Re: Obsessed with Mouth Noises

From:    Gary Shannon <fiziwig@...>
> Granted, pronunciation can be interesting, but I'll
> never understand the seeming obsession with trivial
> nuances that seems to grip some linguists.
> Pronunciation is nearly irrelevant when it comes to
> fulfilling the primary purpose of language;
> communication.
The problem (aside from the fact that, as Tim May says,
it's obviously untrue) is that what linguists are trying
to do is precisely characterize what people know about
their language, and vowel-formant frequencies and points
of articulation are one of the many things they learn
rather than are born with. Although you don't say it,
the attitude that descriptive linguistics is no more
than "butterfly-collecting" is disturbingly prevalent and
profoundly harmful to the profession because you
can't even begin to model people's knowledge of language
until you have some idea about what kinds of language
are actually extant.

 =========================================================================
Thomas Wier	       "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
University of Chicago   half the time." -- octogenarian Sheikh Zayed of
1010 E. 59th Street     Abu Dhabi, to a French reporter.
Chicago, IL 60637