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Donmillion
In: Acton, Middlesex
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Very effective way of showing one's inability to engage with intellectual discussion ...
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Donmillion
In: Acton, Middlesex
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| Ishmael wrote: | | Donmillion wrote: |
Please reassure me that that was a typo! |
You have so much to learn -- but already you know too much for that to be even remotely possible. |
Okay, so instead of being so bloody supercilious, perhaps you can explain to me in what universe G is a vowel?
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| Donmillion wrote: | And by the way, it didn't take "centuries" for "the philological industry" to come up with an effective working model, It was essentially the work of Sir William Jones in the late 18th century. Everything since has been refinement....
"It's a fact of life that The Establishment does not include checking of its own paradigms"? RUBBISH. You should get out more. |
Amazing a mind exists that can write these sentences almost back to back.
But then consider that this mind is actually typical.
Astonishing.
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Donmillion
In: Acton, Middlesex
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| Ishmael wrote: | | Donmillion wrote: | | Since the alternate hypothesis ("fish hands") was disproved... |
When? |
Clearly, you don't read email carefully, either on the lines or between 'em..
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| Donmillion wrote: | | ...showing one's inability to engage with intellectual discussion ... |
I refuse to engage in "intellectual discussion". I'm a conscientious objector.
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Donmillion
In: Acton, Middlesex
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| Ishmael wrote: | | [I refuse to engage in "intellectual discussion". I'm a conscientious objector. |
It says on the back of THOBR, "Witty, provocative, persuasive and original". I haven't contributed a lot of that myself, but it's nice to see flashes of it from others.
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Donmillion
In: Acton, Middlesex
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| Ishmael wrote: | | Donmillion wrote: | And by the way, it didn't take "centuries" for "the philological industry" to come up with an effective working model, It was essentially the work of Sir William Jones in the late 18th century. Everything since has been refinement....
"It's a fact of life that The Establishment does not include checking of its own paradigms"? RUBBISH. You should get out more. |
Amazing a mind exists that can write these sentences almost back to back. |
You seem to think there's some sort of inconsistency there. "Checking paradigms" doesn't always mean "falsifying them" and it doesn't always mean "validating them". The refinement of the PIE hypothesis over a few centuries has included both provisional validation of some paradigms, and falsification of others. The falsified ones are now largely discarded (a minority of linguists won't agree). The validated ones are provisionally accepted, but are frequently checked against new data, or new interpretations of existing data.
Interesting, Ishmael, that you respond to the "philosophical" postings, but won't touch the "factual" ones with a barge-pole. Do you have an explanatory hypothesis for how [nait] came to be spelt NIGHT (and KNIGHT)?
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| Donmillion wrote: |
Please reassure me that that was a typo! |
Of course. Good catch. It should have said G is a vowel.
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| Donmillion wrote: | | Interesting, Ishmael, that you respond to the "philosophical" postings, but won't touch the "factual" ones with a barge-pole. |
I defer to Dr. Crisp.
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Donmillion
In: Acton, Middlesex
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| DPCrisp wrote: | | Donmillion wrote: |
Please reassure me that that was a typo! |
Of course. Good catch. It should have said G is a vowel. |
Witty and provocative again!
But not very helpful. Of course, the distinction between vowels and consonants is purely conventional and does not correspond to any real phenomena, so while it is true that G is a vowel, it's also true that A, E, I, O. and U are consonants. or, to put it another way, they are all sounds, and incapable of further analysis.
Oh. But wait a minute. "Vowel" is a speech-sound in which the flow of air is unobstructed by any part of the vocal apparatus other than the vocal cords, whereas "consonant" is a speech sound in which there is at least partial obstruction. So there is a difference!
Please put me out of my misery and reassure me that you meant, "I is a vowel" ...
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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You can't learn until you acknowledge your ignorance.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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Is it harder to accept that Z can be G?
Constricted and unconstricted are two ends of a continuum. Vowels and consonants are just (some of) the sounds made as you open and close your mouth.
You know they say there are 5 senses, but really there are many more (30-ish)? Same with vowels. It's conventional to doubt the convention when it comes to Y, but we are brainwashed to ignore the others or consider them improper, but I/we have seen A, E, G, H, I, J, L, N, O, Q, R, U, V, W, Y, Z and maybe M acting as vowels. But 'proper' requires a standard, and English spelling was not standardised until after English spellings had been invented. As we see in Middle English. As even the linguists admit.
It's only RP brainwashing that enforces a few stereotypes about the sounds each letter makes. {Dunnarf make it difficult to teach kids to read "phonetically".} This is Linguistic Rectitude. Bush & bosk, newt & eft, blah & blah and blah are the the very same word forced apart by the reaction we are trained to have on seeing them.
Writing them down now does not pretend to prescribe how they are to be pronounced. What was written centuries ago doesn't either. Except in the context of Standard English, which a) is unrepresentative and b) did not exist before the so-called Great Vowel Shift.
If you can not determine with any precision how things were pronounced before the shift -- and, barring RP, you can not determine with precision how they are pronounced after the shift -- then you can not determine what the shift was.
But I'm still waiting to hear what people had to say about it at the time.
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Donmillion
In: Acton, Middlesex
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| Dan Crisp wrote: | | AEers need to engage with the detail, and then demonstrate that their explanations account for the phenomena better than other explanations. Simply and dogmatically standing on "principle", like Ishmael, won't cut it. |
This is simply untrue. ... when the soundness of the whole enterprise is under scrutiny, we can only start at the bottom. |
My problem is not with "starting at the bottom" ("standing on principle"), but refusing to move on from there ("simply standing on principle") to explore the implications.
| if you really think "what is is what was, except when it wasn't" expresses anything but sea-level common sense, I'm afraid there may be no common ground after all. |
The most important thing I know about "common sense" is how rarely it corresponds with reality.
As you've expressed it (another variant), it's only a truism, with as much value as "black is black" or "white is white". But to adopt as a fundamental principle, if not the fundamental principle, "What is, was, unless proved otherwise" flies in the face of universal experience, which is that everything changes constantly.
Be that as it may: the principle is what we (in the AE forums) have, and what I am trying to get people to do is stand on the principle and work out what it really implies.
As you wrote:
| What evidence is evidence of is often a key question for us; and it is not answered by "look at the evidence... here have some more". |
So, going back to the pronunciation of long I in modern English versus all other languages that use the "Roman" alphabet; looking at the fact that [nait] is spelt NIGHT but [kait] is spelt KITE; what are facts like those evidence of?
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| Donmillion wrote: | | Be that as it may: the principle is what we (in the AE forums) have, and what I am trying to get people to do is stand on the principle and work out what it really implies. |
You don't know the first thing about our work. Yet, frustrated by your inability to comprehend what we have done, you presume to teach us how to do it better.
You need to sit back. Read. And try to comprehend. And for a very long time.
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Donmillion
In: Acton, Middlesex
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| Dan Crisp wrote: | | I/we have seen A, E, G, H, I, J, L, N, O, Q, R, U, V, W, Y, Z and maybe M acting as vowels |
It seems to me that there may be a number of confusions going on here. Following the explanation may require some patience.
[1] "A, E, G, H, I, J, L, N, O, Q, R, U, V, W, Y, Z and M" are not vowels; they are letters of the alphabet, whereas vowels are speech-sounds. Some of the letters are used to represent vowel sounds, but not all of them. This is a matter of definition.
[2] "A", "E", "I", "O", "U" and "Y" are used in English to represent vowels. These are voice sounds which can be produced continuously (till your breath gives out); which are "voiced" (meaning that the vocal cords "buzz"); and which are produced with an open vocal tract (i.e., no part of the vocal apparatus is closed).
[3] The remaining letters all either represent consonants, or are silent in speech. A consonant is a speech-sound in which the free flow of air through the vocal tract is partly or completely obstructed by lips or tongue.
[4] Among those letters, some, including "M", represent a class of consonant called "continuants". These are consonants in which the air flow is only partly obstructed, so they can be uttered momentarily, as in mum [mum], or prolonged for as long as you like, as in bite 'em [baitm...]. Phonetically, [f], [l], [m]. [n], /ng/, [r], [s], /sh/, /v/, and /zh/ are continuants (as in little, [litl.], or dialect / American centre, [sentr.]); but this doesn't make them (or the letters used to represent them) vowels.
[5] H, representing [h] (the voiceless laryngal fricative), is a special case. It's not a vowel, since it doesn't involve vibrating the vocal cords. It's not strictly a consonant, since it doesn't involve any obstruction to the vocal tract. It's a "breathing" or "aspirate".
[6] The remaining consonants are all "obstruants" or "stops", in which the flow of air through the mouth and/or nose is completely stopped for an instant (a "damming up" of vocal pressure), and then released. B, D, G, J, K, P, Q, T, and W all represent obstruants in normal English speech. But never vowels.
So what do you mean when you describe G as "acting as a vowel"? I can only think that you are referring to situations such as IGH, pronounced [ai], or OUGH, sometimes pronounced [au:], as in PLOUGH.
But consider: how do you pronounce the word "I" (the nominative form of "me")? It's possible that Bedforshire people pronounce it [a:] (rhyming with "baa"), but probably you pronounce it [ai] (rhyming with "fly"). Then, what about "bite"? My bet is you pronounce it as [bait]. So the [ai] sound, what is conventionally described in English (only) as "long I", doesn't need the GH. The fact is that they are not pronounced in NIGH, and NI on its own would have the same pronunciation. (Think of older pronunciations of "Italian", [aitalj@n], and "Iraq", [airak].)
Similarly, the G in PLOUGH is silent. How do you pronounce the OU of out? So what does the G(H) do that PLOU wouldn't?
I'm open to correction; but, as I say, I think there is considerable confusion, in what you have written, between "letters" and "speech-sounds", between "vowels" and "continuants", and between "vowels" and "silent letters".
| If you can not determine with any precision how things were pronounced before the shift -- and, barring RP, you can not determine with precision how they are pronounced after the shift -- then you can not determine what the shift was. / But I'm still waiting to hear what people had to say about it at the time. |
I'm still waiting for an explanation of how the spelling of [naif] as KNIFE came about.
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