Re: YAPT

Gary Shannon wrote at 2005-01-04 08:08:15 (-0800)
 > More evidence for my contention that the exact nature
 > of mouth noises is probably the least important aspect
 > of language. Just listen to a four way conversation
 > between people from Syndey, Bombay, Boston and South
 > Carolina and you'll notice that they all understand
 > each other just fine even though they have practically
 > no mouth noises in common.
 >

Gary, you're not really saying anything substantive here.  You're just
indulging your personal prejudice against phonology again.  Without
specifying any standard of "exact" one could as accurately claim that
the exact nature of speech sounds is the _most_ important aspect of
language, as it is the only thing which enables us to distinguish
between two utterances.  Defining the kind of variation in
pronunciation which will not prevent comprehension is not trivial.
Even if you could define it, you'd have no standard by which to
compare changes in pronunciation to changes in syntax or any other
domain.  Since you cannot judge whether a difference in one domain is
greater or smaller than a difference in another, you have no grounds
on which to say that comprehension is more sensitive to changes of one
type than another.

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