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kangaroo, word breaks

From:Muke Tever <alrivera@...>
Date:Saturday, August 26, 2000, 13:09
> 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!