User talk:Rua/Archives/2013/December

December 2013

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Thanks, BracketBot (talk) 19:43, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

Dutch grammar

hi Codecat

well, how can I explain that this part needs example coz I dont have any in the main time? thx Wafaashohdy (talk) 18:08, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

You can try {{examples}}? CodeCat (talk) 18:58, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

*f vs. /ɸ/

I don't think it's strictly necessary to write /ɸ/ to be IPA-correct. /f/ is fine as an IPA phonemic representation of the sound, regardless of whether it actually had the pronunciation [ɸ]. Likewise you will frequently see /d/ written (e.g. in Ringe) when the pronunciation was actually [ð] between vowels. I think the page should consistently use IPA phonemic representation (with /slashes/) and use narrow phonetic representation (with [brackets]) only when necessary to clarify otherwise non-obvious situations. E.g. definitely we need to write voiced fricatives as such, because the change [ð] → [d] is important and had significant interactions with other changes. But the change [ɸ] → /f/ is basically irrelevant; likewise for /x/ splitting into [h], [x], [ç], which had probably occurred at least partly by OHG times. Benwing (talk) 02:10, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

In fact the change [x] -> [h] initially before a vowel may have occurred already in Proto-Germanic since it appears to be reflected in all daughter languages. Benwing (talk) 02:13, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

But the phoneme is /ɸ/ not /f/. Saying "we call it /f/ but it's really /ɸ/" is just silly. Why would you write /f/ if it's not /f/? We don't write /ʋ/ for the English /w/ either, do we? As for /d/, that's a matter of allophony. Proto-Germanic did not have any allophony for /ɸ/ that we can tell, because all of them were susceptible to change to [β]. And we know that it was [β] because it became /b/ in German and under certain other conditions (after nasal, geminates). I don't think there is really any doubt among linguists that Germanic's *f was /ɸ/. CodeCat (talk) 02:23, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Well, silly or not, it's very common to use a more basic symbol to phonemically represent a similar but less-common one. Many texts on English phonology write /r/ for the R even though it's obviously not a trill (except maybe for a few Scottish dialects). Your example of /ʋ/ for /w/ doesn't work because it substitutes a less-common symbol for a more common one. Same principle explains why we normally write *f not *ɸ in reconstructed Proto-Germanic words. Essentially the bilabiality of /ɸ/ and the specific feature differences between /ʋ/ and /w/ are irrelevant in a primarily phonological rather than phonetic sense. I'm not opposed to using /ɸ/ but we should follow standard sources rather than making things up on our own ... e.g. does Ringe 2006 use /f/ or /ɸ/ when giving phonemic IPA versions of words in Proto-Germanic (if he does this at all)? Benwing (talk) 03:48, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Some other examples where conventional notation disagrees with phonetic reality:

• We gloss the sound of "caught" in American English with /ɔ/ although this isn't very accurate even for people like me who lack the cot-caught merger (it's really more like [ɒ]);
• we gloss the sound of "but" with /ʌ/ although it now sounds like [ɐ] in both American and British English;
• French conventional nasals /ɑ̃ ɛ̃ ɔ̃/ are all somewhat inaccurate in describing the actual sounds of standard Parisian French, esp. the first two, which sound more like [ɒ̃ æ̃];
• German dictionaries often notate the sound of the eu vowel as /oi/ or /ɔɪ/, whereas it's actually more like [ɔʏ];
• etc.

Benwing (talk) 03:48, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

User CodeCat comments

User CodeCat comments at Talk:Altaic languages: Revision history: "I also don't see the point in the 'discussion', if it can be called that." Well, no. I left a comment not a discussion. *grin* Speling12345 (talk) 11:10, 18 December 2013 (UTC)