Re: Futurese

In a message dated 04/29/02 7:13:08 PM, uaxuctum@YAHOO.ES writes:

<< Would you say English compounds such as "plane crash",
"fire exit", "adult content" and the like are just one
word each? >>

    Yes; they're listed that way in the dictionary.  Each is one "lexeme".
Why?  Because you can't automatically predict the meaning of these phrases by
a combination of the meanings of both words in any predictable way (contrary
to what you proposed).  A plane crash is "the crash(ing) of a plane".  So,
logically, a fire exit, is "the exit(ing) of a fire", correct?  From what it
sounds like, if your language were to employ a system like this, you would,
then, have to list each one as a separate entry in a dictionary--which would
lead one to wonder, why not just smash them together into one word?
    Per the sound system, you might want to read up on auditory phonetics.
Whether a sound is pronounceable or not is largely irrelevant to whether it's
a "good" phoneme for an IAL.  What matters is whether it can be distinguishe
d.  For example, [v/z/Z] are (I believe one could argue) more salient in
pronunciation, but [f/s/S] are auditorilly more salient.  Also, voiceless
stops are far more salient than voiced (in fact, it's more likely to have a
distinction other than voicing in determining the difference between stops,
and other sounds, as well.  In English, it's been argued that there are no
voiced stops: just aspirated and unaspirated voiceless stops.  The same has
been argued for [s/z]: [z] being voiceless, but having a narrower
constriction than [s]).  And the velar place of articulation is very weak,
making voicing very difficult, since a tight constriction is not easily
achievable (even in languages that have a [g] which contrasts with [k], [g]
shows up with far lower frequency than [k], or other voiced stops like [b]
and [d]).  Evidence of the weakness of [g] shows up in tons of languages
(like /g/ > [G] in Spanish, for example), and it often disappears completely
in certain environments.
    Next, with regards to your posting on your defense of your phonemes, the
argumentation is just atrocious.  I apologize for saying it in such a way,
but it is.

<<* JAPANESE (poor sound system = of course, VERY EASY to pronounce):>>

    I had no trouble pronouncing this sentence, having no prior training in
Japanese.  Of course, knowing the pitch-accent rules would have made it even
easier...

<<* SAMOAN (perfect example of extremely poor sound system = of course,

> this one must certainly be DEAD EASY to pronounce):>>
    I had no trouble pronouncing these, either.  I am studying Hawaiian,
though.  However, both of these examples are totally irrelevant.  Why?
Because you're proposing a language that allows only monosyllabic words, and
no hiatus (i.e., two vowels in a row).  A word like "aofa'i" could never
exist in Futurese.  If your language adopted the exact sound system of
Samoan, I bet it'd be just as easy to pronounce because of your rules
regarding syllable structure.  Why, then, these examples?  Seems like they're
there to kind of distract the reader.  They prove a different point, though
by posting them, it could possibly be inferred that this completely different
point is synanomous with your point, which it isn't.  Tricky, but that
doesn't fly.
    Also, you might want to find a word other than "poor" to describe small
sound inventories.
    And I'm absolutely baffled at how you came up with 11 consonants for
Japanese.  I counted 27 just now, and that was without getting picky.

<<If you ignore the main

> trend of having at least two liquid sounds, L and R, clearly dis-
> tinguished, on the argument of helping the speakers of a certain
> group of languages in pronouncing the IAL, then the rest of the
> inhabitants of the world would have all the right to protest and
> ask for their own habits of pronounciation to be taken into ac-
> count, so that they too had the privilege of having the task of
> learning to pronounce the IAL equally simplified.>>
    Yes, they would have the right.  Would they do it?  No.  And, by your
logic, there's an easy way to clear this up: Include only one liquid phoneme,
but *don't* say that it's only to help the speakers of certain groups of
languages.  Just say it's because you don't like having two, and that's the
way it's going to be.  Problem solved.  Besides, there's auditory evidence
which suggests that it's easier to tell the difference between [t] and [k],
and between [v] and [b] than any /r/ and /l/ phoneme--much easier.  Even with
[t] and [k], Hawaiians, et al can still tell the difference between [t] and
[k].  They existed as two separate phonemes at one time in the language: a
push chain just left [t] as the odd man out.  Just because a distinction
doesn't exist in a language doesn't mean that the distinction can't be made.
English doesn't have a distinction between aspirated and unaspirated [t] at
the beginning of a word.  Does that mean English speakers can't tell the
difference?  Certainly not.  The lack of aspiration is one way you can tell
if someone's speaking with an accent.

<<it is quite rare that a

> native speaker of a language finds a sound of his/her mother
> tongue difficult to pronounce>>
    Ever heard English speaking children pronounce "drawing" as "drawling"?
"Red" as "wed"?  Is this rare?  Most times it doesn't persist (usually
because kids are sent to a speech therapist), but occasionally it does.  A
friend of mine can't pronounce /l+labial/ combinations.  So "wolf" becomes
"woof" [wUf], and "elm" becomes "em" [Em] or "el" [EL] (could this be where
that variant of "almonds" [&mIndz] came from?).  Why do speech therapists
exist, after all?
    The problems I think you'll encounter are minimal quadruplets like the
following: /rir/, /ril/, /lir/, /lil/.  And multiply that by six vowels, and
you have quite an interesting set of syllables.  Oh, and what about /jij/,
/jiw/, /wij/, /wiw/, and with all the vowels?  You'll have to semantically
bury most of these, so that one is the word for "dog", and another the word
for "overcrowdedness", so there will be no possibility of confusion (though,
of course, you probably wouldn't have a syllable meaning "overcrowdedness" in
your system).
    If I were to give you some honest advice, I'd say you should get rid of
one of the liquids (again, this is based on auditory evidence), and get rid
of the idea of one syllable = one basic concept, from which larger ones are
built.  And if you're not, you should be very careful with metaphor.  Not
even the "most basic" ones are as intuitive as you might think.  A good book
to read is Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson.  Anyway,
that's all I have to say for the moment.

-David

"fawiT, Gug&g, tSagZil-a-Gariz, waj min DidZejsat wazid..."
"Soft, driven, slow and mad, like some new language..."
                    -Jim Morrison