Re: Optimum number of symbols

At 4:37 pm -0400 24/5/02, Mike S. wrote:
>Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...> wrote:
[snip]
>>If 'twas just an occasional quirk, then the pronunciation of ancient Greek
>>would be clear and non-contoversal.  It ain't either.
>
[snip]
>do that, and furthermore, unnecessary.  Phonemic scripts only need to
>indicate the *contrastive* units of speech.
Obviously, otherwise they wouldn't be phonemic - which is pecisely the
point I've been making.

>If, on the other hand, you are pointing out that phonemic scripts
>can be compromised by dialectal and diachronic changes (as was rampant
>in Greek and later in Latin),
No, I'm not - for the simple reason that until a Greek standard emerged
under the Koine, different regions of Greece used spellings which reflected
their own local pronunciations.  I'm talking about a synchronic situation.

[snip]
>
>Alternately, if you are pointing out that phonemic contrastiveness
>is lost because of, for example, lack of marked vowel length, then
>you are right.  Insofar as a script fails to contrast phonemes it
>is less than phonemic.
Which is what I've been trying to say  :)
All I've said is:
- until some were consciously contrived in the 20th cent., no alphabetic
script was fully phonemic; alphabets show a tendency towards phonemic
representation in the sense understood by the  phoneme theory.
- some alphabetic scripts are less phonemic than others.

>However, I do hasten to add that, as I am sure
>you know, many, if not the vast majority, of vowel ambiguities in Greek
>and Latin were in practice pretty easily solved by context.
Probably by the L1 speakers - and this is why the Greek use of the
Phoenician abjad as an alphabet would have not been advantageous to the
Phoenicians.  Because of the structure of their language, the vast majority
of theoretic ambiguities in not expressing vowels would easily have been
solved by context.

[snip]
>
>p b t d c g f s m n r l h
Written consonants - but /j/ and /w/ should be counted among the
consonants, and there was no symbol for them; also the status of [N] is
debatable.

[snip]
>Other than that, these were extremely well-behaved
>consonant graphemes.
{b} was a bit naughty sometimes, getting herself pronounced as [p], e.g.
urbs /urps/, abstuli /'apstuli:/ etc.

The Romans were inconsistent in this respect.  It can be argued that as the
stem of the words was urb- then it's better to put up with a slight
irregularity and write _urbs_ ('morphemic' spelling) rather than *urps.
But then, what did they do with the perfect tense of _scri:bo:_,
_scri:bere_ ? They wrote _scripsi_ /skri:psi:/ with {ps}!

The simple fact is that /ps/ was variously written {bs} or {ps} without
strict consistency, which is why Claudius proposed using a single letter
for the sound as the Greeks did and still do.  He proposed a reverse C (the
'antisigma') and for a short time it was actually used.

The {g} went and got itself pronounced as [N] before /n/, e.g. _dignus_
['diNnus].  So, do we say that [N] was an allophone of /g/ before /n/, and
that it was an allophone of /n/ before /g/ or /k/, thus having the same
sound as allophone of two different phonemes?  Or did ancient Latin have a
marginal phoneme /N/?

>      Even the quirks are totally predictable when
>rendering their pronunciation.  Consonants are generally recognized
>as more salient than vowels;  in any script it's more important
>to get consonants right than to get vowels right.
Oh, and I thought the Greek vowels were such an important improvement over
the Phoenician abjad!


[snip]
>
>Okay.  Saying "tended towards a phonemic represntation" and "more
>or less closely" are fair ways to look at it.
>
>In your last post, however, you said "alphabetic scripts have never
>been phonemic until the creation of some last century".  That
>statement strikes me as an overstatement.  If that was not your
>intention I stand corrected.
I suppose I should've said "entirely phonemic".

[snip]
>
>I do not believe it's necessary to place stock in the theoretical
>validity of the notion of the phoneme in order to recognize the
>universal practicality of the alphabet.
No - but one must surely accept the notion of phoneme if one it to agree
whether a writing system is phonemic or not.

As for universal practicality, that is another matter.

[snip]
>
>In other words, in my view, you would have to go much, *much*
>farther than merely questioning or rejecting the notion of phoneme
>to cast the universal practicality of the alphabet into doubt.
In my view the two things are barely related.

[snip]
>I should mention that I have refined my position in the last two days,
>so I hope you don't feel like you're having to shoot at a moving target.
Not at all - we all have occasion to change or modify points of view.  I
expect I'll do so until the time comes for me to quit this mortal coil (as
Shapespeare put it).

>What I mean precisely by the "universality" or "universal practicality"
>and similar terms is that because all human speech can be analyzed
>in contrastive segments, *all* human languages lend themselves to the
>alphabetic system of writing in a *trivially easy manner*.
No here I have to take issue with "in a *trivially easy manner*".  Some
languages lend themselves to the phonemic type of analysis more easily than
others.  In another post, I've mentioned some of the problems with Mandarin.

I suppose it is 'trivially easy' to sit down for a quarter of an hour or so
and come up with an alphabeticization for Mandarin Chinese (I've done so
many times  :)
But it is not, I submit, a trivial task to come up with a satisfactory form
of Romanization.  There have been so far four centuries of attempts.

> This is
>the special attribute that alphabets have that no other system of
>writing has.  For example, a language with a simple syllable structure
>may be a good candidate for a syllabary, but a language with a complex
>one is not.
No one, I think, has argued otherwise.

[snip]
>
>What I do *not* claim for the alphabet is both "universal optimality"
>and "universal desirability".  These are totally different claims.
But the thread did start (I know, because I started it) with the question
of optimality.

[snip]
>do claim.  Chinese scholars were happy with their system, so they kept
>it.
Not so.  Many Chinese scholar proposed different systems of phonemic
writing during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  The most successful
of these was Wang2 Zhao4's system of 100 which actually gained some support
among Chinese authorities.

1918 saw the publication of the Zhu4yin1 Zi4mu3 (Pronunciation Alphabet) in
which the symbols were adapted from forms of simple characters;this was
introduced into schools in 1920.

Other Chinese scholars continued to experiment with Roman characters; a
group which included Zhao4 Yuan2ren4 (i.e. Yuen Ren Chao himself) devised
the system known as Gwoyeu Romatzyh (National Romanization) which was
formally adopted by the government in 1928, with the vague hope of
substituting it for characters in the long run.

Unfortnately Japanese occupations, WWII and the subsequent Maoist
revolution put paid to all that.  But in 1958, the Communist National
Assembly approved the Pin1yin1 Zi4mu3 (Phonetic alphabet); but it/they had
approved two years earlier a revision and simplification of the most
commonly occuring characters.  The Pinyin transcription has been gradually
introduced into schools as a _secondary_ writing system, tho mainly, I
understand, as an aid to achieve greater uniformity in the pronunciation of
Modern Standard Chinese.  It is also used in some public inscriptions.

Yes, Chinese can be alphabetized - but it hasn't been trivially easy.

[snip]
>
>>On the other hand, Arabic numerals have been adopted universally in Europe
>>and, indeed, now most of the world (either in their westernized or native
>>Arabic form) because they were perceived to be universally advantageous.
>
>Indeed they are advantageous.  Another great *advancement* in history.
>Or do you maintain that Roman numerals are just as good as the Arabic?
>After all, they *were* in use for *centuries* and, as you have insisted,
>"nothing is superior to anything else".
I have never said "nothing is superior to anything else'.  Indeed, I quoted
the Arabic numerals as an example where change was fairly rapid and made
without the pronouncements any official bodies - i.e. they were perceived
to be better.  What I was trying to say is that where something is
perceived to be advantageous it is adopted.  They Chinese have known of the
western alphabet for four centuries, yet it has not been popularly adopted.
My conclusion is that unlike the Arabic numerals, the western alphabet has
not been seen to be a radical *advancement*.

[snip]
>>
>>..and the early Greeks didn't even realize they were doing it  :)
>>It was lucky happenstance.
>
>Really?  When they built the acropolis, did they not realize they
>were doing that either?  Interesting people if so.
There is no need for the sarcasm.

Nor did the Greeks build the acropolis - it was a natural feature.  But
building temples etc on the acropolis is a very different matter than
simply writing using someone else's writing system.  There is in fact no
_valid_ comparison between the two activities, as far as I can see.

Good grief - when I was kid in primary school I played around with
different codes and different writing systems; but I couldn't have built a
garden shed then, let alone a temple.

I have actually spent some years in research on pre-Greek linguistics,
especially in Crete; during these reasearches, the origin of writings
[plural] in Greece generally cropped up.  I have researched this.

[snip]
>>
>>When systems like the Egyptian lasted about four millennia and the Chinese
>>system is still going strong after three and a half millennia, I'd say
>>describibg them as "adequate" is being a bit patronizing.
>
>Ah yes, we wouldn't want to patronize ancient civilizations, would we.
Well, I genuinely would not - but then I don't want to be sarcastic either.

[snip]
>
>I don't think the Shavian script is so great.  Its failure to catch
>on is no wonder, and certainly bears nothing on our present discussion.
Then I've misunderstood you. I thought you were claiming that an alphabet
was an advance because it was phonemic (or nearly so).  Whatever one may
think of the Shavian alphabet, it gives a damned sight more phonemic
representation of English than the 26 letters of the modern Roman alphabet
ever could, and certainly more than the present system does.

Ray.


=======================================================
Speech is _poiesis_ and human linguistic articulation
is centrally creative.
                                 GEORGE STEINER.
=======================================================

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