Re: Obsessed with Mouth Noises

Of course, everybody can do everything his own way.
This is democracy, after all. But I have trouble to
follow you when you say that phonetics are no more
phonetics. The only thing I can do is referring to my
(French) dictionnary, which says (accents dropped):

- phonetique, adj. Relatif aux sons du langage.
Ecriture phonetique, celles ou les signes graphiques
correspondent aux sons du langage.
- phonologie, n.f. Science qui traite des phonemes du
point de vue de leur fonction dans une langue donnée.
- phoneme, n.m. Element sonore du langage.

So I feel it hard to understand why we should use
words having a very specific meaning to mean something
different. What is this good ? Why not say that what's
phonic is phonic, and graphic is graphic, and gesture
is gesture ? So much simpler ! But if I have to buy a
more recent dictionnary, ok, I'll do it.

I know the methodology you mention (is this called
heuristics, or rather empirism ?), and in fact, it is
very much used in computer programming too ! But
perhaps it's just not the best way, although there
always will be a part of it when making a program. Why
? Because man is not infallible. But shall we follow
the Shadok philosophy ?(Shadoks were some strange
birds in a French cartoon, in the seventies). The
Shadoks used rules likes:
- The more you fail, the more you have a chance that
it will work in the end
- If you have 999 chances in 1000 that the thing will
fail, so hurry to do the 999 first tests, because the
1000th will probably be the right one.

But after all, if it's all just for fun, so the
important thing is to have fun.

--- David Peterson <ThatBlueCat@...> wrote:
> Philippe wrote:
>
> <<If you use "purely graphical languages", that you
> don't use "phonetics", but writing, or drawing.
> "Phone" (phi, omega, nu, eta) means "voice" in
> Greek.>>
>
> 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.   Phonetics is the
> study of the implements (natural or unnatural) used
> to communicate.   In sign
> language, the active articulators
> are the fingers, hands, arms and face (though
> there's also an argument that
> the torso is used).   Using this
> definition, the active articulators of a purely
> graphic language would be the
> things used to write the language
> down.   If this is a computer, the study becomes
> less interesting.   However,
> if you were using plain old pencil
> and paper to write, then the phonetics of a written
> language would be the
> changes in the glyphs.   So, for
> example, if the word for "circle" was a drawn
> circle, but the word for "oval"
> was an oval, it would be interesting
> to see just how ovular you could get before an
> interpretation of "circle"
> would become impossible--in other
> words, what the boundaries for simple phonetic
> variation are.   This would be
> no different from saying that, to
> pronounce "pipe" you could say [p_hajp] or [p_ha:p]
> or [pajp], or maybe even
> [pap], but definitely not [faip] or
> something totally off the way like [flut].   How one
> draws a glyph is
> *exactly* the same phenomenon.
>
> 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.
>   What's one to do?
>
> I always start out with the phonology, phonetics,
> and writing system of a
> language.   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.   But
> maybe this is the difference between the computer
> scientist/programmer and
> the English major (me).   I don't
> see the distinction as being important: I simply
> prefer one way over the
> other.   You, however, have made the
> claim that if you do it my way, you're basically
> fated to do it your way,
> where the first round of phonology, etc.
> was just practice, and could in no way work with the
> rest of the language.
> A bold claim.   I think there are
> probably a lot of phonology, etc.-first conlangers
> on the list, and I bet
> that not all of them were forced to do a
> total teardown of the phonology once they created a
> syntax.
>
> Just a note: this, of course, excludes the
> possibility of doing it all at the
> same time.   That is, getting an idea for a
> particular syntactic/morphological phenomenon,
> setting up a basic phonology
> to test it, refining the specific
> phenomenon, then refining the phonology, then moving
> on to everything else.
> Though systematicity has its
> perks, I'd wager that there are a lot of conlangers
> who do it this way, as
> well, in which case a chicken or egg
> argument would be largely irrelevant.
>
> -David
>

=====
Philippe Caquant

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

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