Re: A prioi vs. A posteriori ?

Christophe Grandsire wrote:
> En réponse à Tristan <kesuari@...>:
>
>
>> BTW... do you want to check your email client's config? You seem to
>> be replacing one linebreak with three or four.
>
> I thought it was only a problem with how I viewed my own emails! I'm
> using a webmail client with no config changes possible. But I know
> where the problem comes from. I usually use IE to use my webmail, but
> today I've installed Opera and I was trying it. Strangely enough, it
> seems that when going through Opera it adds line breaks that
> shouldn't be there. I'll try to find out what's wrong. Until then, I
> reverted to IE to read my email, so it should work correctly again.
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.

>> Ahem. We work the right-way-around.
>
> The wrong-way-round you mean.
Unless right and wrong have different meanings in your topsy-turvy
hemisphere, I mean right. 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.

> That it's your way doesn't mean it's the right one ;)))) . That it's
 > *my* way *automatically* means it's the right one ;))) .

You can tell you're French! :P

> > You're all upside down.
>
> You're wrong guy. Because everybody knows you all have special shoes
> to prevent you from falling! ;)))
I'm bare-foot at the moment... no special shoes. I could walk outside on
the grass if you wanted to claim that the carpet here has the same effect.

>>  Haven't you looked at any Egyptian maps?
>
> Well, the Egyptians were inversed in many ways, so that doesn't mean
> anything :))) .
Yeah, but I'm sure they had a number of things right: this is one of them.

> > And _The Age_ (Melburnian newspaper) has
> > recently printed a map of Melbourne with the bay (south) at the top
> >  and the nothern suburbs at the bottom. The way it *should* be.
>
> And who are you to decide of those things? ;))) Let the majority of
> the world decide what orientation is correct. And the majority still
> lives in the Northern hemisphere (not my fault, it's just where
> there's the most land ;))) . Normal that it takes precedence :)) ).
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.

>> Yes, well they're just fools that don't count.
>
> It never occured to you that *you* may be the fools that don't count?
> ;))) Because I know I'm not personally :) .
Yes, but you don't speak a dodgy version of English, which is what we
were talking about here.

>> I betcha more languages have diphthongs than nasal vowels.
>
> You're just proving my point :)) . That's why they are so vain. They
> have been so much copied that they have lost all substance. Nasal
> vowels keep some charm by staying original :)) .
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,
and now you go off and say that French is *good* for having incompatible
vowels? Be consistent!

>> Why would people use an uvular sound to represent the sound of
>> choking if it weren't because it sounds like choking?
>
> But people don't use an uvular sound to represent the sound of
> choking. they use glottal sounds instead :))) .
Isn't [h] supposed to be a glottal fricative? Well, the choking sounds
sound nothing like them. Much more like [R].

>> Your kidding, right?
>
> Nope. In 2000 the population growth in France was 0.5% and has been
> growing ever since :)) . France is responsible for 2/3 of the
> population growth in Europe while representing only 16% of its
> population.
Wow. I'm impressed.

> Hehe, French people are making more and more babies these days ;))) .
And don't you feel bad, not helping them? Honestly. I'm ashamed at you! :)

>> Oh, okay. I didn't realise that. I guess that explains why that
>> kind of /R/ is borrowed as null in words like louvre /l0:v/, livre
>> /l@iv/, hor[s] d'oeuvre /o:"d8:v/, rather than as /@/ like in just
>> about every other language.
>
> Probably. Just because you're so handicapped that you cannot
> pronounce such a simple coda as [vR] ;))))) . I actually pity you...
It's not a handicap if it restricts your ability to do something totally
undesirable.

>> I generally skip the pronunciation of French, not having been
>> brought up to pronounce a language where you have to choke to
>> pronounce a sound family that shouldn't even exist but before a
>> vowel.
>
> What would you do with Arabic then? *That*'s choking. Compared to it,
> French has only labial consonants!
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. Needs
long-short distinctions as well, I'd say.

> I thought conservative meant wanting to keep things as they were in
> the past? In this case, saying that what was good to your father is
> good enough for you fits pretty much the definition doesn't it?
> ;)))))
Okay, *maybe* speech-wise I'm conservative, but I'm not conservative in
enough ways for you to be able to call me that!

>> What opportunity do I have?
>
> Create them!
>
> > Even if I was watching SBS (Special
>> Broadcasting Service, the people who show most foreign-language
>> stuff hereabouts, but it's hardly their main _raison d'être_), I'd
>> be paying too much attention to the subtitles to hear a word of any
>> French programming they may have.
>
> But you're talking in the conditional, meaning you've not tried it
> ;)) . Never say you can't when you just won'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... I know that there's a reasonable amount of English
>> monoglots in at least one country with its own growing group of
>> anti-Americans.
>
> Of course, but nothing prevents them to learn French in order to be
> able to listen to pioneers of the anti-globalisation movement like
> José Bové! (and note that I'm *extremely* ironic here ;)))) )
Apart from the fact that French has horrible rhotics, useless rhotics,
surplus rhotics, French isn't an oft-used language in these parts. 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? 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?

(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.)

>> Yeah, but something like /dZiz @str&ij@n. [do] v0: pa:lz &iNgl@iz/?
>> (I have no idea if that's how it'd be. Forgive me and make better
>> suggestions. And tell me what would most likely replace 'do'.)
>
> LOL. It wouldn't be far from that actually (a typical Normand way to
> pronounce this sentence would be [Syz ostRa"LE~. ty paRl"ti la~glE]?
Where's the -ti come from in /paRl"ti/? And I probably should've
included an article before 'Anglese'. To used to English's use of the
definite.

> But that Normand- influenced French rather than Normand proper).
And it is Norman French that Anglo-Norman and thus Anglese would derive
from, isn't it? So it makes sense. Except for the fact that
[Sys]=/Z+sys/ whereas /dZiz/=/dZi/ (i.e. I) + //z~s// (i.e. 'm).

> The most likely replacement of 'do' would be [k] after a question word
> (from "que", the origin of it is a very much eroded "est-ce que",
> which is present uneroded in standard spoken French) or [ti] after
> the verb in a question without question word. Both are typical
> question particles in Normand French.
Where's this [ti] come from (i.e. what was it like a thousand years ago,
and what does it mean)? 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.

Anyone know of any useful sources (in English) on Anglo-Norman as it was
spoken when it was spoken as a first language?

>> Hardly past tense. I've known of the term 'auxiliary verb' for
>> longer than I've known that 'could' is theoretically the past tense
>> of 'can'.
>
> As I said, the past tense of the auxiliaries has nearly taken a life
> of its own. But tense agreement still exists as far as I know (the
> past of "I do it because I can" is "I did it because I could". I
> doubt "I did it because I can" would have the same meaning, or would
> even be simply correct), so the idea that "could" is the past tense
> of "can" is still not completely gone yet :) .
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.

>> I'll take my cues from someone else, I think (taking my life like a
>>  movie?).
>
> Never heard of metaphors? ;)))
Yeah, I know, I was just using your very same metaphor!

Tristan

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