Peter_Constable@... wrote:

>
> On 11/09/2001 12:27:06 PM Lars Marius Garshol wrote:
>
> >Now we're getting somewhere. What is a segment?
>
> If you're familiar with the notion of a phoneme, that is close to the
> notion of a segment. In phonology and phonetics, the simplifying
> assumption is made that the speech stream can be segmented into discrete
> units. Each of these would be atomic in the sense that is something that
> can be more or less independently articulated. There are also aspects of
> phonology that are "supra-segmental". These are characteristics of the
> speech stream that can span multiple segments: e.g. stress, tone,
> intonation.

You could say that "phoneme" is theory-dependent and "segment" isn't.

> >* Peter T. Daniels
> >|
> >| Scripts are not artificial objects, created by scientists, so of
> >| course there are no "pure" members of any of the classes.
>
> [snip]
>
> >| Yes, it is an Ethiopic word, and no, of course it isn't a member of
> >| a different class! Why would you think it is?
> >
> >Mainly because the modifications used to indicate the vowels are not
> >entirely systematic. There is a system, but it has deviations which
> >must be learned. Thinking about it I guess I agree that despite them
> >Ethiopic fits the class "abugida" better than it does "syllabary".
>
> As Peter D mentions, these classes don't have fixed boundaries, and the
> objects are not classified by a set of strictly required criteria. The
> classes have prototype definitions (see Lakoff's "Women, fire and
> dangerous things" for further discussion), and the best we can do is point
> to prototypical examples. So, ironically, Ethiopic script may not be the
> best script in terms of which to typify the class "abugida". I'm inclined
> to say that Evans' script (Cdn syllabics) is better as a prototypical
> example.

No, because it doesn't have marks -- you have to understand the concept
of "markedness" to view it that way.

The best example is Brahmi; I used "abugida" because (a) it fits into
the sequence abjad/alphabet/... nicely and (b) no one could come up with
a Sanskrit-based word that was manageable -- the best Bill could do was
something that started with "akshara" and went on for a lot more
syllables (something like 'garland of letters').
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...