Re: How close is Vietnamese to Mandarin or Cantonese?

Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>
> benlizross wrote:
> >
> > Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > >
> > > benlizross wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > Lee Sau Dan wrote:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > >>>>> "benlizross" == benlizross <benlizro@xxxxxxxxxx> writes:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > >> > FYI, "typhoon" is [t'Oi22 fUN55] in Cantonese. So, if you
> > > > > > >> > think "typhoon" came from Cantonese, you not only have to
> > > > > > >> > explain the discrepancy in the final "n", but also the
> > > > > > >> > wrongly spelt diphthong in the first syllable.
> > > > > > >>
> > > > > > >> Can you point to _any_ English word that ends with, or even
> > > > > > >> contains, the sequence "oong" /uwN/? -- Peter T. Daniels
> > > > > > >> grammatim@xxxxxxx
> > > > > >
> > > > > > benlizross> Is every little phonotactic gap like this assumed to
> > > > > > benlizross> be the result of a Rule of English Phonology? I
> > > > > > benlizross> believe the Aussies have /uN/ in "boong". (And maybe
> > > > > > benlizross> some sinophiles pronounce names like "Fung" and "Sung"
> > > > > > benlizross> that way.) Even if we imagine that /uwN/ is somehow
> > > > > > benlizross> impossible, would not /uN/ be a possible English form
> > > > > > benlizross> for the Cantonese word? FWIW OED has an 1806 citation
> > > > > > benlizross> in which the word is spelled <ty-foong>.
> > > > >
> > > > > I'm trying to explain to LSD that absence of /N/ in the English word
> > > > > does not require absence of /N/ in the source language. The /uN/
> > > > > sequence in the source language (for instance, Cantonese) should yield
> > > > > /uwn/ in English.
> > > >
> > > > What I'm questioning is whether you have a theory which predicts
> > > > _exactly_ this outcome. And I don't see it so far.
> > >
> > > There can't be a "theory" unless there's a pattern. What are some other
> > > [-uwN] words that have been borrowed by English? /uwN/ doesn't exist in
> > > English, so it has to come in differently.
> >
> > That's the theory that I'm questioning -- the "so" that links those two.
> > Is there no such thing as an accidental gap in your theory?
>
> Is there no such thing as an explicable, or principled, gap in _your_
> theory?

If I had a theory of my own, there would be, sure. The absence of
initial /N/, or /hC/ clusters, would be a fact about the system.
It might be more plausible if you argued that long vowels in general (I
think this is true) don't occur before /N/. So we have sing, sang, sung,
song, but not corresponding long vowel + N. The absence of /EN/ and /UN/
words would be accidental, which is why "boong" fits OK.

> > ("Boong" was mentioned here a
> > > few days ago -- as an insulting term for Australian native?, which makes
> > > it an oddity, an "expressive," if you will, outside normal phonology as
> > > "Bach" is.)
> >
> > What nonsense. I suppose this goes with your bizarre dogma that "names
> > aren't words"?
>
> Another of I. J. Gelb's interests was prosopography, so maybe that's
> where I picked it up. (He was president of the American Names Society
> for quite a while.) If you don't accept the mainstream theory of the
> nature of names (or "definite descriptions," to use an archaism), do you
> have a better account of them?

???The only sense of "definite description" I know (from Russell) has
nothing to do with phonology.

Perhaps you could give an actual citation of somewhere this "mainstream
theory" is set out?

In the meantime, I'll say:

- names are words (which are socially assigned to individuals);
- some names (like some non-names) are foreign words, and thus may
exhibit extra-systemic phonological features.

>
> > "Bach" is a foreign name (I don't mean [+foreign] or some
> > such putative feature, I mean the name of a person from a non-English
> > speaking culture.) Such names may be de-naturalized to taste, including
> > the use of non-English phonemes like /x/, but most people use a /k/. (In
> > fact in my native dialect, where we didn't have anything much like [a],
> > we pronounced his name to rhyme with "rock".)
>
> "Rock" is /rak/. (That's why [a] is called "short o" in traditional
> grammar.)

I think you mean "traditional [in some personal sense] American English
phonology". In fact [a] is called "short o" only because, for some
people, it is the vowel in a lot of words mainly spelled with <o>. What
I am telling you is that the composer's name rhymed with "rock" in my
native phonology, and that I would not consider the vowel in question to
be phonetically [a].

> > "Boong" may be offensive, but it is no more "outside normal phonology"
> > than "dago" or "***".
>
> Except it now turns out that it isn't an example of /uwN/ at all.

Nobody ever said it was. You misread my /uN/ as equivalent to your
/uwN/.

And incidentally, you have not explained why Cantonese [U] would be
expected to be borrowed as English /uw/.

>
> > > If, of course, Australian English has a plethora of words borrowed from
> > > Australian languages that end in -oong, then a new (Firthian) subsystem
> > > has arisen,
> >
> > Why on earth would you want to postulate a new "subsystem", Firthian or
> > otherwise? They've simply acquired a new word which includes a phoneme
> > sequence that wasn't previously instantiated.
>
> In nearly 2000 years of the English language, a certain sequence was
> never "instantiated," and you think that's a coincidence?

You think the phonology of English has been the same for 2000 years??

Ross Clark
.