Re: BBC does it again

On Jun 12, 10:58 am, "John Atkinson" <johna...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
"Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote...
On Jun 12, 12:05 am, "John Atkinson" <johna...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote...
 "John Atkinson" <johna...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
There's a huge difference between saying that vowel length is a
phoneme, and that long vowels are a sequence of two short vowels.

No one (including Abondolo) is "saying" (or implying) either of these
things. In some languages, long vowels may indeed be bimorphemic,

Tsk, tsk, tsk.

Does this mean you don't agree that there are such languages?  Or is it
that the term "bimorphemic" is meaningless according to "classical
phonological theory", that, in fact, you can't count the number of
morphemes in a word?  Or something else entirely?  You have to be just a
little more explicit to us poor autodidacts.

Compare and contrast:

bimorphemic
biphonemic

Have we been talking about morphemes _anywhere_ in this discussion?

either a sequence of two short vowels, or, a short vowel plus a
morpheme of length. (I don't think either of these is the case in the
Uralic languages that have long vowels, but what would I know?) In
others, long vowels (and diphthongs too) are apparently just as
monomorphemic as short ones.

I can see the logic of using only the macron in the latter languages,
only double vowels in those where long vowels behave like other cases
of
two short vowels in hiatus, and only ":" where an added morpheme of
length is the best (or most economical) analysis (which may well be
the
case in many Australian languages).

Is this standard practice, in your experience? (Rhetorical question)

Similarly, in Polynesian and Australian languages, some authors use
double letters and some use macrons, both in phonemic
representations
and standard orthographies. Thus the Maori orthographic convention
uses macrons, while most developers of scripts for Australian
languages
use double letters because most of the people who'll be using these
orthographies are already used to writing English, which (as usually
written) doesn't have diacritics. Actually, in Maori, many writers
wrongly leave out the macrons, for the same reason -- because of the
influence of English.

Your quoter _still_ isn't working right.

My quoter is working just fine on everyone except you (no doubt Google
is putting something funny in your headers).  Every time I answer one of
your posts, I have to go through and add an extra ">" to every line.
It's boring, so I won't do it any more.

Do you have the same problem when you quote Franz?

Orthographies need not be phonemic.

Of course not. They rarely are, completely. But when linguistically
sophisticated people devise orthographies for previously unwritten
languages, they tend to make a serious effort to be as phonemic as is
reasonably practical.

This is left over from Pike's "Technique for Reducing Languages to
Writing." People like Smalley went far beyond the notion that a
phonemic orthography is an ideal orthography.

Exactly.  I said "as phonemic as reasonably practical".  There are a
number of different, often contradictory, things that make an
orthography "good" (for a particular language, whose speakers live in a
particular linguistic environment), and the aim of the developer is to
devise a decent compromise, not any sort of "ideal".

As I said, that's an outmoded approach.

In Maori, leaving out the macrons isn't "wrong" because it's
sub-phonemic. It's "wrong" because it represents a deviation from the
accepted orthographic tradition -- that is, it's a spelling mistake.

And how did that "tradition" become "accepted"?-

It was imposed by the missionaries.
.

Relevant Pages

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  • Re: BBC does it again
    ... convention in many Uralic languages, ... and that long vowels are a sequence of two short vowels. ... uses macrons, while most developers of scripts for Australian languages ... orthographies are already used to writing English, ...
    (sci.lang)
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  • Re: BBC does it again
    ... convention in many Uralic languages, ... and that long vowels are a sequence of two short vowels. ... double letters and some use macrons, ... orthographies are already used to writing English, ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: BBC does it again
    ... >> phoneme, and that long vowels are a sequence of two short vowels. ... Does this mean you don't agree that there are such languages? ... phonemic orthography is an ideal orthography. ...
    (sci.lang)