Re: Obsessed with Mouth Noises

Seems time that we close this discussion about
"mouthnoiseology", because we won't go any further.

I nerver said phonology is not "interesting". Lots of
things are interesting. Ornithology is interesting.
Astronomy is interesting. (Why shouldn't I  rely these
fields to language ? they have evident links with it).
Phonology is interesting too, of course (and of course
it is one aspect of language). This was not my point.
As I said, if the goal is to have fun, then fun is the
important thing. And methodology is not an absolute
synonym for hierarchy. It's just a trial to give an
answer to the question: "well, how shall I proceed ?"
In any project, you have to think about methodology.
Of course there is not only one possible answer, and
of course it depends, among others, of your final goal
(but also of your material possibilities, for ex).

To me, the point about different ways of complementing
is of course interesting too. What I meant is that it
looks rather as a syntactical question, therefore
attached to some particular languages. That's the kind
of information I would gather in my initial studying
phase: "there are natlangs using ditransitive, or
dative, or whatever, constructions: let's try to find
the rules for them; let's see how other languages make
it in comparison". Then, after collecting (and
verifying) the facts, I should try to make a synthesis
out of it. This all, of course, if I had 100 lifes,
because it takes very, very much time. (That's why I
would rely on people who already made such studies,
and probably not go and ask original informators for
many different languages, even if in theory it would
be safer).

Clearly this is all my opinion, but isn't one of the
goals of this list to exchange opinions, besides facts
? Linguistics is a human science, therefore it is
subjective for a great deal; therefore it is quite
impossible to stick to mere facts and suppress private
opinions. I read others' opinions, and gather among
them what interests me, and sometimes change my own
former opinion because of them (or see new aspects I
hadn't thought of before). So the whole thing goes
forward, surely not on a straight way, yet it does. If
phonology is interesting, then I bet exchanging
(contradictory) opinions is interesting too. Agreeing
on everything might just be terribly dull.

--- "Thomas R. Wier" <trwier@...> wrote:
> From:    Philippe Caquant <herodote92@...>
> > - as I said, we indeed communicate (on the list)
> > WITHOUT phonology, because our messages are 100%
> > written. I have no microphone connected to my PC.
>
> But that's not what the debate is about. The debate
> is about
> what use phonology and phonetics have -- "are they
> interesting" --
> and whether you can understand human language
> without it. And
> the answer to that is:  you can't.  The fact that we
> can now
> communicate as well as we do via the internet does
> not diminish
> the fact that it does not capture all aspects of
> human speech.
>
> > So you first had to think: what is tense ?
> > what concept is that ? shall I use it ? This of
> course
> > all IMHO.
>
> Beside the point.  No one here -- certainly not me
> -- is suggesting
> phonology should take some kind of priveleged
> position among
> the modules.  Of course you have to think about the
> other modules,
> and they have their place.  But I would dispute the
> idea that you
> have to create your conlangs in some kind of
> hiearchical order;
> I know I certainly sometimes choose the sound of
> morphs first,
> and the morphosyntax later. I know other conlangers
> have had
> similar experiences.
>
> > I'm not sure for ex that your example about dative
> > construction # ditransitive is a universal
> question;
> > perhaps it concerns only some languages, and other
> > languages use other systems ? In that case, it
> would
> > also be somehow peripheral, or superficial (in the
> > meaning of surface forms), the really important
> thing
> > being the deep (conceptual) structure: what do
> such
> > forms really mean
>
> Hardly.  You're missing the point.  The point was
> that a property
> of verbs -- whether they take complements, and if so
> what kinds of
> complements -- is fundamental to understanding
> grammatical patterning.
> I was suggesting that minimizing the role of
> phonology is like
> suggesting the complexities of complementation are
> not "interesting"
> -- even though so much of grammatical questions
> revolve around it.
> Likewise, many morphological questions
> (reduplication, e.g.) involve
> questions of phonological structure just as much as
> morphological or
> syntactic ones.  You simply can't ignore that fact.

=====
Philippe Caquant

"High thoughts must have high language." (Aristophanes, Frogs)


	
		
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