Re: French verb conjugation: "je harcele"? or "je harcelle"?

On Sat, 29 Mar 2008 22:23:29 -0700 (PDT), mb
<azythos2@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in
<news:bcda8bcb-f031-4e04-a672-e3efaa6538fb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
in sci.lang:

On Mar 29, 2:49 pm, "Brian M. Scott" <b.sc...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Sat, 29 Mar 2008 14:35:08 -0700 (PDT), mb
<azyth...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in
<news:ab6fc7f1-bca5-4579-91f2-7cf5dbffc84f@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
in sci.lang:

On Mar 28, 3:41 pm, "Brian M. Scott" <b.sc...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Fri, 28 Mar 2008 15:24:53 -0700 (PDT), mb
<azyth...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in
<news:4b4bd937-0dc3-4a40-a22c-6cbf157b77af@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
in sci.lang:

On Mar 27, 2:36 pm, "Brian M. Scott" <b.sc...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

[...]

The author of the 'French' section of the Handbook of the
IPA describes it as a central vowel with some rounding and
places it squarely at the schwa point of the quadrilateral.
It's been a while since I last heard much French, but that
or something just a little further forward sounds about
right to me, and unstressed [ø] definitely sounds wrong.
It's possible that barred-o (X-SAMPA [8]) would be slightly
more accurate, but in the absence of any other vowel in that
range the more familiar [@] doesn't seem unreasonable.

Attempts at detailed description of effective
pronunciations (by a foreign ear, who hears what it was
trained to...) are irrelevant. What counts is the phoneme
range and how it is defined (eme range) in the source
language.

Dismissals made in ignorance of the facts are irrelevant.
At least one of the two authors of that section is French.

Right. And my mother tongue is Chinese, and I am just
babling without any idea of any facts while Mr Ross has
perfect command of all or them.

The authors of the article in question are Cécile Fougeron,
of the Institut de Phonétique of the Univ. of Paris, and
Caroline L. Smith.  This 'Mr Ross' appears to be a figment
of your imagination.

So what?
Quoting from above:

"Attempts at detailed description of effective pronunciations (by a
foreign ear, who hears what it was trained to...) are irrelevant."

That was about the foreign ear of Mr. Scott (not Ross, sorry).

Either you read very poorly, or you don't know what a
genuinely detailed description of a pronunciation would look
like, since I offered none. I have no idea what you think
you mean by 'effective' in this context. Finally, you have
no idea how my ears have or have not been trained.

[...]

"but that is certainly not central, and /@/ does not
represent anything in the source language. It still
remains highy unreasonable to force your own concepts on
another language, where there is no correspondence. "

I'm not forcing a damned thing on anyone; I'm simply
reporting how that French vowel is normally represented in
broad IPA transcription. (This includes standard French
references like Petit Robert and
<http://atilf.atilf.fr/dendien/scripts/tlfiv4/showps.exe?p=combi.htm;java=no>.)
If you're surprised, blame your ignorance, not the
messenger.

The fact is that /@/ most definitely *does* represent
something in standard French, even if that something usually
isn't [@]. And if you weren't more interested in playing
the supercilious jackass than in understanding what you
read, you might even have realized that I nowhere claimed
that e muet is commonly pronounced [@]; indeed, I explicitly
denied this.

Now, if a certain Cécile and a Ms Smith chose to explain
it in an English book in these highly inadequate terms
it's their problem,

Ah, I see; you obviously know nothing about the book in
question.

[...]
.

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