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Re: Optimum number of symbols

From:Roger Mills <romilly@...>
Date:Thursday, May 23, 2002, 20:02
Ray Brown wrote:


>At 10:44 pm -0500 21/5/02, Thomas R. Wier wrote: >[snip] >> >>Actually, I was referring to different forms: <Rad> and <Rat> >>are homophonous in the singular, and yet are phonologically >>distinct in the plural: <Räder> /RE:d@/ and <Räter> /RE:t@/. >>This does bear on the criticism of a true phonemic system, since >>a true phonemic system will fail to capture phonological >>neutralizations like that in the German data I presented. >>That is, /Rat/ is really two distinct words: /Rat/-1 and /Rat/-2,
Quite so.
> >Surely, phonemically they are /ra:d/ and /ra:t/ respectively, tho both >pronounced [ra:t], since in syllable final position /d/ is pronounce [t].
The first person to suggest that to the early phonemicists was drummed out of the corps for introducing an "abstraction", I think. The generative idea of underlying (abstract) forms, operated on by a series of ordered rules, was IMO a great improvement, even though Chomsky and Halle carried it a little too far.
>But the falling together of final /t/ and /d/ is one of those awkward >features that in my view suggests the phonemic analysis does not tell us >the whole story.
All too true. Slightly off the subject-- Perhaps our high-school Latin teachers didn't want to trouble our little minds with details, but it strikes me now that a lot of the bothersome "irregular" forms could have been explained more simply by introducing us to a few rules and a little linguistic history: e.g. the root of lex/legis is /leg-/, the nom. has |x| /ks/ simply because of required devoicing. (and sim. in related lego, -ere, lectus); and the addition (actually dropping) of -t- in all those participles in /-ns ~ntis / . (Or perhaps others' Latin teachers did a better job than mine.......?) Similar in Spanish, the orthographic- and radical-changing verbs (at least the regular ones with e~ie and o~ue) could have been explained better, rather than just treated as exceptions.

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Thomas R. Wier <trwier@...>