Re: languages in reverse

In a message dated 6/17/2007 12:03:20 AM Central Daylight Time,
rfmilly@MSN.COM writes:


> Shouldn't it be called [SIlg'NI ~ SIlg'NI?] ? Surely it's not based on the
> _spelling_ !!
>
Perhaps so, but I don't do this sort of transcription readily.  English has a
set orthography, so hsilgnE would have the mirrored orthography.  All the
letters should be reversed, too, but there's a limit to what I can do easily.

> To be really accurate, we'd have to pay attention to very minor allophonic
> variants-- e.g. the final stressed [I] in [SIlg'N__] isn't really [I], nor
> [i], but somewhere between the two.
>
My main concern is only that the result be understandable.  If some minor
aspects are too hard, then I'll just leave them out, as long as the result is
still understandable.

I don't intend to make any recordings, though.  I'll just reverse the
transcriptions and go from there.

> IMO it will be a very strange "English", with lots of initial [N], final
> [h], preaspiration of final vl.stops, and some daunting cons. clusters :-)))
> And if it isn't really mappable beyond the sentence level, what's the point,
> other than fun and tour-de-force-ism?
>
How could it be understandable in units greater than a sentence?  Language is
linear; utterances depend on what comes before, not what comes after.
Sentences are still small enough a unit to be able to deal with this, but paragraphs
and larger units just become weird, like time travel (which may have an
appeal of its own).

stevo


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