Re: English spelling reform

At 10:38 AM -0400 10/14/02, John Cowan wrote:
>Adrian Morgan scripsit:
>
>>  There are any number of words that are reduced in practically all
>>  speech but which may preserve an unreduced vowel under special
>>  circumstances, e.g. possibly when sung.
>
>Sung English is an interesting dialect with its own intense phonological
>peculiarities.  For example, I say "glorious" as [glOr\i@s], with three
>syllables, but make it [glOr\jOs] with only two when singing.
>Once in Salt Lake City
What, you didn't even stop by and say hello? :-)

>I heard the Mormon Tabernacle Choir rehearsing --
>quite an experience -- and the choir director was making precisely this
>point, at which time I realized that I had absorbed that rule myself
>without ever being taught it.
The MTC has had a spotty record when it comes to enunciation; do you
remember who the director was? The current group (Craig Jessop,
Barlow Bradford, and Mack Wilberg) are much more technically
demanding than previous directors have been. I have a couple of
friends in the choir, and they've mentioned how much more work it is
now. The choir has always had a gorgeous sound, but now you can
understand the words.

>Still, this is not as weird as Sung French, where final schwas that have
>been silent for centuries are still pronounced!
In Tohono O'odham there are processes which add vowels and whole
syllables to words to fill out the meter in oral recitation and
singing. A claim which had been made of the language is that the
inserted vowels reflect earlier forms in a manner similar to French.
A grad school colleague wrote her dissertation on stress patterns in
the language and devoted a chapter to this kind of metrical
adjustment, but I don't remember if she showed that the vowel inserts
are etymological or not. The language also has productive
reduplication for pluralization; however, in songs reduplication can
be "vacuous" and not fill any grammatical purpose, being used only
for metrical adjustment.

Dirk
--
Dirk Elzinga                                             Dirk_Elzinga@byu.edu

"No theory can exclude everything that is wrong, poor, or even detestable, or
include everything that is right, good, or beautiful."    - Arnold Schoenberg

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