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Re: Rotokas (was: California Cheeseburger)

From:Mark P. Line <mark@...>
Date:Sunday, June 20, 2004, 16:40
Andreas Johansson said:
> Quoting "Mark P. Line" <mark@...>: > >> Thomas R. Wier said: >> > From: "Mark P. Line" <mark@...> >> >> I don't think we have any evidence that Rotokas has ever been >> analyzed >> >> with so many syllables. Seeing the number '350' in a single >> *secondary* >> >> source is not a good data point when we can find in a primary source >> >> that >> >> Rotokas has 11 phonemes and that its syllable structure is only (C)V. >> > >> > I'm jumping in here, and don't much of anything about Rotokas, but >> > how can it have a (C)V syllable structure when the name of the >> > language itself has a coda? Is there some constraint allowing word >> > final codas but not word internal ones? >> >> >> I must have been mistaken about Rotokas being (C)V. >> >> Clearly, those who don't know much of anything about Rotokas are in the >> majority here, so I'm outvoted hands-down. > > I'm quite convinced that Mr Wier was asking a honest question.
So you're saying that, knowing not much of anything about a language, it makes perfect sense to question primary sources on the basis of a single form for which you have no particular reason to believe (due to the widespread occurrence of external language names) that that single form is even native to the language in question. Where I come from, that's not how linguistics is practiced. But we all know that I come from a different planet. :) Me, I would have started from the assumption that the primary source giving us (C)V syllable structure is probably correct (not knowing any different), and asked if anybody knows where the name 'Rotokas' comes from, since it's clearly not well-formed phonotactically in Rotokas (according to that primary source). It's one thing to be disbelieved when there's no source in play. What astounds me is that I am so often disbelieved (usually by the same handful of people) even when there *is* a source and all I'm doing is repeating what it says. Something of a gunslinger mentality, I reckon: youngsters trying to see who's quicker at the draw than the aging, retired gunslinger who's really just in town to visit the saloon. You could say that the aging gunslinger brought this upon himself by the choices he's made, and you'd be right. New choices are in order, then. Clearly I've failed to inspire much professional trust from some people here, but that's okay. This list is recreational, and otherwise vacuous. I just need to remember to treat it that way. I have my own forum for Empirical Linguistics, so I'll be using that in future for discussion of (not purely theoretical) linguistics and natlang issues. I'll take purely theoretical discussions to my forum on Neurocognitive Linguistics, because any such discussion will have to be related to that paradigm somehow or I won't be very interested. Most of my work in functional-typological linguistics is empirical, not theoretical, so that stuff can be found on the Empirical Linguistics forum. Ontological discussions in the functional-typological vein are landing at the Semiotics of Complex Systems (SoCS) website. I'll take my part of any further discussion of Wittgenstein to the SoCS site. This list is about conlangs, so now there'll be less intrusion of linguistics, philosophy and natlang stuff, at least from me. Sorry to have been so obviously disruptive to the game as it is played here. I just can't get the hang of the rules. -- Mark

Replies

Andreas Johansson <andjo@...>
Aaron Grahn <aaron@...>Rotokas
John Cowan <cowan@...>