Re: What's the different between /tS/ as one phoneme and as two?

From: Mxsmanic (mxsmanic_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 07/21/04 

Date: Wed, 21 Jul 2004 20:52:09 +0200

Brian M. Scott writes:

> But you've already demonstrated that your observation isn't
> to be trusted.

You are confusing your inference with my implication (if any) or
demonstration (if any).

> Irrelevant. The foreignness of an accent has more to do
> with the kind of variation than with the degree.

Individual variations are highly random, and as such, they can mask a
foreign accent if the latter is sufficiently faint.

> I have no idea who Louis Jourdan is, and I can't recall
> having heard Hauer.

Louis Jourdan is an actor born in France and best known for his
performance as Gaston in the movie _Gigi_ (1958). He worked for years
to eliminate his French accent, leaving him without a French accent but
with a highly idiosyncratic and rather faint accent that didn't really
correspond to anything identifiable. I speculate that it was a sort of
fossilized overcorrection.

Rutger Hauer is a Dutch actor who is perhaps best known as the rebel
replicant in _Blade Runner_ (1982). He speaks English without an
accent, and supposedly speaks German without an accent as well.

> The important point is that these are largely *unconscious*.

So is playing the piano or riding a bicycle, but one can learn to do
both to perfection well after puberty.

> Oh, native *fluency* isn't a great problem; many people
> manage that. That has nothing to do with acquiring a native
> *accent*, however.

The same statements hold for a native accent. But some of the more
frustrated linguists cling to the same myths even with respect to
fluency.

> Goodness, but you're ignorant! Muscle memory, also and more
> accurately called motor memory, is hardly the invention of
> linguists.

Motor memory isn't the problem.

> Ah, I see: you don't understand the word 'psychological'.
> It is not normally used of motor processes, especially at
> the unconscious level.

Neither is muscle memory, since muscles don't have memories.

> Irrelevant.

Highly relevant. You claim I have a tin ear, but if I have perfect
pitch, your claim cannot be true. 

-- 
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