Re: Obsessed with Mouth Noises

I didn't understand everything you said (being not a
linguist, and my English being mediocre), but:

- 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.

- true, grammar, in any nat or conlang, will probably
make use of phonology, but one could imagine thinking
like: 1/ ok, this concept (suppose, tense), I will
implement by adding a suffix to the verbal stem. 2/
ok, what will the suffix look and sound like ? It's
just a question of methodology. But the thing is that,
before you decided you will use "-to" or "-shwrzyw",
or whatever (and how this should be pronounced), you
first had to decide that tense would be implemented by
a suffix, and before you decided that, you had to
decide that there would be a concept of tense in your
language. So you first had to think: what is tense ?
what concept is that ? shall I use it ? This of course
all IMHO.

I think sometimes we mix a little analyzing real
natlangs and constructing conlangs. Here again, I
think the methodology could be (I wanted to say should
be, but let's be careful): 1/ analyze as many natlangs
(and auxlangs) you just can; 2/ make a synthesis of
what you noticed; 3/ decide what you will use for your
own conlang; 4/ try it, and see if it works.

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 ? Surely different languages used
different solutions to implement the (deep) underlying
concept, but this concept is probably universal,
because it belongs to human brain.

--- "Thomas R. Wier" <trwier@...> wrote:
> From:    Philippe Caquant <herodote92@...>
> > So this is an endless and useless quest, phonology
> > being the most external part of the language. When
> an
> > engineer wants to build a car, he doesn't spend
> five
> > years thinking of the paint colour of it, or on
> the
> > exact form of the rear mirror.
>
> But that's the problem:  phonology is *not* mere
> decoration,
> since there is NO communication without it. We
> aren't telepaths:
> it's absolutely essential to the grammatical system.
> It's more
> like having the right kind of fuel or oil.  But
> these analogies
> trivialize grammar unnecessarily.  One might as well
> downplay
> the kinds of complementation various kinds of verbs
> have. Afterall,
> what's the big difference between a dative
> construction and a
> ditransitive with a PP?  Obviously, only certain
> classes of
> verbs can undergo dative-shift, and that fact has
> necessary
> implications for the internal structure of the
> lexicon and
> thus the rest of grammar.  The same can be said for
> phonology:
> you can't know what the speakers know about what
> they say
> until you know what the speakers in fact say.
>
> And later:
> > The idea is not to pretend that phoneticians' work
> and
> > science is of no value at all. I myself am
> interested
> > in it, to some point. But syntax and, most of all,
> > semantics, are very much nearer the core of a
> > language. We should think seriously about
> phonetics
> > when we have already built the fundaments of the
> > language, and not the contrary.
>
> The idea that phonology is somehow unimportant is
> precisely
> the kind of hierarchical syntactocentric nonsense
> that Chomsky
> and friends have been propounding for decades.  It
> was wrong
> then, and it's wrong now.
>
> (Not that Chomsky is unique in this fault.  There
> are plenty of
> people who make other modules, like semantics, the
> pole star
> around which the rest of the grammar is fit, such as
> work
> done by Van Valin.  But these monomodulocentric
> models usually
> if not always create more problems than they solve.)
>
>
 =========================================================================
> 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

=====
Philippe Caquant

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

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