Re: Subtitutes for English /T/ and /D/

On Jul 22, 2:09 pm, Ruud Harmsen <realemailons...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Sun, 22 Jul 2007 09:31:42 -0700: "Peter T. Daniels"
<gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx>: in sci.lang:

On Jul 22, 8:40 am, Ruud Harmsen <realemailons...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Sun, 22 Jul 2007 05:12:57 -0700: "Peter T. Daniels"
<gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx>: in sci.lang:

Nathan is trying to tell you that
phonemic change does not occur instantaneously, but spreads among a
population.

It does.

Which of the two statements above are you agreeing with?

All three. He's trying to tell me, it doesn't occur instantaneously,
and it spreads.

Then where is your disagreement?

At any one moment, any individual idiolect-speaker has
either the pre-change or the post-change system.

No, because which system applied isn't a binary, digital question, but
an analogue matter.

You really ought to stop flaunting the fact that you don't understand
what "phoneme" means.

And of course you'll never explain, in simple terms, how from I say it
follows that I don't understand it and what exactly I don't understand
about it. Happened before, will happen again. Very desappointing.

Either there is a phonemic distinction in some idiolect, or there
isn't. There's no indeterminacy. Absolutely. Ever. No way. Nohow.

That too is a gradual process. And if in its environment the child
detects an intermediate stage of a gradual process, it'll learn and
copy that intermediate state.

What is an "intermediate state" between having a distinction and not
having it?

Exactly that. You are beginning to understand the problem and see
reality.

You, however, aren't.

You didn't answer the question.

An unclear, undecisive, unconvincing, half-baken doubtful distinction.
Did you ever try to analyse any real world languages?

All the problems in Gleason's workbook, just like every linguist of a
certain age.

.