From: Arnaud Fournet
Message: 61215
Date: 2008-11-02
----- Original Message -----
From: "bmscotttg" <BMScott@...>
> as regards French,
> I was meaning that initial clusters like #wr- and #wl- don't exist,
> but this is only one more feature.
And I was pointing out that since they also don't exist in English,
which certainly has a phoneme /w/, it's a rather unconvincing feature.
==========
Yes,
As I wrote myself, it's only one more feature.
Arnaud
=======
> The point was the sound -w- only appears in very limited contexts,
> as a prevocalic component of diphthongues.
So? It's a glide phoneme; why should it behave like a fully
consonantal phoneme? (By the way, every serious linguistic
description of French that I've read gives French three glide
phonemes, /w/, /j/, and /turned-h/.)
=======
What kind of serious linguistic descriptions ?
They are not phonemes, they are just closed vowels used as first components
of diphthongs.
Does it not strike you there is a 100% coincidence between three closed
vowels /u/ /i/ and /y/ and three first components ?
What about Occam's razor ?
It's useless to invent phonemes with a hyper-unbalanced distribution
when you can describe the system without them using diphthongs.
Arnaud
========
Not at all: I'm explaining why I think that you're wrong. (I don't
play that kind of game, and I don't appreciate the suggestion that
I would.) I agree with Rick: you're being misled by the orthography.
> I was expecting this from you, so I'm not surprised.
Watch it: that kind of insult is altogether unnecessary.
========
I can't see why my negative expectations (that were actually fulfilled) are
insults.
Arnaud
======
> Do you understand what a minimal pair is ?
Yes. I am aware that morpheme boundaries can have phonological
consequences and that many people accordingly use a more restrictive
definition of 'minimal pair' than the one that I was using above; if
your prefer to call <loua> ~ <loi> a near-minimal pair, feel free
to do so.
=======
I think most of what you have written in the last 48 hours could be used in
a introductory course in Phonology as a benchmark collection of idiocies.
I'm afraid you don't understand what a minimal pair is.
Idiotic phonology : Lesson 1
A minimal pair made up of variants of the same word :
Message 61150
> In fact the consonantalization of the initial of <oui> was
> already accepted by the 16th century grammarians, though
> fluctuations between /wi/ and /ui/ continued into modern
> French (Pope, ยง241).
>> Brian
=======
To the beginner :
A minimal pair must be made up of two different words.
<oui> /ui/ being [wi] or [ui] does not prove /w/ exists.
Fluctuation between phonemes should not be confused with free variants of
one phoneme.
Idiotic phonology : Lesson 2
A minimal pair made up of a two-syllable word with two morphemes and a
one-syllable word with one morpheme.
> > /w/ is certainly marginal in French, but there are a few
>> minimal pairs, e.g., <loua> [lua] vs. <loi> [lwa]
>> Brian
======
To the beginner :
A minimal pair must be made up of two different words with the same syllabic
structure
and most recommendably both should be mono-morphemic.
A.
============
It may be that French can be given a satisfactory phonemic analysis
in which /u/ has allophones [u] and [w]; I *have* seen such an
analysis of Italian. But the analyses of French that I've seen use
two phonemes, a vowel and a glide. And if there are competing
analyses, I tend to prefer those that are closer to the surface
realizations.
Brian
======
If you are dealing with a superficial phonetic level,
Don't speak about phonemes, speak about sounds.
You don't understand what you are talking about.
Arnaud
==========
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