Re: English questions
| From: | Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Friday, May 23, 2003, 14:50 |
|---|
Interestingly, I got Thomas's message, and Tristan's reply to John's
reply to Thomas's message, but I never received John's actual reply.
So I apologize if I'm repeating anything he said.
On Fri, May 23, 2003 at 08:09:40AM -0400, Thomas Leigh wrote:
> (And while I'm at it, I know that the slashes / / are supposed
> to enclose phonetic representation, not phonemic representation,
As I understand it, it's actually the other way around. The slashes /.../
are used for phonemic representation, while square brackets [...] are used
for a given phonetic realization of those phonemes.
> Also, does anyone know why Modern English ended up with /x/>/f/
> in a few words (e.g. laugh, enough) rather than /x/ just dropping as
> it did in most words?
I'm showing my ignorance of the topic here, but the "gh" in those words
was originally /x/? It seems like an especially odd spelling; I would
have expected "gh" to be voiced, perhaps representing /G/, but not /x/.
-Mark
Replies