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<div dir="auto">Dear Aznar,<br>
<br>
I meant spaces between words. There are blank "spaces" between each character, of course, just not at word or syllable level.<br>
Below is Korean when it was first written: each character (representing a syllable) is equally separated from each other.<br>
<br>
<img style="max-width:100%;height:auto" src="cid:6C216A0178F14CC3A29D4F8785B65C32"></div>
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Regards,
<div dir="auto">Ian</div>
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<div name="messageReplySection">On 26 Nov 2021, 7:26 PM +0800, Jocelyn Aznar <contact@jocelynaznar.eu>, wrote:<br>
<blockquote type="cite" style="border-left-color: grey; border-left-width: thin; border-left-style: solid; margin: 5px 5px;padding-left: 10px;">
Dear Ian,<br>
<br>
I'm not sure what you mean by Thai, Tibetan, Khmer, Japanese, pre-modern<br>
Korean not having spaces. I mean, ok you don't have to type them as<br>
such, but there are white spaces between the characters, they are just<br>
not systematically indicating the word boundaries but can also other<br>
make obvious other linguistic phenomena/cues, like syllables, sounds,<br>
semantic traits, etc.<br>
<br>
People looking at the history of writing (like Paul Saenger's Space<br>
Between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading [the text was criticized on<br>
the accuracy of historical account but, not on the general thesis as far<br>
as I'm aware]) showed the relationship between typography and the<br>
practice of reading, like for instance being able to read silently, a<br>
practice that was very restricted first and got more common in Europe<br>
during the XVIIe century (if I remember well). Some historians also<br>
report on how reading aloud or silently affect how people interpreting<br>
differently the relationship between the texts and its narrator (here to<br>
be understood from Gérard Genette's narratologic conception, that is the<br>
narrator as the character telling a story, not the actual person<br>
writing/telling it).<br>
<br>
I guess for SMS messages in Riau Indonesian, people were first to read<br>
them aloud while writing. And now that they integrated spaces as a<br>
character, they should write them without reading them aloud.<br>
<br>
This topic about white spaces also reminds me how some French colleagues<br>
who were quite fluent in Mandarin Chinese reported that it was faster<br>
for them to read a text in Chinese than in French, as you mostly didn't<br>
speak (in your head) the text while reading it. I guess it's an hint<br>
indicating that the practice of silent reading in Chinese could be much<br>
older than the European practice.<br>
<br>
Best,<br>
Jocelyn<br>
<br>
Le 26/11/2021 à 11:54, JOO, Ian [Student] a écrit :<br>
<blockquote type="cite">Dear David,<br>
<br>
thank you for introducing your interesting paper which I’ll have a look<br>
into soon.<br>
But, I don’t think speakers not employing spaces necessarily indicates<br>
the absence of wordhood.<br>
In many traditional orthographies, there are no spaces at all: Thai,<br>
Tibetan, Khmer, Japanese, pre-modern Korean, etc.<br>
But that wouldn’t necessarily mean that Thai speakers don’t perceive words.<br>
Many orthographies only transcribe consonants - but that wouldn’t mean<br>
that the speakers don’t perceive vowels as phonological units.<br>
So I think the emergence of spaces is sufficient, but not necessary,<br>
evidence of wordhood.<br>
<br>
Regards,<br>
Ian<br>
On 26 Nov 2021, 6:45 PM +0800, David Gil <gil@shh.mpg.de>, wrote:<br>
<blockquote type="cite">Following on Nikolaus' comment, it is also an experiment that is<br>
performed whenever speakers of an unwritten language decide to<br>
introduce an orthography for the first time: Do they insert spaces,<br>
and if so where?<br>
<br>
I wrote about about this in Gil (2020), with reference to a<br>
naturalistic corpus of SMS messages in Riau Indonesian, produced in<br>
2003, which was the year everybody in the village I was staying in got<br>
their first mobile phones and suddenly had to figure out how to write<br>
their language. In the 2020 article, my focus was more on the<br>
presence or absence of evidence for bound morphology, and less on<br>
whether they introduce spaces in the first case. What I did not<br>
mention there, but which is most germane to Ian's query, is the latter<br>
question, whether they use spaces at all. In fact, my corpus contains<br>
lots of messages that were written without spaces at all. Within a<br>
couple of years the orthography became more conventionalized, and<br>
everybody started using spaces, but to begin with, at least, it seemed<br>
like many speakers were not entertaining any (meta-)linguistic notion<br>
of 'word' whatsoever.<br>
<br>
(BTW, in Riau and many other dialects of Indonesian, the word for<br>
'word', /kata/, also means 'say'.)<br>
<br>
David<br>
<br>
Gil, David (2020) "What Does It Mean to Be an Isolating Language? The<br>
Case of Riau Indonesian", in D. Gil and A. Schapper eds.,<br>
/Austronesian Undressed: How and Why Languages Become Isolating/, John<br>
Benjamins, Amsterdam, 9-96.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
On 26/11/2021 12:11, Nikolaus P Himmelmann wrote:<br>
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">Hi<br>
<br>
On 26/11/2021 10:17, JOO, Ian [Student] wrote:<br>
<blockquote type="cite"><br>
The question would be, when one asks a speaker of a given language<br>
to divide a sentence into words, would the number of words be<br>
consistent throughout different speakers?<br>
It would be an interesting experiment. I’d be happy to be informed<br>
of any previous study who conducted such an experiment.<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
Yes, indeed. And it is an experiment, though largely uncontrolled,<br>
that is carried out whenever someone carries out fieldwork on an<br>
undocumented lect. In this context, speakers provide evidence for<br>
word units in two ways: a) in elicitation when prompted by pointing<br>
or with a word from a contact language; b) when chunking a recording<br>
into chunks that can be written down by the researcher.<br>
<br>
In my experience, speakers across a given community are pretty<br>
consistent in both activities though one may distinguish two basic<br>
types speakers. One group provides word-like units, so when you ask<br>
for "stone" you get a minimal form for stone. The other primarily<br>
provides utterance-like units. So you do not get "stone" but rather<br>
"look at this stone", "how big the stone is", "stones for building<br>
ovens" or the like.<br>
<br>
Depending on the language, there is some variation in the units<br>
provided in both activities but this is typically restricted to the<br>
kind of phenomena that later on cause the main problems in the<br>
analytical reconstruction of a word unit, i.e. mostly phenomena that<br>
come under the broad term of "clitics". In my view, one should<br>
clearly distinguish between these analytical reconstructions, which<br>
are basic building blocks of grammatial descriptions, and the<br>
"natural" units provided by speakers, which are primary data<br>
providing the basis for the description.<br>
<br>
Best<br>
<br>
Nikolaus<br>
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
<br>
--<br>
David Gil<br>
<br>
Senior Scientist (Associate)<br>
Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution<br>
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology<br>
Deutscher Platz 6, Leipzig, 04103, Germany<br>
<br>
Email: gil@shh.mpg.de<br>
Mobile Phone (Israel): +972-526117713<br>
Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091<br>
<br>
</blockquote>
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