Meaning change with emphasis shift

[Jeffrey Kopp]

On Tue, 5 Nov 2002 21:53:01 -0500, "David D. Robertson" <ddr11 at COLUMBIA.EDU> wrote:

>Moving on...Another example of contrast that we know, characteristic of
>Grand Ronde, is /khApa/ (stress shown by capital letter) meaning "at",
>versus /khapA/ meaning "there".  Given their locative sense, these are
>presumably from the same root.

Hey, that's great.  The word audibly moves, and the change in meaning is almost self-evident.  You can clearly hear it--but it might not be apparent in writing.  One could easily gather it from context--but it might not be visible in a dictionary entry unless it was carefully explained.  I can begin to appreciate now how much subtlety could have (or may have) been lost by recording the Jargon using our 26-character alphabet.

I believe children (whose vocabulary still developing and therefore limited) assign different meanings to some words by shifting their emphasis.  This may be easily overlooked by adults, but I can remember it from my own early years, in the way my sister and I communicated.  (When we were between say, 3 and 7, we could make ourselves understood by one another much more quickly and easily than by our adult-vocabulary parents.)  A parallel expedient might be naturally (possibly even unconsciously) employed in a limited-vocabulary pidgin.

J.