Re: Rotokas (was: California Cheeseburger)

On Sunday, June 20, 2004, at 04:04 , Thomas R. Wier wrote:

> 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?
Eh? I thought it had been stated somewhere in this thread (about a week
back IIRC) that 'Rotokas' was *not* the native name of the language.

Basing an argument on a single item is a bit dodgy IMO, and names are ever
less secure. Isn't this a bit like asking how can French not have the
phoneme [tS] when the name of the language ends in [tS]?
==============================================================

On Sunday, June 20, 2004, at 06:09 , Mark P. Line wrote:

[snip]
> 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.
As Mark recently wrote in another thread: "A little learning is a
dangerous thing.."   :)

I previously had _no_ learning about Rotokas, so have no ax to grind. But,
  as far as I understand it from this thread, those who've actually studied
the available material do seem to agree that Rotokas has (C)V structure
and nothing I've read so far gives me any firm evidence to doubt this.

Ray
===============================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
ray.brown@freeuk.com    (home)
raymond.brown@kingston-college.ac.uk   (work)
===============================================
"A mind which thinks at its own expense will always
interfere with language."         J.G. Hamann, 1760

Reply