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there is a law inside the alphabet

alphabetlaw2018 said:
Well, how come the whole world does not know that English has four tones all these IPA Linguistics years, i wonder...
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IPA is perfectly capable of representing tonal languages and linguists know when to use the tonal symbols and when not to. But tones in English are inflectional and convey intent whereas intonation in tonal languages are intrinsically part of the word. When I ask, “Do you understand?” the rising pitch on the last syllable does not make it a different word from “understand.” You seem not to know how linguistics works.
 
sackett said:
@Helen: Do you think it's time to explain phonemes to the group? Such a
simple and useful concept, and it seems to be an arcane mystery to 99% of speaking
humans. Hell, there are surely deafmutes out there who understand phonemes.

But I'll defer to you as to the wisdom of this. I studied linguistics
for some years, including a year at Berkeley, but it's not my field.

My late father in law quite envied my contact with spoken Cheyenne.
He said he wished he'd known me back then; I could have served as
an informant of sorts.

I blushed.
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Sorry, sackett, didn't see this, have been concentrating on coughing and sneezing over xmas - do go ahead and explain the phantastic phonemes, the sounds that are the tiny building blocks of languages that trip up so many when they try to learn new languages. Especially the ones that look the same when you use the alphabet, but actually change the meaning of spoken words (cf. s in English; not all languages differentiate between voiced and unvoiced s).
 
IPA Linguistics is a trap. First, it gives out easy and innocence definitions to draw you in, and then, wamp! you found yourself in "Alice in Wonderland Rabbit Hole".
 
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JayUtah said:
IPA is perfectly capable of representing tonal languages and linguists know when to use the tonal symbols and when not to. But tones in English are inflectional and convey intent whereas intonation in tonal languages are intrinsically part of the word. When I ask, “Do you understand?” the rising pitch on the last syllable does not make it a different word from “understand.” You seem not to know how linguistics works.
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Modern English has 4 phonemic stresses. No, dont ask me to give examples.
I'm too old, crotchety, and rusty at phonology.

Like damn near all languages, English also has suprasegmental phonemes,
i.e., the tones you're describing. I remember my brush with Coastal Swahili,
which can indicate a question by sounding like a vaudeville Swede. Vell, it dozz, yaw.

ETA after reading poor Helen's post: A phoneme is a meaningful segment
of the sound system of a languge.

That's all. Since language is made of sound, the necessity of identifying
phonemes is obvious. The need to represent them in writing is also obvious.
If a language's phonemes have not been identified before, here's a great chance
to present its speakers with a rational spelling for their tongue -- a great blessing,
as any English or Gaelic speaker knows.

My late father in law's A Basic Course In Linguistics contains a
good opening discussion of this and every other linguistic topic. Search
his name: Charles F. Hockett.
 
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alphabetlaw2018 said:
IPA Linguistics is a trap. First, it gives easy and innocence definitions to draw you in, and then, wamp! you found yourself in "Alice in Wonderland Rabbit Hole".
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You are coming relatively close to stating something with some kind of meaning behind it. Are you sure you want to do that?
 
alphabetlaw2018 said:
IPA Linguistics is a trap. First, it gives out easy and innocence definitions to draw you in, and then, wamp! you found yourself in "Alice in Wonderland Rabbit Hole".
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So let me see if I have this right. With your admittedly rudimentary understanding of two of the world’s many languages, you’ve discovered that an entire field of scholarship is bogus. Is that right?
 
alphabetlaw2018 said:
IPA Linguistics is a trap. First, it gives out easy and innocence definitions to draw you in, and then, wamp! you found yourself in "Alice in Wonderland Rabbit Hole".
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THE ANSWER: HUMAN BEINGS RAISED TO SPEAK AN INDO-EUROPEAN LANGUAGE SUCH AS ENGLISH HAVE THE FOLLOWING IN
 
alphabetlaw2018 said:
IPA Linguistics is a trap. First, it gives out easy and innocence definitions to draw you in, and then, wamp! you found yourself in "Alice in Wonderland Rabbit Hole".
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How on earth could it be a trap? It's merely a way of describing the different sounds we make when we speak?

Also, if the alphabet people live in Alice's Wonderland, I'd love to meet them there. Or even better, in the Hunting of the Snark.

Although i have to admit that you don't have to hunt very long for snark in this thread.

And don't denigrate phonemes, read sackett's post about them, it might actually make you think. Though I'm not sure if that would make things better or worse for you. Or us.
 
when the water is bogus, we must be honest.
Linguistics is like a baby, and IPA is like a tub of bogus water with stuffs floating inside.
 
alphabetlaw2018 said:
when the water is bogus, we must be honest.
Linguistics is like a baby, and IPA is like a tub of bogus water with stuffs floating inside.
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Water can be bogus? Boggy, possibly, I'll give you that, i have seen examples of boggy water, but bogus? Does that mean that water is a lie, like cake? I do not understand. Do you? And whose baby is it?

Oh, hang on, I think I do understand, you're talking about IPA, as in ale - i totally agree, it's absolutely like a tub of boggy water!

Cakes and ale. Both a lie. Yet there have been books written about them.
 
Helen said:
It wouldn't have helped, since I haven't read anything by him. Or not by any of him - just saw the list of pen names. He is very obviously one, or possibly several, of the alphabet people.
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/Kornbluth/ is just one of his allophones, excuse me, one of his alloblokes,
since he's an alphabet person. This isn't complicated. Or very interesting.

When I was at Berkeley, there was talk of a Northwest Coast language
in which all of the vowels' shapes appeared to be determined by their
phonetic position. IOW, the language had only one vowel. Perhaps. More work
was required.

In the case of allopeople this is also the case, but inevitably
so. There's never more than one of them, tiresomely the same at parties, dinners,
saloons, car crashes, evictions, you name it.

In this forum, from time to time we encounter the familiar allocrank, who ALWAYS
knows better. Than anybody.
 
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