Re: non-phonetic english spelling

From: John Atkinson (johnacko_at_bigpond.com)
Date: 12/30/04 

Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2004 10:11:34 GMT

"Rolleston" <rolleston@onetel.net.uk> wrote...

> John Atkinson wrote:
> [...]
> >> That seems to be a statement of a property of Italian words rather than
> >> a definition.
> >
> > A property of Italian phonological words, you mean.
>
> I thought that was clear from the context. A property of Italian
> phonological words is a property of Italian words, isn't it? or is
> it always necessary to use "phonological", perhaps two or more times
> to make sure there is not the least chance of any misunderstanding?

Well, in the case of this thread, someone came up with the Italian "words"
sul, il, un, con etc. These are grammatical and orthographic words, but not
(I believe) phonological words. This may have been clear from the context,
but several people didn't pick it up. In this case, a property of Italian
grammatical and orthographic words ("can finish with a consonant") *isn't* a
property of Italian phonological words (or so I was contending). Sure,
mostly to say simply "word" is fine (since in most examples of each are are
also examples of the others, so there's no confusion). So it's not "always
necessary" to use the qualifiers. But in some cases it is. Like this one.

[snip]

> > The point of division between phonological words would be
> > determined by various other rules -- e.g., in Italian, the "penultimate
> > stress" rule (with all its exceptions), which word the clitic appears
> > most attached to (the following noun or whatever for prepositions and
> > articles), and no doubt others.
>
> Can such attachment be described using phonological rules?

Cross-linguistically, certainly not. In Italian, I suspect not, not in
every case-- but I don't know Italian at all well, so I could easily be
wrong

John.

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