said:
> > In message <cqbq725fntcbdhvj2...@4ax.com>, Bob Cunningham
> > <exw...@earthlink.net> writes
> > >I don't think of dictionaries as telling people how to
> > >pronounce words. I think of them as giving typical examples
> > >of how the words are pronounced. For that, phonetic
> > >notation is appropriate.
> > Dictionaries on CD-ROMs have changed all that.
Changed all what? The voice is quite clearly illustrating a
typical way to pronounce the word, while the text
pronunciation can be assumed to be doing that.
R J Valentine
The Famous Author may be suggesting in his simple and honest way that
people will start pronouncing things the way the dictionary pronounces
them. I agree rather with what Mr. Cunningham seems to be effectively
asserting, which is to say that the dictionary gives one way of
pronouncing words and the user still has to translate that into a more
comfortable way of pronouncing them. I for one am not likely to pronounce
words the way that OED is likely to suggest. Better they should keep the
underlying phonemic IPA to themselves and allow the user to select an
accent from one of several regional accents offered or even allow users to
specify one for themselves with a phonetic IPA. Put a few board-certified
linguists on that project and they could start justifying the oxygen they
use up.
--
rjv
Bracing for the bluster about how long paragraphs are too hard to grasp.
Al in Dallas
Hear, hear!
Aaron J. Dinkin
> On Sun, 21 May 2006 19:04:28 +0000 (UTC), "Aaron J. Dinkin"
><din...@babel.ling.upenn.edu> said:
>
> [...]
>
>> In general, if you encounter a word that you don't know,
>> and you ask someone (in a text medium) how you should
>> pronounce it, their response is only useful if it's in
>> terms of phonemic representation.
>
> I wouldn't presume to tell people how they should pronounce
> a word. I would only tell them how I think I pronounce it,
> or how I think someone else pronounces it, and that takes
> phonetic notation.
But you would be wrong - or rather, unhelpful - in doing so. What
they want to _know_ is how they should pronounce it - that is,
what is the correct pronunciation for their own dialect.
In the terms of this discussion, giving a phonemic representation
doesn't constitute _telling_ them how to pronounce it, but it is
giving them enough information (probably) to determine how they
should pronounce it.
Bob Cunningham
> On Wed, 31 May 2006 08:23:11 +0100, JF
> <j...@NOSPAMmarage.demon.co.uk> said:
I've listened to some other talking dictionaries to see how
they compare with what you say. They are _Merriam-Webster's
_Collegiate_ online, _Random House Webster's Unabridged_,
and _American Heritage 4th Edition_ online.
The words I listened to in each case were "shit", "piss",
"fart", "fuck", "cunt", "cunnilingus", and "fellatio".
In the _Collegiate_ a man says them all.
In the _Random House Webster's_ a woman says them all.
In the _American Heritage 4th_, a man says them all.
(Not necessarily the same man or woman in each case.)
By the way, I found it interesting in the days when
dictionaries prudishly refrained from listing naughty words
to see that they did list "cunnilingus", which struck me as
being as naughty as any of them if not naughtier.
Joe Fineman
> By the way, I found it interesting in the days when dictionaries
> prudishly refrained from listing naughty words to see that they did
> list "cunnilingus", which struck me as being as naughty as any of
> them if not naughtier.
*Which* dictionaries?
It's a technical term, and thus not actually taboo, tho perhaps a bit
hard for a prudish lexicographer to define. A dictionary that
contained it would almost certainly also contain "fellatio". Even
when I was little (1940s), Webster's Collegiate contained "penis" --
and "masturbation", of which the entire definition was
"self-pollution".
--
--- Joe Fineman jo...@verizon.net
||: The prince of virtues is courage, and the crown of courage :||
||: is contempt for public opinion. :||
Frank ess
> Bob Cunningham <exw...@earthlink.net> writes:
>
>> By the way, I found it interesting in the days when dictionaries
>> prudishly refrained from listing naughty words to see that they did
>> list "cunnilingus", which struck me as being as naughty as any of
>> them if not naughtier.
>
> *Which* dictionaries?
>
> It's a technical term, and thus not actually taboo, tho perhaps a
> bit
> hard for a prudish lexicographer to define. A dictionary that
> contained it would almost certainly also contain "fellatio". Even
> when I was little (1940s), Webster's Collegiate contained "penis" --
> and "masturbation", of which the entire definition was
> "self-pollution".
>
>>>> is contempt for public opinion. :||
My source ( G. Legman; no first name ! ; _Rationale Of The Dirty
Joke_ ) says the word is "cunnilinctus"; I spelled it that way in a
report, and the transcriber very kindly "corrected" it.
--
Frank ess
"We become just by the practice of just actions,
self-controlled by exercising self-control,
and courageous by performing acts of courage."
-Aristotle
Peter Moylan
> By the way, I found it interesting in the days when dictionaries
> prudishly refrained from listing naughty words to see that they did
> list "cunnilingus", which struck me as being as naughty as any of
> them if not naughtier.
When I was at school, the dictionary in the school library automatically
fell open at "bum". Apparently it was the only rude word in the book.
Well, the only one we found, anyway.
The library copy of "The Canterbury Tales" also had favourite pages, so
much so that it was difficult to keep the book closed.
--
Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org
Please note the changed e-mail and web addresses. The domain
eepjm.newcastle.edu.au no longer exists, and I can no longer
reliably receive mail at my newcastle.edu.au addresses.
The optusnet address still has about 2 months of life left.
Bob Cunningham
<jo...@verizon.net> said:
> Bob Cunningham <exw...@earthlink.net> writes:
> > By the way, I found it interesting in the days when dictionaries
> > prudishly refrained from listing naughty words to see that they did
> > list "cunnilingus", which struck me as being as naughty as any of
> > them if not naughtier.
> *Which* dictionaries?
Okay, I confess that my statement was based on incomplete
research. I evidently reached my conclusion years ago from
looking in _Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary_,
which was the only dictionary I used for a few years. My
printing of it carries the copyright 1965.
It has "cunnilingus" (alternative spelling "cunnilinctus")
and "fellatio", but no "cunt", "fart", "fuck", "piss", or
"shit".
However, I see now that _Webster's Third New International
Dictionary_ (_W3NID_), which was the unabridged parent of
the _Seventh Collegiate_, has some of the four-letter
naughties, but it still has no "fuck".
I find it interesting to find that the CD-ROM edition of
_W3NID_ *does* have "fuck". This adds to evidence I've
found before that the CD-ROM version is not just the print
version taken to CD-ROM.
Someone has mentioned efforts by lexicographers to avoid
being too explicit in defining sexual terms. This is shown
by the use of "oral stimulation" to define "cunnilingus",
which has continued into the latest, the 11th, edition. But
the etymology gives clearer insight, saying that "-lingus"
is from Latin "lingere", to lick.
The situation is similar with "fellatio", where the
definition says "oral stimulation of the penis", but the
etymology says the Latin etymon "fellare" means to suck.
Come to think of it, though, some people might want to argue
that "oral stimulation" is better in both cases, because the
actual practices may involve forms of oral stimulation other
than licking and sucking.
> It's a technical term, and thus not actually taboo, tho perhaps a bit
> hard for a prudish lexicographer to define. A dictionary that
> contained it would almost certainly also contain "fellatio". Even
> when I was little (1940s), Webster's Collegiate contained "penis" --
> and "masturbation", of which the entire definition was
> "self-pollution".
Okay, that "someone" was you.
R H Draney
>
>Someone has mentioned efforts by lexicographers to avoid
>being too explicit in defining sexual terms. This is shown
>by the use of "oral stimulation" to define "cunnilingus",
>which has continued into the latest, the 11th, edition. But
>the etymology gives clearer insight, saying that "-lingus"
>is from Latin "lingere", to lick.
I'm trying to think of an appropriate way to mention this to my dentist the next
time she tries to get me using an "oral stimulator"....
There is such a thing as being *too* coy....r
--
It's the crack on the wall and the stain on the cup that gets to you
in the very end...every cat has its fall when it runs out of luck,
so you can do with a touch of zen...cause when you're screwed,
you're screwed...and when it's blue, it's blue.
Joe Fineman
> My source ( G. Legman; no first name ! ;
Gershon.
> _Rationale Of The Dirty Joke_ ) says the word is "cunnilinctus"; I
> spelled it that way in a report, and the transcriber very kindly
> "corrected" it.
It is "cunnilinctus" in Ford & Beach's _Patterns of Sexual Behavior_
(1951), which I think is where I first saw the word (in 1962). The
OED does not have that, and has "-lingus" going back to 1887.
--
--- Joe Fineman jo...@verizon.net
||: Truth is too small a fish to be caught in the law's coarse :||
||: meshes. :||