Re: [Bulk] Re: [Bulk] [tied] Re: loading

From: Grzegorz Jagodziński
Message: 71807
Date: 2014-10-01

Oh, please... you are trying to find problems where there are absent... Let's discuss about something more interesting. You do not want to make yourself fit to the others - it is your problem, and only yours. Show respect to the others, however, and do not try to force "standards" because they are not standards in any respect.

You are completely wrong in many points, including terming PIE a *fiction* - but it is as fictional as Proto-Germanic! We may discuss of course what reconstruction - PIE or PG is closer to the unknown reality (and the answer is obvious) but it does not change the fact that both are only reconstructions.

Once again, IPA is not a standard, in any respect. People from English-speaking countries may think differently but it does not matter. The world does not end by English-speaking countries! No one should be so narrow-minded. In Slavic countries there are also numerous linguists who make their examinations, and only very small number of them use IPA at all. It is not because of the tradition but because the fact that IPA is not convenient for Slavists (and many others). You may like to write all those arches but we like and will like to use single symbols for single phonemes. IPA creators have never understood this.

Anyway, IPA is not a standard. Go to a bookshop in UK or USA, and buy an English dictionary which uses IPA, good luck with it. Read a book on Indo-European (Germanic, Italic, Altaic, not even speaking of Slavic lngs), and find IPA in it. I do not say that such works are absent at all. But if IPA was a real standard (not only in opinion of its creators and a small number of followers... I would even say fans), it would be used in 80-90% books, and it is very far from being true.

Once again, there is a SCIENTIFIC STANDARD for writing both PIE and other reconstructed IE proto-languages (like PG) and it is not IPA. It is not (only) a question of tradition but (also) of a considered choice. Imagine that the reconstructed language is as real as natural languages (as an object of scientific examination, it _is_ that real - but IE linguistics is not fiction but science, even if some people still call it art). Do you know a single language that uses IPA as its written standard? Notice that unlike English, there are languages with spelling very close to phonematical one. And still none of them uses what you call "standard". Unlike the metric system which has incomparably wider application.

I have read some works of linguists who describe small and little known languages, and no one of them uses IPA. I have also read some proposals of artificial languages, made both for normal use (like Esperanto) and just for fun (like Loxian) - and none of them uses IPA. The conclusion is: IPA may seem to be ideal for some people but it does not work well in practice! It is just not practical with all those digraphs and arches you like so much. So, any comparison of IPA and the metrical system is just ridiculous. The metrical units are convenient (much more convenient than all those inches and yards) - and IPA is not convenient for lots of applications, including those in IE-stics.

It is as inconvenient as the need to use special third-party programs (like BabelMap which I know perfectly) only for writing some strange looking symbols, instead of just using the keyboard in any text editor. I do not say it is impossible, or I do not try to find a valid excuse - as there is nothing for that I should say "excuse me". Which is more, both parts in communication need to have special fonts to see those arches correctly. Normal fonts, provided with the operating system of the computer, do not allow to see the arches on their places, see " ͡͡ts". The arch should be above the two symbols while it is in front / left of them. Again, I do not say there are no fonts that show all diacritics as they should - but it means additional, unnecessary troubles again. Note also that this stupid system accepted by IPA creators and followers violates the most basic rule of phonemic spelling: one letter for one phoneme. No arched digraphs should be acceptable. It is so because some IPA followers believe (yes! we are talking of beliefs, not of knowledge) that affricates are two phonemes joined together! From the point of view, say, Polish phonology, it is just a nonsense, an absurd. Some people realize this, and this is why special, single symbols made of two letters have been added to the IPA inventory. But recognizing / differentiating of "ts" (2 letters) and " HTML clipboard ʦ" (1 letter, code 0x02A6 in Unicode) is very hard in practice, again. Using "ts : c" is much simpler, and this is what almost all Slavicists do in fact.

You are also wrong thinking that [a] (or anything else) means a low central vowel. No, IPA has not a symbol for such a phoneme (instead of just negating my statements, show me that the organization called International Phonetic Association terms [a] central). The symbol [a], by definition, means a front vowel. Not as front as [æ] but still front. Yes, in a given language it can be accepted for the low central phoneme but not in general.

So please, finish this unnecessary discussion because you are wrong. The fact is that very little number of IE-sts uses IPA (I would even say that no one uses it, counting serious thinkers) and you will not change it.

You may love IPA very much but the fact is that it is too little popular to use it here - unless you are so malicious to want to impose your personal ("idiosyncratic") ideas and this way to make others' lives harder.

Writing of Altaistics or Uralistics as of "idiosyncratic linguistic theories" you seem to prove you are urgently looking for an occassion to quarrel just for quarrelling. It is not a kindergarten here, and I am not the best partner for it, please look one for it somewhere else. Anyway, I have just finished this thread with one, very small request: do not provoke people who comply standards that are compulsory in the IE-an field of research only because you think everybody should comply your "standards" instead.

Grzegorz Jagodziński


W dniu 2014-09-28 13:40, octavianoaf24@... [cybalist] pisze:
 
---In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, <flavianops@...> wrote :
>
There is a reason for the Indo-europeanist tradition, which is a question of accuracy, or rather lack of it. Consider the glottalic theory versus the traditional one. Both have problems.  One cannot be sure if PIE *d should be represented either as /d/ or /ť/. The phonetic symbols convey a level of accuracy that may never be met. Nor can anyone say if the PIE *e was pronounced as /e/ or /ε/. What is represented as /bh/ can could be realized as breathy voiced, aspirated voiced, or aspirated voiceless consonant, depending on the theory one is more confident with. There is no such accuracy on the phonological reconstruction so as to represent the reconstructed forms with phonetic symbols instead of letters. It would be like represent a measure of 5 cm taken with a ruler as 50.00 mm, as if it was taken with a micrometer.

>
Please notice I was referring to Ancient Greek and Proto-Germanic, not the entity called "PIE", which in my opinion is a *fiction*, albeit a convenient one. In such a context we should speak of *phonemic* rather than phonetic values. This is why e.g. the traditional "voiced apirated" /bh, dh, gh/ (/bʰ, dʰ, gʰ/ is a *misrepresentation*) convey just a little more value than pure *algebraic* symbols like those intended for the so-called "laryngeals" (h₁, h₂, etc).

W dniu 2014-09-25 11:04, octavianoaf24@... [cybalist] pisze:

---In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, <grzegorj2000@...> wrote :

>
It is not tradition, it is a pragmatic approach, for a number of reasons.
>
I'd rather say a biased or idiosyncratic one.

> First: IPA is NOT perfect, especially for languages (like Polish) which contain affricates contrasting with consonantal clusters (like c : ts, č : tš, ʒ : dz, ǯ : dž etc.).
>
Actually, IPA uses the ͡͡    diacritic to convey that meaning, so e.g. ͡͡ts is a single phoneme.

IPA is clearly an English-biased standard, uncomfortable when analysing e.g. Slavic languages (this is the main reason for which IPA has NOT a wide application in Slavistics). Or Nostratic, where affricates are single sounds, not clusters as IPA suggests. Tell Altaicists, Uralicists etc. to use IPA...
>
Idiosyncratic linguistic theories using idosyncratic symbols. Too bad.

> Even worse, IPA has not a symbol for central [a]! 
>
Really? I don't think so.

> Writing [a] we suggest it was front, and writing [e] we suggest it was mid-close (and not mid-open). There are no reasons for such a suggestion. So, there is also no reason for writing IPA symbols instead of the ones widely spread in literature.
>
Literature = tradition.

> Also writing þ instead of the stylized Greek letter theta (used for IPA) is more comfortable: I have thorn on my keyboard layouts (it is used in Icelandic) while I have not the Greek alphabet, and the more I do not have IPA symbols!
>
This can hardly be a valid excuse about modern computers and software. I'd recommened you try a nice program called BabelMap

> BTW, sometimes IPA is very far from being accurate: English c/k (like in "cat") is often aspirated and should not be spelt with just [k] (in fact, in most cases it is pronounced like Greek khei and not like kappa).
>
Most of the time, we content ourselves with *phonemic* transcriptions, not phonetic ones, so in the context mentioned, phonemic /k/ is phonetically realized as a voiceless aspirated [].

> Then, the Indo-Europeanists convention is as good and as bad as IPA is (and sometimes it is even more accurate). But wide spreading in the literature works in favour of it, and against using IPA.
>
But science advocates for standarization, and this why e.g. the metric system is almost universally preferred to English units.