your first problem was whether japanese would have some sort of
new or unique problem with an alphabet given the absence of certain
syllables (like shi) from the language. the answer is, of course, no:
the language would fall into either of the two extant conventions for
dealing with the syllable: always write "shi", or write "si" and just
change the pronunciation.
You're right. There wouldn't be any "new or unique" problems but there
might have been some space for confusion, which is what I asserted. A
gojuuon (kana table) contains all permitted syllables (kana representatives
of _families_ of syllables, actually) while an alphabet would allow many
invalid combinations. For a syllabic-moraic language where there are almost
as many invalid combinations as there are valid ones this method makes good
sense.
no written language stands independent of its pronunciation rules.
alphabets need a somewhat larger set of rules than syllabaries, but
that's true independent of language.
Um, "no written language" would be too strong. Avestan script was invented
to make obsolete pronunciation rules by containing a large enough, but not
too large, set of basic symbols that were to be in one-to-one
correspondence with phonetic constructs of the language(s) that mattered to
its inventors. Since there were no exceptions there was no need for rules
beyond the correspondence between symbols and phonetic constructs. Of
course, the script itself became obsolete in due time. Modern day IPA is a
better informed attempt with an expanded albeit similar goal, although it
still needs to "approximate" sounds of some languages and it is extremely
hard to learn and use for non-phoneticians; or phoneticians for that
matter, but at least learning IPA is part of their job.
**********
i'm not a linguist, but the linguists i know subscribe to the
viewpoint that the written and spoken language are separate.
and evolve separately. i would derive from this that writability
is independent of pronouncability.
If a sequence of symbols corresponds to something from a natural language
then it must be pronounceable since it must have been uttered at some time.
The same rule may not apply to "extensions" to natural language (acronyms,
stenography) or artificial languages (mathematics, computer programs).
--On Friday, September 11, 2009 17:59 -0400 Anthony Sorace
<[email protected]> wrote:
that's a whole different problem, though.
your first problem was whether japanese would have some sort of
new or unique problem with an alphabet given the absence of certain
syllables (like shi) from the language. the answer is, of course, no:
the language would fall into either of the two extant conventions for
dealing with the syllable: always write "shi", or write "si" and just
change the pronunciation.
no written language stands independent of its pronunciation rules.
alphabets need a somewhat larger set of rules than syllabaries, but
that's true independent of language.
--On Friday, September 11, 2009 18:16 -0400 erik quanstrom
<[email protected]> wrote:
That's true but isn't exactly the same thing. "Irregularly" pronounced
combinations are still valid combinations. I'd say the universal example
for languages that are written in Latin alphabet or a variation thereof
would be the (notorious) 'fgsfds.' It's an invalid combination because
there is _no_ pronunciation at all--except 'figgis-fiddis' which is a
really recent, and ground-breaking, invention ;-)
by this definition, one could devise a valid input method
with which it would be impossible to type "xyzzy".
no written language stands independent of its pronunciation rules.
alphabets need a somewhat larger set of rules than syllabaries, but
that's true independent of language.
i'm not sure they are fully dependent. consider acronyms. or even
variable names. (sometimes these need to be referred to
in speech.) there are special hacks for making these
pronouncable. in mathematics the same symbol can
have many pronunciations that depend entirely on the
context.
i'm not a linguist, but the linguists i know subscribe to the
viewpoint that the written and spoken language are separate.
and evolve separately. i would derive from this that writability
is independent of pronouncability.
trying to think as a linguist, i would consider spoken acronyms
to be cognates from the written language.
as an homage to j. arthur seebach i'd say, "english is *neat*".
- erik
