How NOT to write a teach-yourself grammar

[Tom Zurinskas]

A junkyard called "Odds 'n' Inns?" Must be for "pickers" to overnight?  Continental breakfast?

Ah thank wee need to worsh out dialects when tockin bout standard prununciation, else we wuent know wut were tocking about.

Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL7+
see truespel.com phonetic spelling


>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Herb Stahlke
> Subject: Re: How NOT to write a teach-yourself grammar
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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 wrote:
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> > Sender: Â Â Â American Dialect Society
> > Poster: Â Â Â Wilson Gray
> > Subject: Â Â Â Re: How NOT to write a teach-yourself grammar
> > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 7:44 AM, Randy Alexander
> > wrote:
> >> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> >> Sender: Ā  Ā  Ā  American Dialect Society
> >> Poster: Ā  Ā  Ā  Randy Alexander
> >> Subject: Ā  Ā  Ā Re: How NOT to write a teach-yourself grammar
> >> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>
> >> On Fri, Sep 24, 2010 at 1:45 PM, Wilson Gray 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
> >>
> >> ------------------------------------------------------------
> >> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >>
> >
> > 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
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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