There are 15 messages in this issue.
Topics in this digest:
1a. Re: Core arguments
From: Roger Mills
1b. Re: Core arguments
From: Carsten Becker
2a. Re: Online Moten Dictionary
From: George Corley
3a. Re: Are there any conventions for issuing a proposed extension to co
From: George Corley
4a. Re: THEORY: Asperger syndrome and hyperpolyglotism.
From: Jörg Rhiemeier
5a. Re: How to choose the name of a conlang?
From: H. S. Teoh
6a. Realistic phonologies and such things
From: Dustfinger Batailleur
6b. Re: Realistic phonologies and such things
From: Alex Fink
7a. THEORY: How alien is syllable stress for French natives?
From: Leonardo Castro
7b. Re: THEORY: How alien is syllable stress for French natives?
From: George Corley
7c. Re: THEORY: How alien is syllable stress for French natives?
From: Patrick Dunn
7d. Re: THEORY: How alien is syllable stress for French natives?
From: Leonardo Castro
7e. Re: THEORY: How alien is syllable stress for French natives?
From: George Corley
7f. Re: THEORY: How alien is syllable stress for French natives?
From: Leonardo Castro
7g. Re: THEORY: How alien is syllable stress for French natives?
From: Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets
Messages
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1a. Re: Core arguments
Posted by: "Roger Mills" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 9, 2013 7:53 am ((PST))
If you haven't already, I suggest you consult a good thorough grammar or
Tagalog or Bisayan (probably the most widely taught Philippine languages in the
US) that AFAIK preserve _most_ of the old AN system. Some of the AN languages
of Taiwan preserve it even better (i.e. allow more categories than Tag. or
Bis.)-- I've seen exs. from Tsou, and will try to find them again.....
I'm not intimately familiar with any of those languages. Bahasa Indonesia,
which I do know, can do some of the categories, but in a much more limited way
(not with every possible verb) and with different affixes. And depending on the
affix, the meaning of the verb can change, sometimes radically-- e.g. datang
'to come', but Caus. datang/kan means 'to import', while "locative" datang/i
(more or less = come to/at) means "to attack".
--- On Fri, 3/8/13, Robert Marshall Murphy <[email protected]> wrote:
I'm trying to do an Austronesian thing, while remaining a bit inventive, but
I'm afraid I don't understand as much as I need to. Causative clauses are
really messing me up.
In my language, four arguments are integral: Agent of Transitive verb (A),
Patient of a Transitive verb (O), Benefactor/Instrument (B), and Location (L).
The argument of an intransitive verbs is called (S). Per the Austronesian
alignment, there are four voices that change who is in the Direct Case, who is
in the Indirect Case, and who needs other cases/prepositions.
=============================================
RM I thnk this terminology is a little non-standard. As you probably know, each
of the so-called "voices" or focuses, has its own special affix-- infix, prefix
or suffix. We usually refer to "actor focus" i.e. a normal SVO (or intr. SV)
sentence (here and in all the other cases, "subject" is marked with a special
marker) "patient focus" the passive voice in Engl. (O=S V + by A); "benefactive
focus)" where the Indirect Obj/recipient becomes subject; "locative focus"
where the location is subject, and "instrumental focus". IIRC Tag/Bis lack one
or the other of the last two, or conflate them -- Taiwan langauges keep them
all distinct (I think....).
I seem to recall a Tsou sentence "NAME killed the pig in the forest with a
spear", where each of the nouns can be subjectivized, each with a different
marker on the verb (+M)--
PIG killed_M1 in the forest with a spear by NAME
FOREST killed+M2 .............
SPEAR killed+M3 .............
etc. etc. I'll try to find the actual ex. But I'm sure that some of the other
noun constituents have to go into prep.phrases.
===========================================
You added: "Causative clauses are really messing me up....."
Maybe the problem is that causatives, at least in the languages I'm familiar
with, don't usually mean "make(=force) SO to do ST"; the meaning of the verb
usually undergoes a shift (in Engl. we typically use a different verb
entirely)-- e.g. the Caus. of 'eat' means 'to feed' (a benign act), not
necessarily "make SO eat" (implied, non-benign, e.g "he made her eat a worm"
not= "he fed her a worm").
================================================
All that works for me (though I don't know how naturalistic it might be). What
I can't imagine is when I introduce the Causative Stem in the verb and I need a
FIFTH argument, the Causee (C). My English brain can do some like this:
I made him give you money on Tuesday.
He was made to give you money by me on Tuesday.
*You were given money by him - who I made do it - on Tuesday.
*Money was given to you by him - who I made do it - on Tuesday.
*Tuesday was when you were given money by him - who I made do it.
My question is this: Is there any language that I can look to for an example
that considers so many things central to the verb? Or is it universally the
case that once you get away from S, A, and O something's got to be dropped?
========================================
Aside from the AN languages, I don't know; I suspect something is usually
dropped, since causatives seem to be a special case. But if you want (or feel
you really need) a marked CAUSEE case, then just do it!! :;))
Messages in this topic (3)
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1b. Re: Core arguments
Posted by: "Carsten Becker" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 9, 2013 4:02 pm ((PST))
For what it's worth, here's my try on the subject:
<http://www.incatena.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=41504>. Disclaimer: I'm not an
expert either, and I've corrected myself multiple times during that thread, and
I'm still not confident I've understood everything correctly at the end.
Carsten
Messages in this topic (3)
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2a. Re: Online Moten Dictionary
Posted by: "George Corley" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 9, 2013 7:53 am ((PST))
On Fri, Mar 8, 2013 at 5:09 PM, Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets <
[email protected]> wrote:
>
> But I don't understand why we're having this discussion. I am *not* going
> to change Moten's orthography. I was just musing about the time when I
> considered to do so. That time is past, and no argument is going to make me
> change my mind on that.
>
It could be useful to other conlangers whose orthographies are not set in
stone yet.
> On 8 March 2013 18:26, George Corley <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> >
> > Someone knows the word, but not what language it comes from, either
> because
> > it was posted somewhere with insufficient information, or they are
> > remembering the word but not where they saw it last.
> >
> >
> That's an awfully specific scenario to change an entire orthography for.
>
This is only the scenario where optimizing for Google would be important,
and it could become quite a common one if you conlang were to become
popular for some reason. Seeing as yours is not one of the conlangs riding
along the back of a popular book/TV/movie franchise, that's still unlikely.
There could be other arguments to be made. Readers will have no idea what
the pipe means without reading a pronunciation guide (the only natlang use
I can think of is the dental click, which will of course be vanishingly
rare). Again, I don't care if you change your orthography, but this could
be something for other conlangers to think about.
Messages in this topic (19)
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3a. Re: Are there any conventions for issuing a proposed extension to co
Posted by: "George Corley" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 9, 2013 8:10 am ((PST))
On Fri, Mar 8, 2013 at 3:05 PM, Matthew George <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 8, 2013 at 4:01 AM, George Corley <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> >
> > The main issue is that, in the real world, we will rarely even need to
> deal
> > with this scenario because time travel does not exist (and may indeed may
> > be impossible).
>
>
> I grant your point. But the same objection can be raised to any conlang
> work.
>
My assumption was that you were going to try to get your changes accepted
by current Esperantists, which I doubt will happen.
> > I don't see much point in optimizing a language for a
> > specialized domain that many people will never use.
> >
>
> For the utilization of the people that might use it. As a fan of SF, I
> often find myself annoyed by the shoddy plotting of time travel in various
> popular media, but explaining why to others is often tedious and complex.
> And I want to start off my conlanging on something relatively simple.
>
You must realize, however, that that is a highly specialized use of
language. I would really doubt that any language would create new
grammatical categories based on the needs of one specific genre of
fiction. It would just be too rarely used and quickly atrophy into nothing.
> Besides, I might write a story or novel about Esperantists...from The
> Future! and it would be convenient to have a language that can easily
> describe
> complex meta-temporal situations.
>
Then create your modified Esperanto and make it part of the time travel
story. You do not need any permission to use or alter an existing language
for fictional purposes. Languages cannot be copyrighted, and the worst you
will get will be some trolls hating on you (which will happen anyway to any
creative work that a sufficient number of people know about).
> > Why not? Esperanto is effectively a living language. It was always
> > intended to be a community project, and I don't think Zamenhof would mind
> > people tinkering with it, as he didn't really mind when he was alive.
> >
>
> Especially since I doubt I'll be taking away or altering any of the
> existing content. I chose Esperanto because 1) it's relatively logical and
> grammatically straightforward, 2) it's a far better subject than English,
> which is terrible, 3) it's a plausible auxlang for the future(s), and 4) it
> reminds me of *Red Dwarf*.
>
I'll just say this:
1) Can't really comment. Esperanto is certainly _simpler_ than many other
languages, in a sense.
2) Depends on your goals. I like natural languages, so I'm more inclined
to think future English is an interesting challenge.
3) NO! I'm sorry, but Esperanto has an extremely tiny chance of achieving
its original goal of becoming a global lingua franca. It has no military,
economic, or cultural power to leverage into becoming such a language. It
has about as many speakers as many minority language, but spread across the
world without a sizeable center. There are very few scenarios where I
could see Esperanto gaining that kind of traction.
4) I have no idea why that is, having never seen _Red Dwarf_
Messages in this topic (25)
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4a. Re: THEORY: Asperger syndrome and hyperpolyglotism.
Posted by: "Jörg Rhiemeier" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 9, 2013 9:07 am ((PST))
Hallo conlangers!
On Friday 08 March 2013 21:17:56 Leonardo Castro wrote:
> I just saw this guy talking about relation between Asperger syndrome
> and hyperpolyglotism (in Portuguese):
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Q78TIpSH6o
>
> He says that learning languages is a great activity for the typical
> "compulsion" of people with this type of autism. Do you anything else
> about this?
I also have Asperger syndrome and am obviously highly interested
in languages, but usually not to the point of actually learning
them. Indeed, the only language I am fluent in besides my native
German is English. I have some basic working knowledge in Latin,
French, Spanish and Dutch to the point that I understand the basic
meaning of written texts in those languages, but I cannot say that
I can speak them. So I am definitely *not* a "hyperpolyglot",
--
... brought to you by the Weeping Elf
http://www.joerg-rhiemeier.de/Conlang/index.html
"Bêsel asa Éam, a Éam atha cvanthal a cvanth atha Éamal." - SiM 1:1
Messages in this topic (5)
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5a. Re: How to choose the name of a conlang?
Posted by: "H. S. Teoh" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 9, 2013 9:31 am ((PST))
On Sat, Mar 09, 2013 at 07:15:46AM -0500, Carsten Becker wrote:
[...]
> I have nothing figured out yet for my own conlang, but it's been
> peeving me for some time already that I made the name in -i, since -i
> is not a derivative morpheme in this language. People have suggested
> that it might be an exonym. OTOH, the people's endonym might be Ayer,
> though that'd be an unusual word in the language, since only few words
> end in -r.
[...]
Well, you can always retcon "Ayer" as an archaic root that has managed
to retain its original form (or close analogue thereof) after the rest
of the language has moved on. This kind of thing happens a lot in
natlangs -- certain very common expressions and nouns get calcified in
their archaic form(s), long after the language has changed so that those
expressions are no longer grammatical or now misfit the current
structures.
T
--
If lightning were to ever strike an orchestra, it'd always hit the conductor
first.
Messages in this topic (12)
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6a. Realistic phonologies and such things
Posted by: "Dustfinger Batailleur" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 9, 2013 11:11 am ((PST))
[posted on the CBB, but no replies, so reposted here]
*Sounds:*
/p b t d k g Ê/ <p b t d k g '>
/m n Å/ <m n ñ>
/f v s z Ê Ê ç x h/ <f v s z Å¡ ž c x h>
/w ɾ j l/ <w r y l>
/tÍ¡Ê dÍ¡Ê/ <q j>
/i iË u uË/ <i Ä« u Å«>
/e eË o oË/ <e Ä o Å> [É]
/a aË/ <a Ä>
*Sound Terms Index:*
L=alveolar
C=consonant
V=vowel
A=approximant
S=consonants w/out approximants and /Ê/
U=unvoiced consonant
W=voiced consonant
O=long vowel
H=short vowel
P=stop
R=affricate
F=fricative
N=nasal
D=dental
E=Velar
T=palatal
Q=close vowels
M=Non-close vowels
*Alternations:*
[ɾ]>[ɹ]/L_
U>W/_O
U>W/_W
W>U/_U
R>F/_F
P>F/_F
H>O/R_
O>H/P_
â>â
/_P
M>M(nasalised)/_N
P>N/_N
F>â
/R_
L>D/#_
E>T/Q_
F>A/_D
P>P(palatalised)/_y
A>â
/_M(nasalised)
*Phonotactics:*
#(S)(A)VC# <--roots
It's supposed to be for a protolang by the way. Thoughts and/or corrections?
Messages in this topic (2)
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6b. Re: Realistic phonologies and such things
Posted by: "Alex Fink" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 9, 2013 3:23 pm ((PST))
On Sat, 9 Mar 2013 14:11:07 -0500, Dustfinger Batailleur
<[email protected]> wrote:
>[posted on the CBB, but no replies, so reposted here]
Well, Rosenfelderesque notation with a bunch of inscrutable one-letter category
names is hard to read. You coulda cleaned it up for human consumption some.
Anyway, there's a bunch here that I don't find very likely...
>/i iË u uË/ <i Ä« u Å«>
>/e eË o oË/ <e Ä o Å> [É]
>/a aË/ <a Ä>
What is it that gets realised as the schwa, under what conditions?
>U>W/_O
This is a weird change. It's most likely to be some sort of stress-based
lenition, but then the conditions would probably invoke the stress structure of
the word, making reference to nearby syllables and such, and not happening
everywhere (e.g. it probably wouldn't happen word-initially, then, where
lenitions are rare). I suppose it could derive from a sort of syllable-length
balancing (like the Finnic gradations) as I mention below, if the voiced
consonants in the output were historically super-short. Or just maybe (though
this has been claimed never to happen by some) long vowels could bear intrinsic
lower tone, and the low tone could be what's causing voicing changes.
The latter two of these solutions are likely to have other implications...
>U>W/_W
>W>U/_U
How universally do these apply? Every resonant has an unvoiced variant? Even
resonants, and [?], induce this? /tr/ [dr\], /r?/ [4_0?] ?
>R>F/_F
>P>F/_F
This'd be quite believable if the outcomes of these processes were _geminates_,
that is there was place assimilation as well. But fricativity, per se, is not
the sort of feature that assimilates, in natural language: indeed, it more
often _dissimilates_ in the cases I'm aware of, which suggests acoustic rather
than articulatory motivation. It might be believable that stops were lenited
to (more audible) fricatives in contexts where they were hard to perceive
otherwise; but why would this only be before fricatives?
On a larger view you have stops & affricates & fricatives all behaving kinda
differently, and this is a little unusual (not too unusual, but a little).
Where did your affricates come from? This might help you figure out what sort
of processes they should engage in (and of course this advice is more generally
applicable too).
In most languages that have them, affricates are _phonologically_ very similar
in behaviour to stops, on account of that they were historically stops (of some
PoA not represented among the stops anymore, mostly). Given that you don't
have a complete series of them, but just /tS dZ/, this is quite likely in your
case (that they developed from a palatalization of one or more of the other
series of stops, and are structurally like /c J\/). Sometimes instead
affricate-hood behaves more like a phonation or matter of articulation, but in
this case there tend to be large series of them, at least initially (e.g. the
second German consonant shift; some dialects retain /pf) ts) kx)/).
>H>O/R_
>O>H/P_
These are also implausible. I can't think of a single case in which onset
quality has affected vowel prosody. And even if it was going to, on the
grounds of the cases I know that go the other direction (like Finnic lenition),
the tendency would be towards _uniformising syllable length_. Since affricates
take longer to produce than plosives, you'd expect them to occur with slightly
shortened vowels.
>L>D/#_
It's worth knowing that the contrast between alveolar and dental isn't actually
the important one in most languages that are reported as having it; what's
usually more important is that the alveolars are apical and the dentals are
laminal.
>E>T/Q_
After _front_ vowels, is what makes sense here. Close front vowels, if you
like. But not just close vowels: [k] > [c] after [u] is bizarre.
>F>A/_D
If a fricative goes to an affricate in some environment it's much likelier to
be when it's _after_ something suitable. Affricates differ from fricatives in
how they begin, after all.
>A>â
/_M(nasalised)
Odd but believable if it was some sort of historical complex coda
simplification rule. Historical /anl/ > [an] becoming synchronic /a~l/ > [a~],
that sort of thing.
>*Phonotactics:*
>#(S)(A)VC# <--roots
Reasonable; what about the phonotactics for _words_, though?
>It's supposed to be for a protolang by the way.
That shouldn't make any difference to its structure, says the uniformitarian
principle. (Of course, might mean you design it to be especially prone to the
sorts of changes you want to have happen along the way.)
Alex
Messages in this topic (2)
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7a. THEORY: How alien is syllable stress for French natives?
Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 9, 2013 1:48 pm ((PST))
I was thinking about how French people perceive stressed-unstressed
contrast. Is it as strange and difficult as tones for those whose
native language doesn't have them?
Até mais!
Leonardo
Messages in this topic (7)
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7b. Re: THEORY: How alien is syllable stress for French natives?
Posted by: "George Corley" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 9, 2013 1:56 pm ((PST))
On Sat, Mar 9, 2013 at 3:47 PM, Leonardo Castro <[email protected]>wrote:
> I was thinking about how French people perceive stressed-unstressed
> contrast. Is it as strange and difficult as tones for those whose
> native language doesn't have them?
>
Wait -- French has stress, not tone. I am reasonably sure of this.
Now, if we actually talk about tonal languages, then this is interesting.
I would imagine that speakers of complex tone systems would either ignore
stress or map it to a particular tone (Mandarin fourth tone -- a falling
tone -- seems to sound very similar to an English primary stress, but I
don't know if Mandarin speakers actually perceive it that way). Speakers
of pitch-accent or simple tone systems may fix stress as a high tone or
something like that. In fact, I've heard that it's still under debate
whether some simple-tone languages have both tone _and_ stress.
Messages in this topic (7)
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7c. Re: THEORY: How alien is syllable stress for French natives?
Posted by: "Patrick Dunn" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 9, 2013 2:43 pm ((PST))
I think Leonardo was asking how difficult it was for French speakers to
learn a language that has phonemic stress, such as English, rather than
perfectly predictable stress (or no stress, IIRC, in some dialects) as in
French. He was comparing it to tone, not implying that French was tonal.
Hmm, tonal French . . . how would *that* arise? All those missing
consonants at the ends of words . . . hmm.
On Sat, Mar 9, 2013 at 3:56 PM, George Corley <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 9, 2013 at 3:47 PM, Leonardo Castro <[email protected]
> >wrote:
>
> > I was thinking about how French people perceive stressed-unstressed
> > contrast. Is it as strange and difficult as tones for those whose
> > native language doesn't have them?
> >
>
> Wait -- French has stress, not tone. I am reasonably sure of this.
>
> Now, if we actually talk about tonal languages, then this is interesting.
> I would imagine that speakers of complex tone systems would either ignore
> stress or map it to a particular tone (Mandarin fourth tone -- a falling
> tone -- seems to sound very similar to an English primary stress, but I
> don't know if Mandarin speakers actually perceive it that way). Speakers
> of pitch-accent or simple tone systems may fix stress as a high tone or
> something like that. In fact, I've heard that it's still under debate
> whether some simple-tone languages have both tone _and_ stress.
>
--
Second Person, a chapbook of poetry by Patrick Dunn, is now available for
order from Finishing Line
Press<http://www.finishinglinepress.com/NewReleasesandForthcomingTitles.htm>
and
Amazon<http://www.amazon.com/Second-Person-Patrick-Dunn/dp/1599249065/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1324342341&sr=8-2>.
Messages in this topic (7)
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7d. Re: THEORY: How alien is syllable stress for French natives?
Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 9, 2013 3:06 pm ((PST))
2013/3/9 Patrick Dunn <[email protected]>:
> I think Leonardo was asking how difficult it was for French speakers to
> learn a language that has phonemic stress, such as English, rather than
> perfectly predictable stress (or no stress, IIRC, in some dialects) as in
> French. He was comparing it to tone, not implying that French was tonal.
Exact!
AFAIK, all French vowels except schwa are equally stressed.
>
> Hmm, tonal French . . . how would *that* arise? All those missing
> consonants at the ends of words . . . hmm.
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, Mar 9, 2013 at 3:56 PM, George Corley <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> On Sat, Mar 9, 2013 at 3:47 PM, Leonardo Castro <[email protected]
>> >wrote:
>>
>> > I was thinking about how French people perceive stressed-unstressed
>> > contrast. Is it as strange and difficult as tones for those whose
>> > native language doesn't have them?
>> >
>>
>> Wait -- French has stress, not tone. I am reasonably sure of this.
>>
>> Now, if we actually talk about tonal languages, then this is interesting.
>> I would imagine that speakers of complex tone systems would either ignore
>> stress or map it to a particular tone (Mandarin fourth tone -- a falling
>> tone -- seems to sound very similar to an English primary stress, but I
>> don't know if Mandarin speakers actually perceive it that way). Speakers
>> of pitch-accent or simple tone systems may fix stress as a high tone or
>> something like that. In fact, I've heard that it's still under debate
>> whether some simple-tone languages have both tone _and_ stress.
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Second Person, a chapbook of poetry by Patrick Dunn, is now available for
> order from Finishing Line
> Press<http://www.finishinglinepress.com/NewReleasesandForthcomingTitles.htm>
> and
> Amazon<http://www.amazon.com/Second-Person-Patrick-Dunn/dp/1599249065/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1324342341&sr=8-2>.
Messages in this topic (7)
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7e. Re: THEORY: How alien is syllable stress for French natives?
Posted by: "George Corley" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 9, 2013 4:00 pm ((PST))
On Sat, Mar 9, 2013 at 5:06 PM, Leonardo Castro <[email protected]>wrote:
> 2013/3/9 Patrick Dunn <[email protected]>:
> > I think Leonardo was asking how difficult it was for French speakers to
> > learn a language that has phonemic stress, such as English, rather than
> > perfectly predictable stress (or no stress, IIRC, in some dialects) as in
> > French. He was comparing it to tone, not implying that French was tonal.
>
> Exact!
>
> AFAIK, all French vowels except schwa are equally stressed.
>
>
Really? I have never heard this claim.
I can say that going from English (which has partially predictable stress)
to Tagalog (which doesn't seem to have any predictability, though my
knowledge is limited) is a little bit difficult. If your language actually
has no stress or completely predictable stress, I imagine learning phenmic
stress would be a little problematic.
Messages in this topic (7)
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7f. Re: THEORY: How alien is syllable stress for French natives?
Posted by: "Leonardo Castro" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 9, 2013 5:28 pm ((PST))
2013/3/9 George Corley <[email protected]>:
> On Sat, Mar 9, 2013 at 5:06 PM, Leonardo Castro <[email protected]>wrote:
>
>> 2013/3/9 Patrick Dunn <[email protected]>:
>> > I think Leonardo was asking how difficult it was for French speakers to
>> > learn a language that has phonemic stress, such as English, rather than
>> > perfectly predictable stress (or no stress, IIRC, in some dialects) as in
>> > French. He was comparing it to tone, not implying that French was tonal.
>>
>> Exact!
>>
>> AFAIK, all French vowels except schwa are equally stressed.
>>
>>
> Really? I have never heard this claim.
Here's a more detailed explanation:
http://french.about.com/od/pronunciation/a/rhythm.htm
>
> I can say that going from English (which has partially predictable stress)
> to Tagalog (which doesn't seem to have any predictability, though my
> knowledge is limited) is a little bit difficult. If your language actually
> has no stress or completely predictable stress, I imagine learning phenmic
> stress would be a little problematic.
Messages in this topic (7)
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7g. Re: THEORY: How alien is syllable stress for French natives?
Posted by: "Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets" [email protected]
Date: Sat Mar 9, 2013 5:51 pm ((PST))
On 10 March 2013 02:27, Leonardo Castro <[email protected]> wrote:
> >>
> >> AFAIK, all French vowels except schwa are equally stressed.
> >>
> >>
> > Really? I have never heard this claim.
>
>
That's because it's bull. In French all syllables except those containing
schwas are equally *timed*, but not *stressed*.
> Here's a more detailed explanation:
> http://french.about.com/od/pronunciation/a/rhythm.htm
>
>
This description is spot on where it concerns the *position* of the French
prosodic stress. It is however hopelessly *wrong* when describing its
nature. The French final stress is definitely one of *intensity*, not of
*pitch*. The final syllable of a prosodic unit is definitely pronounced
more loudly, but does not necessarily have a different pitch from the rest
of the unit.
As for perceiving phonemic stressed-unstressed contrasts, my experience is
that we perceive them just fine. *Reproducing* them, on the other hand, is
another matter entirely. Even nowadays I tend to mess it up in English and
Dutch, and end up stressing the wrong syllable (not always the last one
though. I tend to overcompensate and stress the first syllable even when
it's wrong). So although we can easily be made aware of the existence of
phonemic stress and easily learn to recognise it (it's not especially
difficult), it's still difficult for us to use it correctly. The difference
between passive and active knowledge I suppose :) .
--
Christophe Grandsire-Koevoets.
http://christophoronomicon.blogspot.com/
http://www.christophoronomicon.nl/
Messages in this topic (7)
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