Lars Marius Garshol wrote:

>
> * Lars Marius Garshol
> |
> | A linguistic dictionary told me[1] that segments are any kind of
> | speech fragment. Is that correct?
>
> * Peter T. Daniels
> |
> | No. "Any kind of speech fragment" might refer to "utterance," perhaps,
> | but a segment is a minimal speech fragment, a component of a syllable,
> | viz., a consonant or vowel or etc.
>
> This sure is difficult. Minimal in the sense that they are atomic?
> Wouldn't that mean that segments are letters, period? Can syllables be
> segments, for example? It would seem that they cannot, since syllables
> are not atomic.

In the etymological sense, "indivisible"?

In a supposedly ideal alphabet, letters correspond to segments.

> | "Phonemes" are artifacts of theory and analysis. "Segments" are the
> | things that get analyzed.
>
> That I didn't understand. How can anyone claim that the term "segment"
> is independent of theory?

If linguistics were an axiomatic system, perhaps "segment" would be
stipulated. But it isn't, so it doesn't matter.

> * Lars Marius Garshol
> |
> | Features of pronunciation are so small they can't be independently
> | articulated, and if the characters of a script have graphic elements
> | that correlate with such tiny features of pronunciation they are
> | featural. Right?
>
> * Peter T. Daniels
> |
> | It's not the smallness, it's the simultaneity. [b], for instance, has
> | features including [+ voice], [+ labial], [- continuant],
>
> Aha! So I can't pronounce a feature on its own simply because a
> feature is just an aspect of a sound, and not an entire sound. So if
> "voice" is a feature it may not be too short to be pronounced, but I'd
> need to combine it with other features in order to have something to
> pronounce at all? So I can't pronounce "voice" on its own, I need to
> have voice + labial, voice + alveolar, or voice + velar to be able to
> pronounce something with voice?
>
> | or however you choose to define your features.
>
> Oh. So there isn't a closed set of features? There are different
> theories proposing different sets of features?

Binary features are preferred over multivalued features, so you're going
to see combinations of [± dorsal] and [± coronal] for place of
articulation. Do you want to call different ways of describing things
different "theories"? Ok.

> | In "boon," for instance, [+ voice] continues throughout the word,
> | while other features go on and off.
>
> Right. Are features always properties of phonemes, meaning that a
> phoneme can be fully and uniquely characterized by its features?
> So {[+ voice], [+ labial], [- continuant]} == 'b', for example?

One approach that uses binary features simply dispenses with the notion
"phoneme," so you can't say features are properties of phonemes.

> Let me ask one test question to see if I understand this: is the the
> tall/deep distinction in Shavian featural?

Mr. Read seems not to have been terribly familiar with phonetics. Most
of the tall/deep rotations correspond to voicing, but then he spoils it
by pairing l and r, m and n.

The reflection pairing p and f, b and v might have been featural, but he
fails to apply it to the other stop/fricative pairs.

So even as an attempt at a featural system, it's a failure.

And the vowel inventory is ludicrous!

(Of course, Shaw wasn't interested in a phonetic alphabet per se; he
wanted to impose RP on all the stupid people who spoke non-RP dialects
all over Britain (or maybe just England, or maybe the world). His
"socialism" was at best opportunistic -- he was interested in épater-ing
the bourgeoisie, not in improving the lot of the poor.)

> <URL: http://www.omniglot.com/writing/shavian.htm >
>
> * Peter T. Daniels
> |
> | They're not classes, they're types. It's a typology. You might even say
> | they're ... prototypes.
>
> Do you mean to say that types in a typology and prototypes (defined by
> means of an example) are the same thing?

I dunno. Sounds good to me.

> * Lars Marius Garshol
> |
> | Peter Daniels has kept describing his typology as historically based,
> | but I've so far failed to understand what he means by that, given that
> | none of his definitions even refer to historical aspects of the scripts.
> | Also, his types have instances that are historically (or genetically)
> | distant, so what's historically based about his typology I just don't
> | know.
>
> * Peter T. Daniels
> |
> | I didn't do that. I said that when I noticed the distinctions between
> | syllabary and abugida, and between alphabet and abjad, I realized the
> | historical implications of these vast differences.
>
> In that case I misread
>
> <URL: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/qalam/message/534 >

Well, I don't know what you're referring to, and I don't appreciate
being forced to click a link and try to read your mind.

> That I never understood how you could make such a claim fits well with
> your insistence that you haven't made it. :-)
>
> | Before 1987, people didn't recognize there were four different kinds
> | of things there. (They said things like "incomplete" or "impure" or
> | "hybrid" or "semi," etc.)
>
> Right. Those are the key indications that the typology has something
> wrong with it, but I not that we don't seem to be entirely rid of
> those descriptions yet. Given that there are cases like Orkhon it
> seems difficult to get rid of all of them.

One. More. Time.

Why does *every* script have to be perfectly accommodated by the
typology?

No language fits perfectly into a linguistic typology; why should any
(let alone all) script(s) be expected to fit perfectly into a
grammatological typology?
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@...