Latin, the Enlightenment, and science
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From: Ruud Harmsen on 29 Dec 2009 18:14 Tue, 29 Dec 2009 23:51:41 +0100: Ruud Harmsen <rh(a)rudhar.eu>: in sci.lang: >Remember, borderline cases a.k.a. marginal phonemes DO NOT exist, per >Peter T Daniels. Phonemes are strictly "same or different", even in >historical context. So one day, at 5:31:14.037 AM on the 14th of March >of the year 1437, the former allophones [D] and [T] suddenly turned >into separate phonemes /D/ and /T/ in the English language. Science >doesn't allow any other scenario, so it cannot have happened but so. Correction: the exact moment can be a matter for debate, of course, but not that the change took place within a single millisecond. -- Ruud Harmsen, http://rudhar.com
From: Ruud Harmsen on 29 Dec 2009 18:18 Wed, 30 Dec 2009 06:58:30 +0800: Robert Bannister <robban1(a)bigpond.com>: in sci.lang: >> If anyone doubted whether the difference between f and v was phonemic >> one could think of endless examples to show that it was, including some >> very common words like "life" and "live" (adjective). Etymology has the answer. Life used to be lif with a macron on the i. Live always had the final e, so the v/f in it was intervocalic, while in life it was not. The e in life is a recent misspelling. >You could add s and z to that. > >> So there does seem >> to be something special about the two th sounds. No, same rule, already pointed out by PTD: voiced when between vowels. Simple as that. >> Is there any mechanism >> that could explain why minimal pairs are so rare? Etymology, grammar, foreign loans. -- Ruud Harmsen, http://rudhar.com
From: Matthew L. Martin on 29 Dec 2009 19:10 Adam Funk wrote: > On 2009-12-29, Marvin the Martian wrote: > >> On Sun, 27 Dec 2009 15:21:58 -0800, sjdevnull(a)yahoo.com wrote: >> >>> On Dec 27, 2:16 pm, Marvin the Martian <mar...(a)ontomars.org> wrote: > >>>> The rebuttal to Chomsky's assertion that thinking is language dependent >>>> is simple: Observe how a chimpanzee has an ability to reason that is >>>> not too far behind the average human; problem solving and primitive >>>> tool use. Since chimps have no language, how is it that they think? >>>> Ergo, not >all< thinking is language dependent. >>> I believe that "since chimps have no language" is at least one place >>> that your argument falls apart, though I'm inclined to agree that the >>> original assertion is incorrect. >> What languages are common among chimps? > > Chimpanzatian? IFYPFY. Matthew -- I have two and 1/3 granddaughters: Alex will find a way to silently get from where she is to where she wants to be. Anna will make an Anna sized hole between where she is to where she wants to be.
From: Peter Moylan on 29 Dec 2009 20:51 On 30/12/09 07:19, Peter T. Daniels wrote: > On Dec 29, 2:45 pm, Athel Cornish-Bowden <acorn...(a)ibsm.cnrs-mrs.fr> > wrote: >> If anyone doubted whether the difference between f and v was phonemic >> one could think of endless examples to show that it was, including some >> very common words like "life" and "live" (adjective). So there does >> seem to be something special about the two th sounds. Is there any >> mechanism that could explain why minimal pairs are so rare? > > The sounds themselves are rare. You just managed to fit two of them into a five-word sentence. -- Peter Moylan, Newcastle, NSW, Australia. http://www.pmoylan.org For an e-mail address, see my web page.
From: DKleinecke on 29 Dec 2009 21:22
On Dec 29, 12:19 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...(a)verizon.net> wrote: > On Dec 29, 2:45 pm, Athel Cornish-Bowden <acorn...(a)ibsm.cnrs-mrs.fr> > wrote: > > > > > On 2009-12-29 19:28:36 +0100, Ruud Harmsen <r...(a)rudhar.eu> said: > > > > [ ... ] > > > > loath loathe > > > OK > > > > wreath wreathe > > > "wreathed" is OK, but how often does the uninflected form occur: almost never. > > > > sheath sheathe > > > Likewise. I don't think I've ever heard "wreathed" in uninflected form. > > > > mouth (noun) mouth (verb) > > > OK > > > > thou (short for 1000) thou (pronoun) > > > The first is engineers' slang; the latter is archaic (other than in church) > > > > teeth teethe > > > As I mentioned earlier (in the bit you chopped), I think "teething" is > > very rare in uninflected form. > > > So we're left with "loth" (as I spell it, but I realize not everyone > > does) and "loathe", together with "mouth" and "mouth". > > > If anyone doubted whether the difference between f and v was phonemic > > one could think of endless examples to show that it was, including some > > very common words like "life" and "live" (adjective). So there does > > seem to be something special about the two th sounds. Is there any > > mechanism that could explain why minimal pairs are so rare? > > The sounds themselves are rare. Some English sounds are so rare they are non-existent. There is no reason why we shouldn't have words beginning "stw-" but we don't (so far as I know - I haven't tested all the places names in England). Interesting philosophical question whether a possible sound with no examples exists in a language or doesn't. For example "atlatl" but "tl" is usually considered non-existent. So far as can tell Englisg speakers have no trouble saying "tl" - unlike, for example, initial 'ng' |