From: Rick McCallister
Message: 61136
Date: 2008-10-31
> From: Arnaud Fournet <fournet.arnaud@...>So, can I get someone more knowledgeable to settle this for me?
> Subject: Re: [tied] Re: [pieml] Labiovelars versus Palatals + Labiovelar Approximant
> To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
> Date: Friday, October 31, 2008, 6:28 PM
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Rick McCallister"
> <gabaroo6958@...>
> >
> > That's a crock of pure bolshevik.
> > Spanish writes /w/ as <CuV>, generally as
> <guV>
> > or <huV>
> > French has <oui> /wi/
> > ===========
> > No,
> > as regards French
> > oui is a vocalic diphtongue [ui]
> > as is shown from the fact
> > that the homophone word ouie makes "liaison"
> > such as les Z-ouies with Z in plural
> > something that is impossible with a consonant initial.
> > The fact that it sounds like [wi] is irrelevant
> > from the point of view of French phonology,
> > [wi] is a vocalic diphtongue /ui/
> > and there is no /w/ phoneme.
> > [w] is a "sound" not a phoneme.
> > In slow "spelling" speech, oui is /u/+/i/
> not
> > **/wi/.
>
> Phonetics is all about sound, you're talking about
> convention. If French
> <oui> sounds like English <we>, then
> <ouV> and <wV> are the same sound
> --at least until someone shows me otherwise
> ==========
> They may sound superficially about the same,
> but from the French point of view [wi] is just fast speech
> for /ui/ a
> vocalic diphthongue with accent of the last part.
> As a matter of fact, u in /ui/ or /ua/ can be changed for
> other vowels o
> (somewhat provincial) and ö : a very absurd and effeminate
> way invented by
> some caricaturists that make moi "me" sounds like
> [möa].
> One of the candidates to the presidency has been
> caricatured this way.
> This only makes it even clearer that the segment /u/ in oui
> and moi is
> vocalic and has nothing to do with w. Möa is
> understandable as a queer
> variant of [mua] "moi" but [mva] is a non French
> combination.
> A
> ========
>
> Liaison is a convention and the liaison of oui is rooted in
> another time
> when it was pronounced /ui/.
> ====
> No,
> Liaison is alive in real speech
> and what liaisons are possible indicates what the status of
> initials is.
> And I suppose oui used to be /oi/ not /ui/ from hoc-illus
> > o-i > oui
>
>
> ========
> But if I went down the streets of Paris saying /ui/ instead
> of /wi/,
> wouldn't people give me some strange stares? Or at
> least more stares than
> they usually give Americans butchering their language?
> =============
> /wi/ does not exist in French,
> as I told you.
> A.
>
>
> >
> > I suppose a native speaker of English would never
> spell
> > week as oo-eek in
> > two syllables,
> > but ouie is spelled this way : ou-i(e) two syllables.
> >
> > This is not true in Northern French
> > where wagon is /wagoN/
> > and **les Z-wagons is impossible.
> > and wagon would not be spelled ou-a-gon.
> > You can contrast it with les Z-oies /ua/
> > standard French is les /V/agons with /v/ instead of
> /w/.
> >
> > and I guess the same is true in Spanish.
> > huevos in plural probably syllabicates as lo-swe-vos
> > not like los-we-vos
> > but I'm not a speaker of Spanish so I let you say
> how
> > it works.
> >
> > This has nothing to do with bolshevism,
> > I'm afraid your phonological approach is a bit
> > superficial and tainted by
> > the fact you are a native speaker of a language where
> /w/
> > is a phoneme.
> >
> > Arnaud
>
> In Spanish, it's definitely /lo-swe-Bos/ or /lo-hwe-Bo/
> but you do have variations such as
> un huevo as /uN-we-Bo/ (with velar n) vs / u-nwe-Bo/
> of course, not everyone uses velar N
>