Re: Obsessed with Mouth Noises

On Sunday, April 11, 2004, at 07:01 AM, David Peterson wrote:

> [snip]
> It's been firmly established for probably thirty years now that
> "phonetics" and "phonology" don't have to apply
> to sounds.  Why would anyone say this?  Simple: Sign Language.  There are
> lots of papers on the phonology of
> sign language.  I attended several talks, in fact, on the phonetics and
> phonology of ASL just last quarter (our
> department was doing a job search for a sign language research position). 
>  So what this means is that we know
> longer have to depend on the definition of a Greek term to know the
> definition of phonetics. 
Obviously not - few people who use words like 'cinema', 'photograph',
'telephone or 'microscope' are aware of their Greek origin or even care
about it. Strange to say, they use them in quite comprehensible ways even
tho they are deprived of this knowledge  ;)

In any case, the Greek 'pho:ne:' did not mean just 'voice'. It is used
both for the articulate speech of humans and for the cries of animals; it
also acquired the meanings:
- faculty of speech
- phrase, saying
- report, rumor
- loud talk, bragging
- message
- formula

The last two certainly need not be spoken & could be signed or written.

> Phonetics is the
> study of the implements (natural or unnatural) used to communicate. 
[snip]

> Continuing (snipping some):
> <<If you do [writing, phonetics and word definition] first, you're
> almost certain to have to do the whole thing again,
> because it won't work.>>
>
> Based purely on your analogy, I'd say, "Wow, yeah!  You've made a
> convincing analogy.  Therefore, what you
> say must be true."  However, I know it to be false. 
Yep.

> What's one to do?
>
> I always start out with the phonology, phonetics, and writing system of a
> language. 
Yep.

> I then use this to build the
> rest of the language.  In fact, I think up phonological phenomena I find
> interesting, and then set up a syntax or
> morphology that can showcase the phenomena.  Doing it the other way
> around would be incredibly dull. 
Amen!

> But
> maybe this is the difference between the computer scientist/programmer
> and the English major (me). 
Nope - I'm a computer scientist. If I'm writing a program I'd start with
analysis & design then code. But I do not see the analogy that coding is
like putting the phonology onto the 'inner design' of language. Certainly
when I am *designing* the phonology & phonotactics there's plenty of
analysis to be done before the design can be properly drawn up and them I
can implement the phonotactics and build up the morphology etc.

> I don't
> see the distinction as being important: I simply prefer one way over the
> other. 
Quite so - and, as I've said in another email, it depends also on what the
language is being designed for. If one wants to revert to the computer
scientist analogy, the approach I used to take with the older 'traditional'
  3rd generation languages, the approach I take if I'm going to program
with Prolog and the approach I take if I'm going do object-oriented
programming are quite a bit different. So with conlangs - the approach
appropriate for artlangs, loglangs, auxlangs & engelangs are certainly not
going to be the same.

Ray
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