Re: Terminology defs

Bryan Maloney wrote:

> To expand on morphology:
>
> The morpheme often spelled in English "-ly" is an English morpheme
> consisting of the phonemes /l/ and /y/.  However, there is no English
> morpheme comprised of /n/ followed by /g/--that violates English
> morphological characteristics (I prefer that to "rules", which some folks
> use, since I'm a biologist and teleological language makes me all oooogly).
Exactly what would those rules be that you're referring to? Are you
talking about phonological rules? If so, I might believe that:  I can't
think of one example where a nasal stop followed by a velar stop does
not assimilate in place of articulation:  [n] / _g --> [N].  But morphological
rules?

(Also -- there's no particular reason to single out linguistic "rules" as
somehow methodologically inferior to those of the physical sciences.
At base, even *those* sciences make fundamental epistemological
assumptions about the world [e.g., "We know that our senses are
giving us valid data"], so why bother?)

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Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
ICQ#: 4315704   AIM: Deuterotom
Website: <http://www.angelfire.com/tx/eclectorium/>
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and
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spirits at the dawn of day. - Thomas Jefferson
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