Re: A prioi vs. A posteriori ?

En réponse à Tristan <kesuari@...>:

>
> Okay. Comes out a lot nicer. Opera (used to) claim(s) that they had
> the
> fastest, most standards-compliant browser out there, but I find that
> hard to believe, unless seven's dramatticaly better.
>
Opera 6.02 was awful indeed. 7.01 seems quite OK. So far it's as fast as
Internet Explorer and it handles encodings and fonts better.

>
> Unless right and wrong have different meanings in your topsy-turvy
> hemisphere, I mean right.
Then you're wrong ;)) .

 The same right which is associated with
> positive images of left-wing parties like the Greens, not the right
> associated with negative images of (right-wing) parties like the
> Liberal
> Party.
>
Then you are *really* wrong ;)))) .

>
> You can tell you're French! :P
>
Nope, just realistic ;))) .

>
> I'm bare-foot at the moment... no special shoes.
You must be young then, I've heard the younger generations have had a genetic
mutation that allows them to stick to the ground even barefoot ;)))) .

 I could walk outside
> on
> the grass if you wanted to claim that the carpet here has the same
> effect.
>
Who says the grass that grows in Australia doesn't have this effect already?
Afterall Australia has been upside-down for millions of years now. It's nature
has had time to adapt to this strange situation and to develop systems so that
nothing falls down ;))) .

>
> Yeah, but I'm sure they had a number of things right: this is one of
> them.
>
Prove it!

>
> Okay Christophe. Little physics lesson here for you: take a ball (one
> that'll float). Get some playdough or something and stick it to the
> top
> half. Put the ball into a bowl of water. Let go of the ball. The old
> top
> is now the new bottom.Even if the Nothern hemisphere started out as
> the
> top, all that heavy land would've made it spin around so that the top
> is
> now the bottom long ago, so up is clearly the southern hemisphere,
> regardless of what anyone else thinks.
>
Little lesson of physics: the Earth is *not* floating on water. True lesson of
physics: take a ball (one with a slightly rough surface). Add to it some liquid
that sticks by capillarity to it (a very thin layer, so that some parts of the
ball's surface are above the level of the liquid), and hang it. Although the
liquid sticks, it will tend to go down, and thus the bottom part will be the
one with the most liquid, and thus the one with the least surface dry. The top
part, on the other hand, will have most dry parts. Since the Northern
hemisphere is the one with the most land, it must be the top one. QED.

>
> If I'm proving your point, your point was faulty. You were on the one
> hand condemning English for its dodgy selection of incompatible
> vowels,
You must have misunderstood me. I never said it had incompatible vowels, I just
said English was renowned not to use much cardinal vowels. That's something
else :)) .

> and now you go off and say that French is *good* for having
> incompatible
> vowels? Be consistent!
>
What is incompatible in nasal vowels? [a~] is as much a cardinal vowel as [a]!
Whether air goes through your nose or not doesn't change that fact! ;)))

>
> Isn't [h] supposed to be a glottal fricative? Well, the choking sounds
> sound nothing like them. Much more like [R].
>
Because if you're able to pronounce a glottal fricative, then you can't be
choking (try to pronounce a glottal fricative when you have something in your
throat!) Choking sounds are combinations of glottal stops, epiglottal and
pharyngeal sounds, but no uvular sound anywhere. Uvular sounds are rather
comparable to coughing sounds (and only when they are unvoiced, while the
French r is voiced). Ergo, the French r has nothing to do with choking :)) .

>
> And don't you feel bad, not helping them? Honestly. I'm ashamed at you!
> :)
>
Why should I help them? I said the French population was growing. I never said
it was good for it to do so!

>
> It's not a handicap if it restricts your ability to do something
> totally
> undesirable.
>
So since you can hear deafening sounds, being deaf is not a handicap? Because
you can walk on the street and get bumped into by a car, having lost your legs
is not a handicap? And *I* am the one with the kludgey logic? ;))))

>
> I'll give you that. Actually, if French got rid of those horrid /R/s,
> got rid of a few of whatever rhotic replaced them (like any that
> weren't
> before a vowel), and I spoke it, it'd almost be a nice language.
Now that's called arrogance. And only French people are allowed to show
it! ;)))) There are international laws about that you know! ;))))

 Needs
> long-short distinctions as well, I'd say.
>
Try to disfigure the most beautiful language of the world?

>
> Okay, *maybe* speech-wise I'm conservative, but I'm not conservative
> in
> enough ways for you to be able to call me that!
>
Well, this bit of the conversation was only about your speech, so what's wrong
with that? ;)) I didn't refer to anything else (I don't know enough your
opinions to put an etiquette en you, and even if I did I wouldn't ;) ).

>
> You're suggesting I walk all the way over the tv. and fight it out
> with
> three siblings (I have a fourth, but she's never home, and she doesn't
> watch tv. much anyway) to watch some dodgy French tv. show that I
> won't
> even be able to understand? No thanks: I prefer life.
>
Well, what you described to me looked pretty lively! ;))))

But I thought you were the one who was sick of having too much free time?

>
> Apart from the fact that French has horrible rhotics, useless rhotics,
> surplus rhotics,
If they were useless and surplus, we would have got rid of them already. They
are there because they are useful. We're practical people you know.

 French isn't an oft-used language in these parts.

Of course not. French is not for people who can think! ;))) And it's well-known
that when you're walking on your head it's difficult to think properly ;)) .

 If
> you have a hundred people whose first language is the same dialect of
> English, why should you try and convince them to learn a totally
> nother
> language, which they'll speak with the fluency of someone who's learnt
> a
> second language?
Because that's cool?

 And you wonder why I think the South is the top. With
> that kind of logic coming out of the Northern Hemisphere, where else
> could be?
>
Hehe, that kind of logic is the *top* of logics you know? ;)))

> (Unfortunately, I don't know who José Bové is, so your irony is missed
> on me. And it probably isn't irony, anyway. People enjoy using the
> word
> 'irony' to describe something taht isn't irony.)
>
I never use a word to mean something else than what it means. I definitely
meant irony. The irony here is that I wouldn't advise anyone to listen to José
Bové more than 2 minutes. He is the most conservative anti-American anti-
globalist guy you can find. Unfortunately, there are rotten apples even in the
best trees...

>
> Where's the -ti come from in /paRl"ti/?
It's a feature common in all Northern Western Langues d'Oil, but its origin is
unknown.

 And I probably should've
> included an article before 'Anglese'. To used to English's use of the
> definite.
>
Hehe, Normally in French you wouldn't use the article in this case. I added it
but it's only optional in Normand French (it was mostly here to make it really
sound different from Standard French).

>
> And it is Norman French that Anglo-Norman and thus Anglese would
> derive
> from, isn't it?
Yep.

 So it makes sense. Except for the fact that
> [Sys]=/Z+sys/ whereas /dZiz/=/dZi/ (i.e. I) + //z~s// (i.e. 'm).
>
It could be possible too. Normand has affricates where French has simple
postalveolar fricatives (but not everywhere, since not all the stops that
became eventually postalveolar fricatives in French became affricates in
Normand). We still say "gambe" from standard "jambe" and "qu(i)en" for
standard "chien". So "je" could also be pronounced [dZ(@)]. Still, in the case
of this pronoun, the deaffricated form is more common.

>
> Where's this [ti] come from (i.e. what was it like a thousand years
> ago,
> and what does it mean)?
We don't really know, as it was not there one thousand years ago. My pet theory
is that it originally comes from the time when third person verbs still had the
pronounced final -t (now it's only present for some conjugations, and never
pronounced except for liaison), followed by the 3rd person pronoun issued from
Latin "ille" in questions (using the common VSO word order in questions). With
the -t disappearing nearly everywhere except in this case and the pronoun
getting pronounced simply [i], the whole thing lost its connection with its
origins (a third person suffix on the verb followed by a third person pronoun),
and came to be viewed as a single particle following the verb, which then was
generalised to every person when SVO word order came around more often even in
questions. Its orthography in Normand (it is written there "-t'y") could be a
mark of its origin (and looks a bit like the use of -t- between a verb ending
in a vowel and a pronoun beginning with one in questions using inversion - you
say: "il a": "he has" but "a-t-il ?": "does he have?". It's definitely a mark
of the former presence of the -t ending for the third person singular on the
verb -).

But it's only a pet theory of mine and I have no proof to back it up. Of
course, this didn't happen in Parisian French, and thus cannot be found in
standard French either.

 To be the full equivalent of 'do' it'd have to
> be able to hold the simple present and past tenses anywhere, as well,
> though that may be happy by generalisation.
>
Why not? In Normand baby talk (like I often heard my mother speak as soon as
she is put in presence of a baby), the [ti] particle oftens appears even in non-
interrogative sentences ("Il était(-t'y) t'un petit nourson !" said with an
exaggerated tonic curve ending in a high-rising tone. Note that "nourson" -
meaning originally "teddy bear", but also used to mean "cute little boy/girl,
darling, cutie cutie cutie, etc... ;)))" - is not Normand French. It's family
idiolect ;)) ), certainly because in French baby talk rhetorical questions are
extremely common. So from there maybe [ti] could get generalised and even take
over the tense marks that were normally put on verbs (by transfer and miscut).

> Anyone know of any useful sources (in English) on Anglo-Norman as it
> was
> spoken when it was spoken as a first language?
>
I wish I had... I only have the notes on Anglo-Norman in my booklets about Old
French and Middle French (where it gets an important treatment, along with
Picard), but they don't say much, mostly only what is different from Parisian
French.

But you can often guess from English borrowings some peculiarities of Normand
French. For instance, English "count" for French "compter" is an indication of
a pervasive phenomenon in Normand French: the diphtongation of vowels in a
nasal environment. Yes, Normand French (even today) has nasal diphtongues.

>
> I'm sure that a proper analysis of the usage of 'could' could show
> that
> it isn't the past tense in that sentence but shows a similar condition
> as the 'could' earlier in this sentence (or maybe another use of
> 'could'...). And 'I did it because I can' is not ungrammatical.
>
But it doesn't mean exactly the same. Or does it?

>
> Yeah, I know, I was just using your very same metaphor!
>
You mean I'm taking the leading role in your movie? ;)))

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

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