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Re: HELP: Vocabulary

From:Philippe Caquant <herodote92@...>
Date:Sunday, July 18, 2004, 19:41
--- Trebor Jung <treborjung@...> wrote:
> When I try coming up > with compounds, they > all seem to be imprecise; when I try to make the > compound more precise, the > result is something like 'to continuously attempt to > crush with the teeth' > for 'to chew'. That is far too long... Or maybe I > need to add some > grammatical categories to my language?
The definition I found for 'mâcher' (to chew) in a French dictionary looks like: 'to grind with teeth before swallowing, or to triturate inside the mouth'. Chewing a gum doesn't really look like 'attempting to crush' it. But about your problem, I'm afraid there there won't be any other way than lexicalization. If you don't want to repeat all the time expressions like 'to triturate inside the mouth', then you just invent a word like, say, 'to chew', whose definition in the lexicon will be 'to triturate inside the mouth'. Otherwise the language will be awfully periphrastic. Just think for a moment of the semantic power and complexity of such a tiny word like 'to sell'. Isn't it very handy ? If someone doesn't know what it means, then he's supposed to look in the lexicon and find, for ex 'to yield [something] [to somebody] for an agreed price', all these concepts having to be defined too, of course. So much meaning in only four letters (and three phonemes) ? Nay, natlangs are really great, if you think of it. (Some will say that especially English is great, since in German, for ex, 'verkaufen' requires 9 letters and 7 or 8 phonemes - I have absolutely no intention of discussing the number of phonemes in 'verkaufen'). [secund topic concatenated because of daily limit threat] Normally I'm not really interested in phonetics, but discussion on this list makes me think sometimes. So I listened carefully to an Irish song interpreted in English by the (great) female singer Sinead O'Connor. It's called 'Paddy's Lament' and is well known, I believe. I was trying to detect differences of pronunciation between the English I learned and her way of pronouncing. First, I noticed words like 'ye' or 'youse' for 'you', and 'Americay' for America, but this is not really a matter of pronunciation I think, rather dialectal words (the written text mentions that orthograph). Then I also noticed that consonants were uttered in a strong way (stronger than in French), but as far as I know, this is the case in English too : 'p', for example, is much stronger than in French. (In another song, I also noticed that 'she' seems to be pronounced not quite I learned it, something between 'shee' and 'shea'). Then I concentrated on the sibilants (is that the word ') like 's' and 'z'. When you listen to a record (any record), such sounds seem to come out separated from the rest of the text, just like they were written on a different music line. So the 's' and 'z' are quite easy to localize, but to my surprise, it seemed to me that the 'd' and 't' (dentals, I presume ') seemed to belong to the same kind of sounds. Not only are they much stronger than in French, but they seem to be followed by something like a 'h' that turns to a very short 'z' : 'And I wished I was at home in Dhear old Dhublin', or 'And I wished I was at home in Dzear old Dzublin' I wonder if English people also notice this as something peculiar ? I also wonder if there is just one phoneme existing both in French and English that could be reasonably considered as the same sound ? To me, it seems that there is none (1), while between French and German, or Spanish, or Russian, or other languages, there are some. Is English a human language ? (1) No, this is exaggerated. The 'z' in 'reason' sounds the same as the one in 'raison', and sounds like 'm', 'n' (but not 'l') are also very similar. But when you describe English vowels, not only have they nothing to do with vowels from other languages, but also you should take into account the melody of them (does X-Sampa do that ? I bet for no). When a vowel in French, for ex, is usually uttered on a single tone, an English vocalic sound sounds like a whole melody : a simple 'a' could nearly be compared to the first verse of 'It's a long way to Tipperary' ;-) [third topic... answering to Christophe] An interesting pair in French: un boeuf / des boeufs (an ox / oxes). In "boeuf", you pronounce the final "f", but not in "boeufs". But, more interesting, the sound "oeu" is not the same in singular and in plural. Singular is open (like in "oeil"), plural is closed (like in "deux"). BTW, "oeil" is simply a perversion of Latin "oculus", and "yeux", of "oculos". ===== Philippe Caquant "High thoughts must have high language." (Aristophanes, Frogs) __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail is new and improved - Check it out! http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail