yahoo

[Dennis Preston]

Well, I see this guy was not shitting us; he does indeed not know
what a phoneme is. That someone would have the chutzpah to design an
alternative spelling system for a language without a clue about the
basics of phonology is amazing. That he would respond to the
attempted tutelage from linguists who do know about such matters
makes him not just the ignoramus he obviously is but a recalcitrant
one as well.

dInIs

>---------------------- Information from the mail header
>-----------------------
>Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>Subject:      Re: yahoo
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>At 9:43 AM +0000 4/6/08, Tom Zurinskas wrote:
>>I agree with below, but don't understand how the same sound can be
>>two different phonemes.
>
>Ah, "biuniqueness" rears its head!  (Seems like yesterday, but it's
>been 44 years since Chomsky's "Current issues in linguistic theory",
>after all.  Time does fly.)  How would you deal with final devoicing
>in German/Russian, where a [t] can correspond to either a /t/ or a
>/d/ in non-final environments?  Does truespel allow archiphonemes?
>It's not as if these battles haven't been fought, and refought, and
>rerefought.  Ah well...
>
>LH
>
>>The same sound needs to be a expressed phonetically as the same
>>phoneme, no matter what the tradspel (traditional spelling).
>>
>>Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
>>See truespel.com - and the 4 truespel books plus "Occasional Poems"
>>at authorhouse.com.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>   Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2008 11:04:21 +0800
>>>   From: strangeguitars at GMAIL.COM
>>>   Subject: Re: yahoo
>>>   To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>>>
>>>   ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>>-----------------------
>>>   Sender: American Dialect Society
>>>   Poster: LanDi Liu
>>>   Subject: Re: yahoo
>>>
>>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>>   On Sun, Apr 6, 2008 at 6:29 AM, Michael Covarrubias
>>>   wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>>   Scot LaFaive wrote:
>>>>>   Essentially, phonemes are
>>>>>   in your head and allophones are the actual production of phonemes in
>>>>>   specific environments. I don't know of any other definitions for
>>>>>   phoneme and allophone that phonologists use, so I'm not sure what you
>>>>>   mean by "search engines give several definitions." I think I'll go
>>>>>   with what phonologists mean by phoneme and allophone instead of Google
>>>>>   and Yahoo.
>>>>>
>>>>>   Scot
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>   Something "in your head" isn't much of a definition. Phonologists
>>>>   probably have more definitions of phoneme than Google and Yahoo combined.
>>>>
>>>>   michael
>>>>
>>>>   Why not? It's just a less technical way to say that phonemes are
>>>   perceptual. Allophones are the way that phonemes are physically expressed.
>>>   A tapped /t/, an aspirated /t/, and an unaspirated /t/ are all the same
>>>   phoneme, /t/, but are different allophones. /t/, however, is a very clean
>>>   example. When you get into vowels, especially diphthongs, it gets tricky,
>>>   and murky. For example, some of you may think Mary, marry, and merry have
>>>   different phonemes, but they're all the same for people like me who have
>>>   merged them.
>>>
>>>   And if you're American, you probably say "man" and "male" with the same
>>>   vowel sound -- "man" with a tensed ash, and "male" the same way, but you
>>>   also probably consider "man" to have a short a sound, and "male" to have a
>>>   long a sound. If you say them that way (and I do), you are using the same
>>>   sound in two different phonemes.
>>>
>>>   When defining an accent one must make some arbitrary decisions about what
>>>   constitutes a phoneme in that accent, and what constitute
>>>allophones in each
>>>   phoneme. Usually we try to apply an objective rule to this process, like
>>>   the idea that changing phonemes affects meaning, but changing allophones
>>>   doesn't, but this is not always cut and dry.
>>>
>>>   --
>>>   Randy Alexander
>  >>  Jilin City, China
>>>
>>>   ------------------------------------------------------------
>>>   The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>>_________________________________________________________________
>>Pack up or back up-use SkyDrive to transfer files or keep extra
>>copies. Learn how.
>>hthttp://www.windowslive.com/skydrive/overview.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_Refresh_skydrive_packup_042008
>>
>>------------------------------------------------------------
>>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org


--
Dennis R. Preston
University Distinguished Professor
Department of English
Morrill Hall 15-C
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48864 USA

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org