Re: tilde Re: Number of writing systems

El Tue, 04 Oct 2005 23:32:51 -0400, "Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim@...> escribió:

>Spanish has a phoneme /ñ/, does it not? (Or maybe in your phonology it's
>a sequence /nj/.) The only graphic distinction between that phoneme and
>the dental nasal is the tilde, is it not? Thus the tilde indicates the
>palatalization of n. (Its history is immaterial.)

I'm afraid it's not. But now I'm only going to answer your line of argument.

>The tilde has no other use in Spanish, does it? Thus, the only function
>of the Spanish tilde is to indicate the palatalization of n. Not to
>indicate palatalization in general; only to indicate the palatalization
>of n.

Thank you. But then, I understand that it would be the same as to say that in Spanish the duplication of a grapheme is a palatalization mark only because the signs representing the lateral and palatal lateral phonemes are "l" and "ll" respectively; or as to say that in Spanish the "h" is a palatalization/affrication mark only because the signs representing the alveolar phoneme and the palatal affricate are "c" -next to palatal vowels- and "ch", respectively; or as to say that in Spanish the vertical stroke of the "q" or the oblique one of the "Q" is a mark of consonantal feature only because the signs representing the velar vocalic phoneme and the velar consonantal one are "q/Q" and "o/O" respectively; or as to say that in Spanish the inversion in vertical axe of symmetry is an interdentalization mark only because the signs representing the voiceless alveolar fricative phoneme and the voiceless interdental fricative one are "s" and "z" respectively; or etc. etc. (all of them are also
unique examples as the hypothetic pair n/ñ used by you).

On the other hand, I understand that the Spanish tilde virgulilla it's not a mark of the system because it doesn't belong to the system as a tool for marking. Furthermore, the palatalization doesn't exist as a distinctive feature in Spanish language. The "ñ" is in Spanish a phoneme with its own identity, it's not a palatalized variant of the "n", as the "ll" is not a palatalized variant of the "l" and etc. etc.

Regards,
Agustín Barahona