How NOT to write a teach-yourself grammar

[Wilson Gray]

On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 7:44 AM, Randy Alexander
<strangeguitars at gmail.com> wrote:
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> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Randy Alexander <strangeguitars at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: How NOT to write a teach-yourself grammar
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 1:45 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>> "The syllabic segment /e/, a front mid vowel, is pronounced similarly
>> to ,,, English _e_ as in _end_."
>>
>>
>> As in "*end*"?! So, it's a nasalized, lax, high front vowel. Probably
>> not really what the authors int[I]nd. And it's not possible to tell
>> whether they really have in mind "... as in _gate_ or "... as in
>> _get_." More likely the latter. But,
>
> The vowel in _gate_ (/ei/) and the vowel in _end_ (/E/) are not the
> same phoneme. Â But _get_ and _end_ do share the same phoneme vowel
> /E/.
>
> Is this publication British (where there /E/ and /e/ are much closer
> than in the US)?
>
> --
> Randy Alexander
> Xiamen, China
> Blogs:
> Manchu studies: http://www.sinoglot.com/manchu
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> Language in China (group blog): http://www.sinoglot.com/blog
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My stars alive! I had no idea that my point would be so elusive!

Millions of native-speakers of English pronounce, e.g. _end_ as
[In(d)]. Therefore, if a teach-yourself grammar tells a reader such as
I, who speaks the variety of English cited, he;s not going to know WTF
vowel is referenced. Whereas, were the authors to have written
something like,

"The _e_ of The-language-of-which-you-have-no-prior-knowledge is, in
sound, rather like unto the _e_-sound of English "bait"

or

The _e_ of said language is, in sound, not especially dissimilar to
the _e_-sound of English "bet"

then their "description" of the _e_ of the unknown language would rise
above the level of empty-of-content for all
native-but-not-necessarily-fortunate-enough-to-have-been-exposed-to-even-general-phonetics-101-speakers
of English, the audience to whom most, if not all,
teach-yourself-a-heretofore-unknown-to-you-language books written in
English is directed.

That any damned-fool of a half-assedly-trained *linguist* ought to be
able to figure out for himself that the authors *most likely* have in
mind a sound similar to, if not precisely the same as, the [E] of,
perhaps, _bet_, is simply irrelevant to my comment. Anyone writing a
book for speakers of any variety of Englishought to know better than
to use an environment as marked, in English, as /_nd into which to
place the somewhat- similar English pronunciation of their target
sound.

The book is a translation-in-progress of a Russian original and
Russian, as English, has allophonic variation. The letter written _E
e_ is, in some environments, pronounced [e], as [E] in other
environments, and as [I] in a third set of environments. But, in the
Russian original, the Russian-language example doesn't have its _e_ in
some random environment in which /e/ automatically goes to [I], [e],
or [E] in any variety of natively-spoken Russian. It would have been
trivial for the American translators to have found a similar word,
such as _bet_, in English.

whether they really have in mind "... as in _gate_ OR "... as in _get_."

Note that I wrote _or_ as in language and not _or_ as in logic, hence
the interpretation that I meant "... as in _gate_ or as in _get_ (or
as both in _gate_ *and* as in _get_)" is unlicensed.

I assume, Randy, that when you wrote.

"The vowel in _gate_ (/ei/) and the vowel in _end_ (/E/) are not the
same phoneme,"

that was meant only for random, unlearned polloi who may be lurking.
It probably would have been useful for them if you had also provided a
working definition of _phoneme_.

Youneverknow.
--
-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"––a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
–Mark Twain

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