Re: BBC does it again

On Wed, 11 Jun 2008 12:05:23 -0400, Harlan Messinger
<hmessinger.removethis@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in
<news:6babe2F3a67grU1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> in sci.lang:

John Atkinson wrote:

"Harlan Messinger" <hmessinger.removethis@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote...

Brian M. Scott wrote:

Harlan Messinger <hmessinger.removethis@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Brian M. Scott wrote:

Harlan Messinger wrote:

[...]

It does seem (to me) reasonable to suggest that whatever
phonemic representation one chooses to use ought to
express the same thing as the phonemic model the same
person uses to describe a language. [...]

I don't agree,

Why? Why *would* one use a representation that doesn't
correspond to the model? [...]

John's given one reason. Another is to avoid throwing away
information that may be useful, either to someone else or to
me on another occasion. I'm not much interested in abstract
phonology; I *am* interested in useful description.

Well--the phonetic representation conveys *that*!

Quite possibly not: it may convey far too much detail.

I'm talking about the phonemic representation, so by
definition we're talking about the abstract phonology.

There is no reason to pretend while doing so that nothing
else exists.

Are you saying that a phonemic representation isn't "useful
description", or anyway that it's is less useful than a phonetic one?

No, I'm saying it serves a different purpose. Since the
whole point is that one phoneme can be realized in a
given language as all kinds of sounds with different
phonetic representations,

No. In principle it would be possible to have a 1-1 match
between phonemes and phones (albeit probably not in a human
language).

there isn't any constraint calling for the phonemic
representation to look like any one of the phonetic
ones, or like any of them at all,

There is: it's a usability constraint.

especially if attempting to copy a phonetic
representation hides a detail of the phonemic model that
it would be useful to convey.

I'm not talking about hiding anything; I'm talking about
showing a little *more*.

Brian
.

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