diction (was velarized /l/ and Billy Holiday)

[James A. Landau <JJJRLandau@netscape.com>]

OnFri, 6 Mar 2009 20:58:55 EST  RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:

<quote>
A small quibble, but it seems odd for a linguist to use the term
"diction" to=20 mean "enunciation." I've always thought that "diction" properly referred to=20 word choice (cf. "dictionary"), but perhaps I have spent too many years in=20 English Departments.  <snip>
</quote>

It's a long story, Ron.

It goes back to the rhetoricians of the island of Rhodes, the same people who invented rhotic dialects and standardized the elementary school curhiculam as rheading, rhiting, and rhithmetic.

It seemed these rhetoricians classified dictions based on how the rhetoric would be written.  The most important speeches were copied onto vellum and hence were known as "vellar".

Unfortunately the Medieval monks who copied the Rhotic manuals on diction were influenced by Trhuspel, and wrote "vellar" as "velar".  This caused Classical scholars to interpret diction as referring to phonetics and enunciation.

So, even Truspel has it bad days.

OT: somebody asked where those 20's came from.  I can't answer that question, but I can pose it in proper language:  "what is the home 20 of those 20's?"


           James A. Landau
           test engineer
           Northrop-Grumman Information Technology
           8025 Black Horse Pike, Suite 300
           West Atlantic City NJ 08232 USA
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