Re: phonology of Plan B
| From: | Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Sunday, July 8, 2007, 15:49 |
|---|
Hallo!
On Sun, 8 Jul 2007 15:23:43 +0100, R A Brown wrote:
> And Rosta wrote:
> > Joerg & Ray concur that Plan B does not have 16 phonemes with
> > consonantal and vocalic allophones:
> [snip]
> >
> > To my eyes, the most sensible analysis of Plan B is the 16-phoneme
> > dual-allophony one. It's the analysis you get if you apply basic
> > principles of contrastiveness;
>
> In the words John McEnroe (with similar intonation & gestures): "You can
> not be serious!"
I hope you didn't smash your racket - those things are expensive :)
> >and the alternatives that Joerg & Ray put
> > forward fail to account for the systematic equivalence of consonants and
> > vowel phonemes.
>
> What???
>
> Plan B has strings of CV, which is not exactly uncommon. The Polynesian
> languages do this all the time. I could easily write Hawaiian, Samoan or
> any of the others, using only consonant symbols. All we need to know is
> how these symbols are pronounced in the odd numbered positions (i.e.
> when used to denote vowels).
Yes, such a writing is possible, though it is quite insane. But that
says nothing about the phonemic structure of the languages concerned.
> OK - Plan B is a little different in that:
> - the last item in a string can be a C, i.e. the final syllable may be
> CVC. But I bet there are examples of natlangs that have the same feature.
There almost certainly are, even I cannot name one.
> - the number of consonant phonemes and vowel phonemes (if, as you
> obviously are, you count the r+V as separate phones) is the same.
>
> Let us suppose we have a natlang with only six consonant phonemes:
> Bilabial Alveolar Velar
> Voiceless p t k
> Voiced v r g
>
> Such a language, we know, does exist. It's called Rotakas. The voiceless
> consonants are plosives, the voiced may be realized as voiced fricatives
> or nasals according to dialect (the 'voiced alveolar' is often realized
> as a lateral or flap).
>
> Suppose our language has the classical five vowels (as Rotakas in fact
> has), but also includes an unrounded high central vowel, CXS /1/ (IPA
> /ɨ/). We could represent our language, let us call it 'Rotakas B', quite
> unambiguously with just six symbols, namely:
> Consonant Vowel
> P /p/ /a/
> T /t/ /e/
> K /k/ /i/
> B /v/ /o/
> R /r/ /u/
> G /g/ /ɨ/
>
> Thus, e.g. BRT KGRP PGGTT = /vut igup agɨte/
>
> Does that mean, then, that 'Rotakas B' has only six phonemes with
> dual-allophony?
Nope. It certainly has *twelve* phonemes - six consonants and
six vowels.
> I submit that:
> a. Any field worker who gave 'Rotakas B' such an orthography would be
> considered a tad weird.
> b. Any phonologist that posited a six phoneme inventory for the
> language, with each phoneme having a consonantal and a vocalic allophone
> would be laughed out of court.
AMEN.
> Therefore, I say: "You can not be serious!"
And rightly so.
> -----------------------------------
>
> Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
> [snip]
> > ............. *Underlyingly*, a Plan B
> > utterance is a *stream of bits* which is segmented into 4-bit units,
> and it is
> > these *bit patterns* that are the fundamental building blocks of the
> language.
> >
> > The consonants and vowels are as secondary to the language as are the
> letters
> > we use to write English secondary to the English language.
>
> Yes, this is true, but if are talking about its *phonology* then we
> must, surely, deal with the consonants and vowels. At a phonological
> level, the underlying bit-stream is IMO irrelevant.
Yes. Phonemes do not consist of bits, even if they are encoded
that way!
> 'Rotakas B' can readily be expressed as a stream of bits in a similar
> manner to plan B. True, 'Rotakas B' would use only six out of the eight
> possible three-bit patters. But let us suppose our eccentric
> field-worker moves on and finds a possibly (tho not not necessarily)
> related group of indigenous people who have a language with eight
> vowels, similar to the Turkish inventory. We now have /i e y ø ɨ a u o/.
> He finds this language, which we may call 'Rotakas C' also has eight
> consonant phonemes; besides the six of 'Rotakas B' it also has a
> voiceless and voiced pair of palatals, thus:
> Bilabial Alveolar Palatal Velar
> Voiceless p t c k
> Voiced v r j g
So far, a perfectly plausible naturalistic language.
> Our eccentric field worker notices that he could use octal numbers in
> order to encode the language, but decides not to. However he cannot
> resist giving the eight bit patterns thus:
> BITS WRITTEN CONS. VOWEL
> 000 P /p/ /a/
> 001 T /t/ /e/
> 010 C /c/ /i/
> 011 K /k/ /o/
> 100 V /v/ /u/ [Now ain't that a coincidence!]
> 101 R /r/ /ɨ/
> 110 J /j/ /ø/
> 111 G /g/ /y/
>
> So we could have: TJRGV RCPT GKKVG /tøryv ɨcat ykovy/
Which is a totally insane way to spell it!
> Does the fact that the eight written consonant symbols of 'Rotakas C'
> can each be individually mapped to a unique three-bit stream make the
> slightest difference to way we examine the phonology? IMHO it makes not
> an iota of difference.
>
> I submit once again that a field worker who gave such an orthography to
> 'Rotakas C' would be thought a tad weird, and that any phonologist who
> posited eight phonemes, each with a consonantal & vocalic allophone,
> would be laughed out of court.
I whole-heartedly agree. What the field worker has produced is a
*binary encoding* that makes clever use of the phonology to save
one bit on each phoneme - but it is still a language with *sixteen*
phonemes, namely eight consonants and eight vowels.
> > Yet, I wouldn't
> > call the bit patterns "phonemes" because they are not domains in the
> human
> > phonetic space.
>
> Nor would I call the bit patterns "phonemes"; more significantly,
> perhaps, *Jeff Prothero, the author of Plan B, does _not_ call them
> phonemes*.
True. I concur with you. The bit patterns are not phonemes.
> Let me quote the relevant parts of his description of the language:
> {quote 1}
> The proposed syntax consists of:
> * An alphabet. "bcdf ghjk lmnp stvz" is suggested, but the
> choice is not critical.
> * A pronunciation scheme which makes all sequences of
> letters equally pronounceable, thus decoupling the rest
> of the language design from the details of the human
> vocal tract.
> {/quote 1}
Which is formulated as if the letters are more fundamental than
the spoken sounds, which is exactly the other way than in written
natlangs. Nevertheless, the 16 letters Plan B is written with
aren't phonemes, just the same as the 26 letters English is written
with aren't phonemes (many beginning conlangers fail at this point).
Plan B has 16 *graphemes*, not 16 phonemes.
> {quote 2}
> (It is
> handy to have the alphabet size be a power of two.
> Eight letters would be less concise, thirty-two would
> be tough to map onto the standard twenty-six char
> character set. To encode an arbitrary
> bitstream efficiently, we use these sixteen letters
> as a hex encoding according to the following scheme.
> (The capital letters in the right two columns
> give the intended pronunciation of each letter
> when used as a vowel and when used as a consonant.)
> {/quote 2}
So, unlike what I tacitly assumed (and did actually do in X-1),
the letters are more fundamental than the bit stream.
> {quote 3}
> the particular letters and pronunciations
> chosen don't matter much, and might be changed
> for a non-European audience.
> {/quote 3}
>
> IMO the last ought to changed to "a non-North-America audience." it is
> quite clear that Jeff considers the vowels of _fought_ and _prop_ to be
> the same, which they ain't in Britain nor AFAIK elsewhere in the
> anglophone world outside of North America. But that is a small point;
> the point is *the particular letters and pronunciations chosen don't
> matter much.* This, basically, is what quote 1 also says.
Yes.
> In quote 2 it is quite clear that Jeff is using "sixteen letters
> as a hex encoding" (which is why I have written more than once that IMO
> it might have been better simply to use the standard hex digits).
> Further, Jeff writes: "the right two columns give the intended
> pronunciation of each letter _when used as a vowel_ and _when used as a
> consonant_" [emphasis mine].
>
> There is mention here or, indeed, any where else in Jeff's article about
> phonemes. Surely by writing "when used as a vowel" and "when used as a
> consonant" he means that each hex letter has _two different uses_. To my
> simple mind, that surely implies used as two different phonemes.
Yes. Two different phonemes represented by the same grapheme,
as in your "Rotokas B" and "Rotokas C" examples.
> So at this stage I submit:
> - that any phonologist that gave 'Rotakas C' just eight phonemes, each
> with a vocalic and unrelated consonantal allophone, would be laughed out
> of court,
> - there is nothing in Jeff Prothero's article that states that Plan B
> has just 16 phonemes, each with a vocalic and unrelated consonantal
> allophone.
I agree in both points.
> So where does the notion that Plan B has 16 phonemes come from? To the
> best of my knowledge it is due to Jacques Guy's satirical 'Plan C' in
> which he wrote:
> {quote}
> The Plan-B language -- I'll call it Bee for short -- Bee, then, has 16
> er... phonemes, because sixteen is a power of two, which makes it
> computationally desirable. Each phoneme has two allophones, one of
> which is a vowel, or a diphthong, or the same preceded by "r", the
> other a consonant. I say: jolly good idea! Indeed, it's like the
> author says: "By providing both a vowel and a consonant pronunciation
> for each letter, and using them alternately, we can pronounce
> arbitrary strings of letters without difficulty". Brilliant. And I,
> poor sod, who thought a strict CV(V) language would do it!
> {/quote}
>
> "The Plan-B language has 16 er... phonemes" - Why "er..."? Because
> surely Jacques Guy knows quote well that they are not phonemes. His
> "jolly good idea!" and "brilliant" are surely sarcastic. Indeed, he
> makes it clear earlier in his article that he 'taking the mickey' out of
> Plan-B.
>
> Sarcastic too, is his "And I, poor sod, who thought a strict CV(V)
> language would do it!"
Absolutely. Jacques Guy pulled a joke from the baroque dual-value
spelling system of Plan B, nothing else! But And did not notice
the humour and based his analysis on it :)
> Of course a strict CV language would achieve the same result, i.e.
> allowing a bitstream to be mapped to a sequence of consonant + vowel.
> Jeff Prothero could easily have given his 16 bit patters a simple
> syllabic value. Yes, a language with only 16 CV syllables is a bit low
> on vowels and consonants. But in my email of Monday, 19th Sept. 2005, i
> showed have the 16 bits could easily be mapped to a system of 24
> syllables; in my page
>
http://www.carolandray.plus.com/Loglang/PhonAndOrthog.html
> I give an alternative system.
> However, Jeff's main concern is that the inventory symbols be a power of
> 2. A syllabary of 32 CV syllables is reasonable, and one of 64 even better.
>
> But, some will say, bit patterns of 5 or 6 bits are (excuse the pun) a
> bit untidy. Jeff's 4-bit patters are exactly half a byte (or 1
> 'nibble'); this is neat as we have exactly two symbols per byte. OK
> then, we'll have syllabary of 256 CV syllables - this will give us a
> much richer inventory of consonants and vowels; it could also meet
> Jeff's concern that "thirty-two would be tough to map onto the standard
> twenty-six char character set."
>
> How so, you ask? If 32 is too many, surely 256 is way over the top! But
> consider De Kolovrat's system of mapping the 100 decimal numerals from
> 00 through to 99 into pronounceable CV syllables. One could fairly
> easily create a similar system for mapping the hex values 00 through to
> FF into pronounceable CV syllables; this even byte value would map into
> a unique CV syllable.
>
> There are all sorts of possibilities, indeed, whereby a bit-stream could
> be mapped in CV syllables.
Yes.
> [snip]
> >
> > So, how to analyse Plan B correctly? In the analysis of the spoken
> > representation you get 16 syllable-initial consonants, 8 vowels and
> > diphthongs, and another consonant /r/ that may or may not be inserted
> > between the syllable-initial consonant and the vowel. Ray and I said
> that
> > the 16 vowels and r/vowel combos are not allophones of the 16 consonants
> > because they are completely different sounds. You say they are.
>
> AMEN!
>
> I repeat: In 'Rotakas C' we have:
> BITS WRITTEN CONS. VOWEL
> 000 P [p] [a]
> 001 T [t] [e]
> 010 C [c] [i]
> 011 K [k] [o]
> 100 V [v] [u]
> 101 R [r] [ɨ]
> 110 J [j] [ø]
> 111 G [g] [y]
>
> So we could have: TJRGV RCPT GKKVG [tøryv ɨcat ykovy]
>
> And says that "the alternatives that Joerg & Ray put forward fail to
> account for the systematic equivalence of consonants and vowel
> phonemes." In what possible way has 'Rotakas C' any less "systematic
> equivalence of consonants and vowel phonemes" than Plan B?
In no way. The consonant-vowel pairings in "Rotokas C" are
entirely arbitrary - as are those in Plan B! One could easily pair
them differently.
> Must 'Rotakas C' then be analyzed as having eight phonemes, each with a
> consonant and vowel allophones?
Certainly not!
> Indeed, you're own statement "systematic
> equivalence of consonants and vowel phonemes" surely implies that there
> are vowel and consonant _phonemes_, not vowel and consonant allophones.
>
> Jacques Guy said of Plan B: "'Twas like waving a red rag at a frog (a
> bullfrog) and I snapped at the bait merrily." Certainly And's letter to
> be like a waving a red rag and maybe I snapped too merrily at the bait,
> but, once again in Mr McEnroe's words, intonation & gestures: "You can
> not be serious!"
Yes. While I see how someone can arrive at a "16-phoneme" analysis
of Plan B (because the *graphic representation* introduces a pairing
of consonants and vowels), it is and remains nevertheless inappropriate.
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
Reply