How NOT to write a teach-yourself grammar

[Herb Stahlke]

My family and I were driving south to Atlanta on I75 in the late '70s.
 In southern Tennessee we got off onto US25 and a few miles out into
the country we passed a junk yard/rummage sale with a hand-painted
sign that read "Odds 'n' Inns."

Herb

On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 11:26 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray 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  Wilson Gray <hwgray at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: How NOT to write a teach-yourself grammar
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 7:44 AM, Randy Alexander
> <strangeguitars at gmail.com> wrote:
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>> Sender: Ā  Ā  Ā  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster: Ā  Ā  Ā  Randy Alexander <strangeguitars at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject: Ā  Ā  Ā 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. Ā 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
>> Chinese characters: http://www.sinoglot.com/yuwen
>> 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
> ā€“ā€“ā€“
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"ā€“ā€“a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> ā€“Mark Twain
>
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