kangaroo, word breaks

> From:    Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...>
> Subject: Re: [wolfrunners] Re: Languages and SF/F (fwd)
>
> bjm10@CORNELL.EDU wrote:
> > I would call a kangaroo by the word "kangaroo"
>
> Well, it is today.  But the question was, what about if English speakers
> had encountered a kangaroo without someone to give them the name.
What's wrong with "boomer" and "flyer" that we already have?
Or are those only deceptively English-looking?

> From:    "H. S. Teoh" <hsteoh@...>
> Subject: Word boundaries
>
> I'm just been thinking... how "real" or how artificial are word
> boundaries? Especially for languages that don't have word boundaries in
> their (original) writing systems. Why must we treat every language
> (nat/conlang) as if they have units called "words"?
I had a library book once, describing English or somewhat.  They called the
word break a phoneme, IIRC, and used it... I forget how... ack, but for
example, <black bird> and <blackbird> were a minimal pair.

The difference in stress between

      black bird  /"bl{k "b@`d/
      blackbird   /"bl{k.b@`d/

was also only possible because there's an intervening word break.

     *Muke!