Re: This week on Dancing with the Stars Re: The Business Memoir - the ``whom'' question


Ruud Harmsen wrote:
I wrote:
(Some from Nothern Ireland make it open and central, or even slightly
back, cf. how the Northern Irish character (Adam Williams,

[inserting correction supplied earlier by Aidan Kehoe]
"in the UK TV series 'Cold Feet'"

played by
James Nesbitt) said <karen>: almost [kAr@n].

I certainly wouldn't object if you provided me with an
all-expenses-paid vacation (though not in winter) in the northern
British isles so that I can learn what vowel qualities you're referring
to.

Bying or lending a DVD is much cheaper, but I won't pay for that
either.

27 Oct 2006 05:59:52 -0700: "Peter T. Daniels"
<grammatim@xxxxxxxxxxx>: in sci.lang:
Surely even in Britain it's still illegal to record the voices of
people (entire communities would be needed to get a feel for local
variation) without their knowledge or permission, let alone publish
that speech for distribution.

This was about an actor speaking with the express purpose of having
his acting filmed and his speech recorded. How can that be illegal?

An actor attempting to imitate an accent is absolutely, utterly
worthless as linguistic data.

(It can tell us what the prejudices of his "dialect coach" are, but it
can tell us nothing about the people who actually speak the dialect in
question. I have no need to cite anything other than the risible
attempts of English TV actors to do American accents on Britcoms.)

(Elicited wordlists are all but useless for investigating casual usage.)

It is an actor with a very marked Northern Irish accent, in tens if
not hundreds of eposides. He plays someone from Northern Ireland (one
episode expressly goes into his background, his friends then go there
too), who lives in Manchester. One character speaks with a Manchester
accent (or Northern English at least; I can't hear the difference
between cities there, although I know they exist), one with a London
accent, one or two speak posh RP, and one is probably from London.
Many such British drama series include people from all over the isles.

Absolutely, utterly useless.

Hugh Laurie's General American is impeccable in *House*, and Joely
Richardson's General American is impeccable in *Nip/Tuck*, and
whatsizname's General American was impeccable in *The O.C.* and is
impeccable in *Ugly Betty*, but that doesn't make their characters
legitimate sources of data about how Americans speak.

Actors BY DEFINITION are acting with their voice. A linguist CANNOT use
"acting," i.e. deliberately considered, voices as data. Even a
Malkovitch or a Franz, schooled in Pinteresque or Mametesque or
Altmanesque or Leonardesque "natural" dialogue, is ARTIFICIALLY
IMITATING natural dialogue.

.

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