Re: phonology of Plan B

Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
> Hallo!
>
> On Thu, 12 Jul 2007 10:32:30 +0100, R A Brown wrote:
[snip]
>>If we did not know the underlying structure and had only the spelling
>>system given us, we would consider a system in which |s| is sometimes
>>pronounced [s] and sometimes pronounced [raj] to be weird. It is only
>>when we notice that this alternation is consistent and not random that
>>we would realize that there was something underlying this pairing.
>
> And this something is *not* a "phoneme".  In Greek (correct me if
> I am wrong, Ray) the accusative singular ending has two forms, namely
> -n and -a.
Correct.

> Nevertheless, /n/ and /a/ are *completely different phonemes*.
Correct.

> It is just that this particular morpheme has two completely different
> *allomorphs* (diachronically, of course, they are connected, both
> descending from PIE *-m by regular sound changes).
Also correct. Yes, both are derived from PIE /m/. After a vowel the /m/
was not syllabic and, in ancient Greek, became /n/ in final position;
but after a consonant the PIE /m/ was syllabic, i.e. [m=], and both
syllabic [n=] and [m=] regularly became /a/ in ancient Greek.

I have genuinely no idea how this is viewed in generative phonology, but
  in ancient (and modern) Greek itself, /a/ and /n/ are certainly
distinct phonemes.

[snip]
>>I still hold that it is risible to analyze Plan B as having 16 phonemes.
>
>
> I wouldn't say "risible"; I'd rather say "misleading".
You are kinder than me   :)

It really does seem to me that if one arrives at a conclusion that has
such phonetically disparate pairs of allophones as[E]~[b],  [ej]~[S],
[I]~[d], [r\E]~[D], [r\I]~[n], [r\ej]~[m] etc., one should question
whether what one is abstracting are phonemes at all.

> And's analysis
> is not entirely ludicrous; it's just that the term "phoneme" is poorly
> chosen.  In *one single aspect*, namely the role of fundamental building
> blocks of the language, the 16 bit quartets *are* "phonemes",
On this I must disagree. This is giving "phoneme" a meaning which it
does not normally have. A "phoneme" is normally understood to mean the
minimal unit in the sound system of a language. I believe the term
'phoneme' is, by extension, used to denote minimal units in signing
languages (tho I may be wrong on this); if so, those using the term in
that context understand what is meant.

But And, by quoting allophones in square brackets, has been using the
term to refer to _sounds_, as such one would surely understand the term
in its traditional sense.

Neither you, nor I nor And at all in disagreement about the 16
bit-quartets (tho arguably one might hold that the bit itself, 0~1, is
the _minimal_ underlying unit). None of us disagrees that these quartets
are fundamental to the language.

The disagreement, which shows no signs of being resolves, is in the
analysis of the spoken representation that Jeff Prothero happen to give
to these quartets in his paper of May, 1990.

I have more than once point out that Jeff also wrote: "the particular
letters and pronunciations chosen don't matter much." This statement in
itself ought to cause us to wonder how meaningful it is to be talking
about the _phonology_ of Plan B.

[snip]
>>Therefore, I now conclude that _both_ my analysis of Plan B as having 16
>>consonant phonemes, eight vowel phonemes, and the 'glide' /r/ is
>>mistaken, _and_ you analysis of 16-phonemes is equally mistaken. IMO we
>>are both analyzing a chimera    ;)
>
>
> Yes.  And that's why this whole thread is running in circles, with
> the same arguments being exchanged over and over again.  We should
> agree that Plan B is fundamentally a language of bit quartets, and
> that any phonological analysis of it (in the traditional meaning of
> the term "phonology", of course) depends on arbitrary secondary
> factors and is thus *meaningless*.
Agreed. One can only discuss the merits of one particular way of mapping
Plan B's quartets to human speech over another way of doing it. Plan B
has a 'phonology' only in the sense in which English (or any other
Natlang) has a bit-pattern representation. Its as tho you, I and And
were arguing over the phonemic or graphemic inventory of EBCDIC or ASCII!

It has no meaning.

[snip]
>>The basic units of Plan B are the quartets of bits. One can discuss
>>whether the ad_hoc system of mapping the bits to writing and to spoken
>>sound is a sensible one or not, but to discuss the phonology of Plan B
>>does not make much sense because, in the strict sense, it has no phonology.
>
>
> Yes.  Plan B has no phonology.  It *can* be represented by vowels
> and consonants, the same way natural languages can be encoded in bit
> streams, but the same way there are many different ways of encoding
> a particular natural language in a bit stream, there are many different
> ways of encoding Plan B in human speech sounds.
Precisely - and what is the system over which we have been arguing?

The clearly ad_hoc system, in which he chose 16 letters normally used to
denote consonants, given in Jeff's paper of May, 1990 depends upon:
- the traditional ordering of letters in the Roman alphabet;
- the normal consonant pronunciation of those letters in English, with
the exception of |c| which is given the sound [S] (as in Ro, Lojban, and
many Conlangs of American origin), |h| the sound [T] (a sound ' may have
in Lojban] and |l| the sound [D] (presumably because keeping its
tradition sound would otherwise have given rise the combination [lr].
- allotting vowel values, not by any scheme, other than that the second
group of eight should be the same as the first, but prefixed with [r\].
The vowels are allotted simply from the American English pronunciations
monosyllabic words beginning with the particular letter in question.

It does seem strange to me to hold that pairs of disparate consonants
and vowels, assigned values in such an ad_hoc way, are then allophones
of the same phoneme. Indeed, it does seem risible to me in that IMO it
is meaningless.

To my mind the only meaningful discussion would be whether this is the
best way to map quartets to spoken language or not. It seems to me quite
clear from Jeff's paper that he was not exactly over enthusiastic about
the scheme he outlined. It was surely just a ad_hoc scheme so that it
could be pronounced.
[snip]
>
>>       A phonological
>>examination might be made when comparing different mappings of the its
>>quartets to spoken form for human use, but that IMO is another matter.
>
>
> Yes.
Yep - and that IMO is the only valid discussion involving Plan B and
phonology.
[snip]
>>
>>They do indeed. Also as I have shown, Plan B could have been implemented
>>in such a way that they were no phonetically unrelated allomorphs.
>
> Yes.  There is no "phonology of Plan B", as there is not "the bit stream
> representation of English";
AMEN! AMEN!

> there are only phonologies of particular
> spoken representations of Plan B.  Your system has a different phonology
> than Jeff's, and mine (X-1) yet another one.
Exactly so. In fact over the past two years, I come up with three
different schemes for mapping Plan B's quartets to human speech (and
writing). I have no doubt there are other ways in which it can be done.

--
Ray
==================================
ray@carolandray.plus.com
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
Nid rhy hen neb i ddysgu.
There's none too old to learn.
[WELSH PROVERB]