Zompist Bboard Again

Starbeam wrote: ↑Sun Aug 13, 2023 11:25 am

Creyeditor wrote: ↑Sat Aug 12, 2023 2:15 pm

Starbeam wrote: ↑Sat Aug 12, 2023 12:34 pm

Do you remember where you saw it? No worries if not, tho i'm curious if it was a formal source or informal hobby thing like this.

I think it was in Paul Kiparsky's chapter in the book titled "Phonological Typology" edited by Larry Hyman and Frans Plank.

I am actually impressed you remember the source so vividly. Thank you! Tho may you please list them hereon? If you're able ofc.

I guess you mean 'link'? Or there is some use of list that I, as a non-native speaker, don't know yet. Anyway, here is a link to the book but it's behind a paywall: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/ ... 51931/html

I actually read the hardcopy in a library.

Starbeam wrote: ↑Sat Aug 12, 2023 12:34 pmBecause i agree with the idea that standard English /ŋ/ is basically /ng/ ([ŋg]), with the /g/ dropping at the end of a syllable, unless a vowel follows in the next.

I invoke Occam's razor here. No need for such a convoluted explenation. Diachronically yes, /ŋ/ came from /ŋg/, but synchronically there's no reason to maintain it's not a phoneme (the biggest evidence being "singer" etc. nog having the /g/).


JAL

I love the view that /h/ and /ŋ/ are allophones.

Creyeditor wrote: ↑Tue Aug 15, 2023 2:18 amI guess you mean 'link'? Or there is some use of list that I, as a non-native speaker, don't know yet. Anyway, here is a link to the book but it's behind a paywall: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/ ... 51931/html

I actually read the hardcopy in a library.

Oh, i meant to simply state the source(s), even without a link. I apologize, 'list' was clumsy wording. Is it easier or harder to read formal linguistics texts as a non-native speaker, btw?

jal wrote: ↑Tue Aug 15, 2023 4:21 am

Starbeam wrote: ↑Sat Aug 12, 2023 12:34 pmBecause i agree with the idea that standard English /ŋ/ is basically /ng/ ([ŋg]), with the /g/ dropping at the end of a syllable, unless a vowel follows in the next.

I invoke Occam's razor here. No need for such a convoluted explenation. Diachronically yes, /ŋ/ came from /ŋg/, but synchronically there's no reason to maintain it's not a phoneme (the biggest evidence being "singer" etc. nog having the /g/).

I agree with this here - it is generally better to posit simpler phonological rules than more complex ones when they adequately predict the surface forms.

Of course, I have found cases in the English I am familiar where neither simple phonological rules nor more complex ones seem to work. Simple rules based on simple tests like being able to form minimal pairs (e.g. if minimal pairs were a rock-solid test, my dialect of English should have phonemic vowel length) quickly run into issues (e.g. vowel length would still be allophonic in final syllables without obstruents in their codas, which questions whether there would be phonemic vowel length in the first place).

But the same goes for complex rules which attempt to predict a wide range of realized forms from a narrow range of idealized underlying forms (e.g. why is the /t/ in tomorrow or tonight liable to be flapped, or why is the /b/ able to (or one or both /b/'s in probably), the /v/ in over or every, or the /ð/ in other liable to be elided, or like, when there is no real way to create phonological rules that predict these particular cases from idealized underlying forms, and furthermore trying to encode these in the underlying forms themselves causes problems with the coherence of the phonological system that is posited, e.g. eliding the /v/ in every causes major problems because the resulting /ɛr/ does not merge with the /ɛr/ in merry because the /ɛ/ in every is centralized whereas the /ɛ/ in merry is not).

I personally have not found any good solution to this dilemma myself, even though I have thought about it way too much. The best solution I have thought of is that words have both underlying forms and realized forms and these need not match each other; the more frequently the words are used the more likely these are to differ, whereas the underlying forms still govern things such as rhyming and phonotactic rules w.r.t. loanwords and coinages.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Tue Aug 15, 2023 12:31 pm I love the view that /h/ and /ŋ/ are allophones.

But I feel it is wrong. A test would be to ask native speakers of English to speak the word hang backwards. I guess that few if any would respond, [hæŋ].

WeepingElf wrote: ↑Tue Aug 15, 2023 1:31 pm

Travis B. wrote: ↑Tue Aug 15, 2023 12:31 pm I love the view that /h/ and /ŋ/ are allophones.

But I feel it is wrong. A test would be to ask native speakers of English to speak the word hang backwards. I guess that few if any would respond, [hæŋ].

Of course it is wrong - I was just making light of linguists' funny ideas about phonology, in this case of the idea that some of them seem to have that one can define phonemes based on distribution alone.

If we don't concede that eng is a phoneme in English, then to deal with pairs like singer and finger, we would need not only word-final rules, but morpheme-final rules. But then to explain opaque cases like "dingy," we would have to concede that these morpheme boundaries need not be current. But then we loop back around to "finger," which also has a defunct morpheme boundary and as such does not have eng. The whole thing quickly becomes a nightmare unless we're willing to just let eng be a phoneme.

Well, you don't need morpheme-sensitive rules, you can make do with phonemic syllabification.

WeepingElf wrote: ↑Tue Aug 15, 2023 1:31 pm [A test would be to ask native speakers of English to speak the word hang backwards. I guess that few if any would respond, [hæŋ].

I may have to try this on some unsuspecting victims. The curious bit is that if the usual phonotactics is correct (and I think it is!) then the word can't be said backwards. We just can't say [ŋeh]. But it might be amusing to hear people try.

(I don't think it would teach us much anyway— this sort of language game is highly affected by spelling, plus I expect people will just come up with an ad hoc solution which tells you about their reasoning but not about underlying forms.)

zompist wrote: ↑Wed Aug 16, 2023 6:12 pm

WeepingElf wrote: ↑Tue Aug 15, 2023 1:31 pm [A test would be to ask native speakers of English to speak the word hang backwards. I guess that few if any would respond, [hæŋ].

I may have to try this on some unsuspecting victims. The curious bit is that if the usual phonotactics is correct (and I think it is!) then the word can't be said backwards. We just can't say [ŋeh]. But it might be amusing to hear people try.

(I don't think it would teach us much anyway— this sort of language game is highly affected by spelling, plus I expect people will just come up with an ad hoc solution which tells you about their reasoning but not about underlying forms.)

Yeah, I expect something like [gəˈnɑ] would be pretty likely...

Trying to produces [g(ə)'nɛ(h)]. For me, /æ/ is roughly [e] before [ŋ], which I instinctually perceive as the dress-vowel, for me usually [ɛ].

I asked someone and after a bit of thought they said [ɡnæ]. The short vowel there is interesting, but clearly it’s an orthographic reversal.

If someone actually said [hæŋ], that would probably just mean that he'd got that joke

Travis B. wrote: ↑Tue Aug 15, 2023 1:12 pmOf course, I have found cases in the English I am familiar where neither simple phonological rules nor more complex ones seem to work. (...) when there is no real way to create phonological rules that predict these particular cases from idealized underlying forms (...) I personally have not found any good solution to this dilemma

But isn't this how sound changes start anyway, by isolated cases that may come about by the frequency they're used, in combination with surrounding phones, and then it spreads to other words perceived as similar based on some rule that needn't be the reason for the initial change at all?


JAL

What do you call a small but professionally done printed document, usually glossy, with between a few pages and a few dozen pages, industrially stapled together, often meant to tell you all about a product, event, company, organisation, institution, or event schedule?

Raphael wrote: ↑Sat Aug 26, 2023 12:29 pm What do you call a small but professionally done printed document, usually glossy, with between a few pages and a few dozen pages, industrially stapled together, often meant to tell you all about a product, event, company, organisation, institution, or event schedule?

Sounds like a 'brochure'.

Richard W wrote: ↑Sat Aug 26, 2023 3:06 pm

Raphael wrote: ↑Sat Aug 26, 2023 12:29 pmWhat do you call a small but professionally done printed document, usually glossy, with between a few pages and a few dozen pages, industrially stapled together, often meant to tell you all about a product, event, company, organisation, institution, or event schedule?

Sounds like a 'brochure'.

*nods* brochure or pamphlet both work for me...sometimes its just an ad (or, for pragmatics, a reminder, if the lawncare company left it on my door)

Thank you!

keenir wrote: ↑Sat Aug 26, 2023 11:32 pm *nods* brochure or pamphlet both work for me...

Not a native speaker, so just to be sure - for me, brochure is independent of content, while pamphlet implies some kind of ideological (religious, political) content, or at least some kind of opinion-piece / rant. Or am I just carrying that implication over from German?