There are 8 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: CHAT: Book recommendations?
From: J R
2a. Re: [CHAT] Pre-Kindergarten diphthong analysis
From: J R
2b. Re: [CHAT] Pre-Kindergarten diphthong analysis
From: Philip Newton
2c. Re: [CHAT] Pre-Kindergarten diphthong analysis
From: Mark J. Reed
2d. Re: [CHAT] Pre-Kindergarten diphthong analysis
From: Paul Bennett
2e. Re: [CHAT] Pre-Kindergarten diphthong analysis
From: Mark J. Reed
2f. Re: [CHAT] Pre-Kindergarten diphthong analysis
From: Philip Newton
2g. Re: [CHAT] Pre-Kindergarten diphthong analysis
From: Philip Newton
Messages
________________________________________________________________________
1a. Re: CHAT: Book recommendations?
Posted by: "J R" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri Sep 19, 2008 1:54 am ((PDT))
On Mon, Sep 15, 2008 at 4:44 PM, Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>wrote:
> On 9/9/08, J R <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > I'm looking into purchasing the following, and would appreciate any
> > recommendations:
> >
> > 1. A dictionary of linguistic terms
> > 2. A grammar of Mandarin
> > 3. A grammar of Tagalog
> > 4. A Russian course
> >
> > (should be in English, preferably!)
>
> Late to the party, but I can recommend adding to any books you end up
> getting with the appropriate Pimlseur CDs from a local library (unless
> you're made of money, in which case go ahead and buy them). Of the
> languages above, I've only done the first half-dozen lessons in
> Russian, and the first one lesson in Mandarin, but Pimsleur's French,
> Spanish, Czech and Ojibwe have all served me remarkably well -- the
> latter as my primary source.
>
> I imagine they'd have served me better were I as good at finishing
> projects as I am at starting them, but that's clearly a flaw in me
> rather than in the material.
>
> I second the recommendation of Trask's Dictionary of Grammatical
> Terms, by the way. Darned solid stuff, and always either on my desk or
> the shelves right next to it.
>
>
>
> Paul
>
Ahh, Pimsleur.... Personally I find it more useful for some languages
than for others. I went through the Persian program (actually there
are two: a 30-unit one, and a 10-unit one which is not only shorter,
but also uses more colloquial pronunciation/terms) with no problems.
But Persian has a pretty simple morphology. Russian, OTOH ... it's not
so much that there are three genders and six cases, as that the
inflection is fusional, syncretic, unsystematic (even down to the
stress, which sometimes changes, and sometimes doesn't). With such a
morphology, I prefer to learn it as directly and systematically as
possible, and then apply it - which is, of course, the antithesis of
the Pimsleur method. But after slogging through 15 or so units of
Pimsleur's Russian, I found it too confusing ... I was just hearing
too many different forms, not quite knowing why they were being used
and how to apply what I was learning to other words. I suppose Czech
is not much better, but it worked for you. Different strokes for
different folks, I guess.
I wonder what the story is behind the inclusion of Ojibwe.
Josh Roth
Messages in this topic (9)
________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________
2a. Re: [CHAT] Pre-Kindergarten diphthong analysis
Posted by: "J R" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri Sep 19, 2008 2:04 am ((PDT))
Good for your son! Perhaps we have an innate understanding of these things
that, for many, eventually becomes corrupted or suppressed by orthography
(at least when the orthography is as off as English's).
I remember insisting when I was younger that 'tree' must be spelled 'chree',
because the word began with /tS/, and we had learned that /tS/ was spelled
'ch'. I was told in resonse that it did not begin with /tS/, but with 't'.
While I was right, I was also wrong ... since /S/ is automatically inserted
into a /tr/ sequence, it makes sense to spell it with a 't' as well.
Josh
On Thu, Sep 18, 2008 at 3:39 PM, Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> For school today my 4-year-old had to bring in a picture of something
> starting with the letter O. Having learned that "O says [a]" ([a]
> being the sound of CLOTH in our 'lect), he immediately thought of
> "octopus". But that seems to be the standard O word in alphabet books
> these days, so my wife thought that too many kids were liable to bring
> one of those in. So we set about thinking of other things that start
> with O.
>
> I suggested "owl", but he sounded it out and informed me that "owl"
> starts with [&] and therefore would be spelled with the letter "A"! I
> had to agree that [&] is indeed the first component of our MOUTH
> diphthong, but I pointed out that we have had discussions before about
> how spelling doesn't always work the way you think it should. He
> remained skeptical.
>
> We compromised on "orange". He was still iffy - we're in the
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] camp rather than, say, the [EMAIL PROTECTED] camp, and
> NORTH is
> not CLOTH, but it was closer than that crazy "owl" idea.
>
> I did try to think of other words besides "octopus" that are spelled
> with O and start with the CLOTH sound, but of course under the
> pressure of trying to get ready to go to school, couldn't think of
> any. Naturally, after I dropped him off I had ocelots and oxen
> chasing ostriches and otters through my head...
>
> Anyway, I'm proud of my boy's phonetic analysis, if not his spelling
> ability. I'll make a linguist of him yet. :)
>
> --
> Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
Messages in this topic (10)
________________________________________________________________________
2b. Re: [CHAT] Pre-Kindergarten diphthong analysis
Posted by: "Philip Newton" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri Sep 19, 2008 6:41 am ((PDT))
On 19/09/2008, J R <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I remember insisting when I was younger that 'tree' must be spelled 'chree',
> because the word began with /tS/, and we had learned that /tS/ was spelled
> 'ch'. I was told in resonse that it did not begin with /tS/, but with 't'.
> While I was right, I was also wrong ... since /S/ is automatically inserted
> into a /tr/ sequence, it makes sense to spell it with a 't' as well.
Perhaps a better response for that situation might have been,
"Spelling is based on a standard pronunciation; in this case, the
standard pronunciation has /tr/ rather than the /tSr/ that's common
around here, which explains why the word is spelled with |tr| and not
|chr|".
(That would also cover things such as people with pen-pin mergers, or
father-bother, which-witch, or horse-hoarse, or .... -- recourse to a
standard pronunciation in which such distinctions *are* made.)
Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Messages in this topic (10)
________________________________________________________________________
2c. Re: [CHAT] Pre-Kindergarten diphthong analysis
Posted by: "Mark J. Reed" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri Sep 19, 2008 6:57 am ((PDT))
Distinguishing 'horse" and "hoarse" must be that NORTH/FORCE
distinction I've read about. What are some sample realizations?
On 9/19/08, Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 19/09/2008, J R <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> I remember insisting when I was younger that 'tree' must be spelled
>> 'chree',
>> because the word began with /tS/, and we had learned that /tS/ was
>> spelled
>> 'ch'. I was told in resonse that it did not begin with /tS/, but with
>> 't'.
>> While I was right, I was also wrong ... since /S/ is automatically
>> inserted
>> into a /tr/ sequence, it makes sense to spell it with a 't' as well.
>
> Perhaps a better response for that situation might have been,
> "Spelling is based on a standard pronunciation; in this case, the
> standard pronunciation has /tr/ rather than the /tSr/ that's common
> around here, which explains why the word is spelled with |tr| and not
> |chr|".
>
> (That would also cover things such as people with pen-pin mergers, or
> father-bother, which-witch, or horse-hoarse, or .... -- recourse to a
> standard pronunciation in which such distinctions *are* made.)
>
> Cheers,
> --
> Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
--
Sent from Gmail for mobile | mobile.google.com
Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Messages in this topic (10)
________________________________________________________________________
2d. Re: [CHAT] Pre-Kindergarten diphthong analysis
Posted by: "Paul Bennett" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri Sep 19, 2008 7:17 am ((PDT))
On 9/19/08, Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Distinguishing 'horse" and "hoarse" must be that NORTH/FORCE
> distinction I've read about. What are some sample realizations?
AFAICT /hor\s/ vs /[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ or something similar.
There's also the (perhaps only stereotypical modernly) /hOs/ for the
former in Southwestern (or Old Western?) USAian, but I'm not sure what
the HOARSE would be for that. Maybe /[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ again?
Paul
Messages in this topic (10)
________________________________________________________________________
2e. Re: [CHAT] Pre-Kindergarten diphthong analysis
Posted by: "Mark J. Reed" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri Sep 19, 2008 8:00 am ((PDT))
On Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 9:41 AM, Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Perhaps a better response for that situation might have been,
> "Spelling is based on a standard pronunciation;
I wouldn't go so far as to say "standard". Especially since, across
the language, the spelling is not consistently based on any one
pronunciation, certainly not any modern widespread one. In fact, I
think the dialects which merge pairs like "horse" and "horse" and
"father" and "bother" are much closer to "standard" status due to
their sheer ubiquity. (Thanks, Hollywood!)
Probably better to just say that the spelling used to match the
pronunciation in the part of the world where the spelling was decided,
and leave it at that, rather than use value-laden terms like
"standard".
> There's also the (perhaps only stereotypical modernly) /hOs/ for the
> former in Southwestern (or Old Western?) USAian
As in "Hoss" Cartwright. But I wouldn't necessarily assume that
"hoarse" was pronounced any differently in such lects.
--
Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Messages in this topic (10)
________________________________________________________________________
2f. Re: [CHAT] Pre-Kindergarten diphthong analysis
Posted by: "Philip Newton" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri Sep 19, 2008 10:45 am ((PDT))
On 19/09/2008, Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 19, 2008 at 9:41 AM, Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Perhaps a better response for that situation might have been,
> > "Spelling is based on a standard pronunciation;
>
> I wouldn't go so far as to say "standard". Especially since, across
> the language, the spelling is not consistently based on any one
> pronunciation, certainly not any modern widespread one. In fact, I
> think the dialects which merge pairs like "horse" and "horse" and
> "father" and "bother" are much closer to "standard" status due to
> their sheer ubiquity. (Thanks, Hollywood!)
>
> Probably better to just say that the spelling used to match the
> pronunciation in the part of the world where the spelling was decided,
> and leave it at that, rather than use value-laden terms like
> "standard".
OK, call it "a specific pronunciation" then.
Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Messages in this topic (10)
________________________________________________________________________
2g. Re: [CHAT] Pre-Kindergarten diphthong analysis
Posted by: "Philip Newton" [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Fri Sep 19, 2008 10:48 am ((PDT))
On 19/09/2008, Paul Bennett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On 9/19/08, Mark J. Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > Distinguishing 'horse" and "hoarse" must be that NORTH/FORCE
> > distinction I've read about. What are some sample realizations?
>
> AFAICT /hor\s/ vs /[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ or something similar.
I thought it was the other way around (/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ vs /Or\/). But I
could
be equally wrong; I'm one of the many with the merger.
Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Messages in this topic (10)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yahoo! Groups Links
<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/
<*> Your email settings:
Digest Email | Traditional
<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/conlang/join
(Yahoo! ID required)
<*> To change settings via email:
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
------------------------------------------------------------------------
