Spurious "Quotes" and Apostrophe's

[Pafra & Scott Catledge]

And the French trema (e.g., Noe"l) functions the same as the diaeresis, not
the umlaut.
----- Original Message -----
From: James E. Clapp <jeclapp at WANS.NET>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Sunday, September 19, 1999 11:30 AM
Subject: Re: Spurious "Quotes" and Apostrophe's


Laurence Horn wrote:
>
> I always assumed (well, not ALways, but from some point ater the 6th
grade)
> that a diaeresis is distinct from an umlaut; the former indicates the
> vowels of e.g. coöperation are pronounced distinctly, the latter that a
> vowel in a language like German or Turkish is fronted.  The two are
> "spelled" the same, but that just makes the symbols homographs, but not
> instances of the same symbol, any more than the two verbs that can occur
as
> homonyms in e.g. "She can't bear children" are the same lexical item.

You had great instincts.  I just looked up "dieresis" and "umlaut" in the
dictionary (RHUD and OED)--an unusual step, I realize!--and found that the
former both etymologically and in conventional usage represents separation
or
division, the latter both etymologically and in conventional usage
represents
a modification of sound.

> Of course, an argument can be constructed in the opposite direction, since
> after all we call an acute accent an acute accent even if it indicates
> vowel quality in one language and quantity/stress in another.

Dictionary to the rescue again:  "Acute" means "sharp"; unlike "dieresis"
and
"umlaut," which refer to the function of the mark, "acute" describes the
physical appearance of the mark; so of course it is the same word regardless
of what purpose the mark is used for.

James E. Clapp