"Peter T. Daniels" <gramma... at (no spam) verizon.net> wrote in messagenews:ceec54da-6938-4c74-a947-e54b8b7e7b2f at (no spam) m44g2000hsc.googlegroups.com...

Of course. Why would a phonetic transcription affect the way I speak a
language?

Are not deficiencies in an apparently regular spelling system even more
likely to result in spelling pronunciations?

"Peter T. Daniels" <gramma... at (no spam) verizon.net> wrote in messagenews:440d05fb-b18a-46a2-889d-6d61fe8dad29 at (no spam) l64g2000hse.googlegroups.com...
On May 17, 9:26 pm, "ranjit_math... at (no spam) yahoo.com"

ranjit_math... at (no spam) yahoo.com> wrote:
What percentage of Marathi toddlers are literate in Marathi?
Do adults learn from toddlers?-
Toddlers turn into adults. They have mastered their language before
some of them learn to read.

Balderdash!  Native language acquisition takes many years.  What they have
when learning to read is useful level of competence in the language.  And if
they're trying to acquire the standard version of the language, writing will
have an effect - especially on vocabulary that is acquired by reading rather
than by talking.

But thinking of it: The change from alveolar to uvular r is a prime
example of a sound change with no intermediate stages. Does it suggest
that a phoneme can jump into an unoccupied place of articulation from
almost anywhere?

On Sat, 17 May 2008 03:00:08 +0100, Richard Wordingham
jrw0602 at (no spam) yahoo.co.uk> wrote in
news:U_qXj.15453$U61.4618 at (no spam) newsfe12.ams2> in sci.lang:

A great many English speakers do not know how to pronounce
"won" - they pronounce it with a short 'o'. (I was
going to write '/wA.n/ or equivalent', but that is
probably less clear a statement.)

Where? I don't think that I've ever heard a native speaker
do this.

"Peter T. Daniels" <gramma... at (no spam) verizon.net> wrote in
messagenews:2be547c4-f655-4078-9df2-461e082f615b at (no spam) e53g2000hsa.googlegroups.com...
On May 18, 12:00 pm, Ruud Harmsen <realemailons... at (no spam) rudhar.com.invalid
wrote:





Sun, 18 May 2008 08:36:58 -0700 (PDT): "Peter T. Daniels"
gramma... at (no spam) verizon.net>: in sci.lang:
On May 18, 11:10 am, Ruud Harmsen <realemailons... at (no spam) rudhar.com.invalid
wrote:
Sun, 18 May 2008 06:41:08 -0700 (PDT): "ranjit_math... at (no spam) yahoo.com"
ranjit_math... at (no spam) yahoo.com>: in sci.lang:

If prestige speakers decide to merge them, others might follow suit.
There's a story that a Spanish king's lisp changed a sibilant in the
language of all citizens. Even if apocryphal, is it an unlikely
story?

And another story is that some French king's speech defect changed
the
French r, which later spread all over France and to large parts of
Germany, the Nederlands, Scandinavia en Portugal. Any truth in it?

No.

Why don't you _research_ the alleged "story" and find out what, if
any, data underlie it?

It's much faster and more reliable to ask you.

Can you point me to some not-too-expensive books I could order, that
explain how the various uvular r's came about? That would interest me
a lot.

|No.
|
|Nor do I understand the question.

|"Came about" from what?

Ruud ---- I don't really see how Peter can fail to understand your
question,
but here's an article which addresses the issue and includes some
references
as well:http://www.linguistlist.org/issues/11/11-2186.html

Peter T. Daniels:

Ruud Harmsen:

Can you point me to some not-too-expensive books I could order,
that explain how the various uvular r's came about? That would
interest me a lot.

No.

Nor do I understand the question.

"Came about" from what?

Ruud ---- I don't really see how Peter can fail to understand your
question, but here's an article which addresses the issue and
includes some references as well:
http://www.linguistlist.org/issues/11/11-2186.html

On May 18, 2:52 pm, "benli... at (no spam) ihug.co.nz" <benli... at (no spam) ihug.co.nz> wrote:



On May 19, 1:27 am, "ranjit_math... at (no spam) yahoo.com"

ranjit_math... at (no spam) yahoo.com> wrote:
On May 18, 2:51 am, "benli... at (no spam) ihug.co.nz" <benli... at (no spam) ihug.co.nz> wrote:

On May 18, 8:39 pm, Ruud Harmsen <realemailons... at (no spam) rudhar.com.invalid
wrote:

Sat, 17 May 2008 19:10:26 -0700 (PDT): "benli... at (no spam) ihug.co.nz"
benli... at (no spam) ihug.co.nz>: in sci.lang:

So whoever devised the Devanagari script for Marathi failed to
represent a phonemic distinction which is made in Marathi (and
presumably represented in the Modi script)? Where did they find such
an incompetent?

You mean whenever a language is starting to be written, a competent
person always devises a script variant for it that is in line with the
phonemics of the language in question?

Interesting.

Well, there have been a lot of competent jobs done, even by people
without formal linguistic training.
I guess I was thinking within the time frame implied by Ranjit's "50
years". In the mid-20th century I would have expected the Indian
government to have access to some linguistically informed help. But
then the Marathi site talked about Modi script being used only until
the 18th century.

My friend's father has used Modi, so it was used in the 20th century.

OK. On the basis of what we know so far, we might guess that the
application of Devanagari to writing Marathi began in the 18th
century, but coexisted with Modi for a couple of hundred years. In the
mid 20th century (I saw a date of 1950 somewhere) the Indian govt
decreed that it was to be Devanagari only from then on. Nowadays
people say Modi is impractical for computer use and so on, and Mr
Gangal tells us that Devanagari is the "birthright" of all Marathi
speakers.

Ross Clark- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I strongly doubt that the Indian government has the power to tell
either the government of Maharashtra or Maharashtrians what script
their language should be written in.

I think that Hindi ( powered specially by the creative impulse of the
Bombay movie industry and with the vast power of the Union Government
behind it) is slowly and relentlessly engulfing other "Indo Aryan"
languages and this script changeover might have been caused by this
phenomenon.

The recent unpleasantness towards "North Indians" (= Hindi speakers)
by militant Maharashtrians is, in my opinion, an attempt by Marathi
speakers to defend their language from a more or less uncoerced
extinction.

Of course. Why would a phonetic transcription affect the way I speak a
language?

What percentage of Marathi toddlers are literate in Marathi?

Do adults learn from toddlers?-

Toddlers turn into adults. They have mastered their language before
some of them learn to read.

On May 19, 12:24 pm, mb <azyth... at (no spam) gmail.com> wrote:





On May 19, 4:27 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma... at (no spam) verizon.net> wrote:

On May 19, 5:29 am, mb <azyth... at (no spam) gmail.com> wrote:

On May 19, 2:07 am, Trond Engen
...

in whatever dia- or
sociolect the change occurs it seems to be a systematic replacement of
all realizations of the phoneme.

Phone.

No, phoneme. A phone _is_ a realization of a phoneme.

Just one of the [very many] individual realizations > and just one of
the [generally several] admitted types.
In this case, there are several.
There would have been no need for even the concept of phoneme if each
separate realization of a given sound was to be confused with it.

You seem now to have befuddled even yourself. There is no such thing
as "realization of a phone."

On May 19, 8:06 am, "ranjit_math... at (no spam) yahoo.com"

Languages not in the 8th schedule (and spoken by a reasonably large
number of people) are called non-scheduled languages but for whatever
reason, the languages on the schedule are not commonly called
scheduled languages by Indians.

Unless they work for the Census of India.

I reviewed the volume on
languages from the 1991 Census for the journal *Language*.

On May 19, 11:46 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma... at (no spam) verizon.net> wrote:





On May 19, 12:30 pm, mb <azyth... at (no spam) gmail.com> wrote:

On May 19, 7:36 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma... at (no spam) verizon.net> wrote:

On May 19, 8:37 am, Ruud Harmsen <realemailons... at (no spam) rudhar.com.invalid
...
Language change occurs bot unconsciously and consciously. E.g. groups
(say students, young women, etc.) adopt some unusual feature.

Not intentionally.

adopted, so they may consciously unadopt it.

They may try to. They may fail, or they may succeed. But they did not
consciously adopt it.

It does apply to the few cases that were extensively researched, so
you can say that. But that is hardly enough data to issue a carved-in-
stone "law" about it.

Your "it" has no antecedent.

Pronoun replacing the whole tedious story of the initiation of sound
change.

Two centuries of linguistics has never turned up an example of a
deliberate language change. (Not vocabulary change, of course.) Do you
have one?

Certainly not (as I already say above).
On the other hand, there are allegations that cannot all be (or
haven't been) thoroughly investigated.

In science, the absence of proof or even inquiry concerning something
is not the same as a regular law of its absence. They are 2 very
different animals. In particular, the absence of proof (especially
where a very rare occurrence is being postulated) cannot be the object
of some absolute and absolutist statement (even coming from a bigshot
Herr Professor).-

On May 19, 11:44 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma... at (no spam) verizon.net> wrote:
On May 19, 12:24 pm, mb <azyth... at (no spam) gmail.com> wrote:
On May 19, 4:27 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma... at (no spam) verizon.net> wrote:
On May 19, 5:29 am, mb <azyth... at (no spam) gmail.com> wrote:
On May 19, 2:07 am, Trond Engen

in whatever dia- or
sociolect the change occurs it seems to be a systematic replacement of
all realizations of the phoneme.

Phone.

No, phoneme. A phone _is_ a realization of a phoneme.

Just one of the [very many] individual realizations > and just one of
the [generally several] admitted types.
In this case, there are several.
There would have been no need for even the concept of phoneme if each
separate realization of a given sound was to be confused with it.

You seem now to have befuddled even yourself. There is no such thing
as "realization of a phone."

That's your personal injection. Read. The confusion is between the
infinite number of single separate sounds and their overarching
concept grouping all permissible, that is beign pointed to. Someone
was mixing phonemes and individual sounds and a passing remark
addressed that, because this could make the very concept of phoneme
invalid.

Until the Daniels and Scott duo started their usual game of trying to
confuse people by lawyers' tricks, accusing people of having said the
contrary of what they say, niceties of exact grammar, confronting one
statement with another one elicited for the purpose, etc. Not
interested in retarded courtroom games.-

On May 19, 3:35 pm, mb <azyth... at (no spam) gmail.com> wrote:





On May 19, 11:46 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma... at (no spam) verizon.net> wrote:

On May 19, 12:30 pm, mb <azyth... at (no spam) gmail.com> wrote:

On May 19, 7:36 am, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma... at (no spam) verizon.net> wrote:

On May 19, 8:37 am, Ruud Harmsen <realemailons... at (no spam) rudhar.com.invalid
...
Language change occurs bot unconsciously and consciously. E.g. groups
(say students, young women, etc.) adopt some unusual feature.

Not intentionally.

adopted, so they may consciously unadopt it.

They may try to. They may fail, or they may succeed. But they did not
consciously adopt it.

It does apply to the few cases that were extensively researched, so
you can say that. But that is hardly enough data to issue a carved-in-
stone "law" about it.

Your "it" has no antecedent.

Pronoun replacing the whole tedious story of the initiation of sound
change.

Two centuries of linguistics has never turned up an example of a
deliberate language change. (Not vocabulary change, of course.) Do you
have one?

Certainly not (as I already say above).
On the other hand, there are allegations that cannot all be (or
haven't been) thoroughly investigated.

Go ahead, allege something.

In science, the absence of proof or even inquiry concerning something
is not the same as a regular law of its absence. They are 2 very
different animals. In particular, the absence of proof (especially
where a very rare occurrence is being postulated) cannot be the object
of some absolute and absolutist statement (even coming from a bigshot
Herr Professor).-

"Very rare"? It's _postulated_ all the time, on the grounds of wishful
thinking or historical fiction.

mb skreiv:

...
in whatever dia- or sociolect the change occurs it seems to be a
systematic replacement of all realizations of the phoneme.
Phone.

No, phoneme. The _phone_ (or set of related phones) [R] seems to be
replacing all older allophones of the phoneme /r/.

But I'll plead guilty to any charge for causing the obfused sidetrack
above. My explanatory skills are not up to the expectations of their
possessor.

- *allophonie* n.f. Système de télécommunications etabli en vue de la
transmisson des saluts