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Re: phonemes (was: 'noun' and 'adjective')

From:John Vertical <johnvertical@...>
Date:Saturday, March 4, 2006, 23:11
>Andreas Johansson wrote: >>Quoting "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...>: >>>Also, the idea that there are phoneticians who dispute the very >>>existence of phonemes blows my mind. :) >> >>Our very own And Rosta is one of them, unless he's changed opinion without >>telling me. > >Well, they don't exist, do they? As I understand it, they are strictly >language-dependent abstractions. While the phoneme theory is quite useful >in describing the way sounds are related in an individual language they by >no means IMO tell the whole story. > >-- >Ray
AIUI, the concept of "allophone" / "reoccuring sound" is meanwhile quite sound (pun not intended), isn't it? Ie grouping complementarily distributed ones into phomenes is where it starts to get theoretical. I even have a phonology sketch to prove this point; here're the allowed CV combinations where C is voiced, oral and central: [vi j\i bi J\i dz\i] [By Zy] [wY] [ji\ Gi\ gi\ di\ zi\] [Bu Gu bu gu Zu du dZu] [ve j\e be J\e dz\e] [v@ w@ j@ G@ b@ g@ d@ z\@ z@ dz\@] [GE gE dE zE] [BO RO bO G\O ZO dZO] [j& z\& dz\&] [va Ra ba G\a da za] [wQ] There is a certain logic to the system, but it is not one based on phonemes in the usual sense. If anyone's interested in constructing a similar non-phonemic appearence, I can explain further. John Vertical

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R A Brown <ray@...>