From: Arnaud Fournet
Message: 61239
Date: 2008-11-02
----- Original Message -----
From: "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...>
>
>>> (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 ?
>
> The usual: outlines of phonology, morphology, and syntax,
> often with a section on historical sources of the lexicon.
>
========
Smokescreen ?
Nothing clear that can be checked.
A.
========
>
>> 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, §241).
>
>> 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.
>
> <sigh> Obviously I should have written more. You
> completely missed the point: that was not offered as a
> minimal pair. The relevant part of the sentence is the
> first part; the second was included in the interests of
> honesty, as it somewhat weakens the force of the first part.
> Pope's §241 in full shows that an analysis of French that
> distinguishes /u/ and /w/ has been possible at least since
> the 16th century.
>
==========
You have a very strange way of drawing this paragraph §241 in the direction
that suites your unproved and inadequate approach.
She speaks of "countertonic vowel" : this is what you translate as /w/ !!
Fluctuations [..] continued into Modern French
reduction of syllabic value.
There's no /w/ or whatever.
This is your personal over-interpretation.
Read it again.
Arnaud