tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post8870256863137513246..comments2024-03-17T09:14:13.950+00:00Comments on John Wells’s phonetic blog: errata typographicaJohn Wellshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13684304410735867148noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-5727760145540867742011-06-24T07:39:57.068+01:002011-06-24T07:39:57.068+01:00Ad Army
Thank you.
Again, I must explain that I ...Ad Army<br /><br />Thank you.<br /><br />Again, I must explain that I am no linguist.<br /><br />'Communista' would, according to my observation, get its vowel lengthened before a pausa, or when placed emphasis on, for most speakers, most of the time. The 'theory' of those who read vowel-quantity into Italian is that stressed vowels get lengthened only if in an open syllable. But according to my observation, this is not true. I have recently cooperated with an Italian partner, this went on for months, we were communicating in Italian and for some subject-matter-related reasons he had often to use the word 'norma'. It struck me how often he lengthened the vowel: 'nawawrma', but only before a pausa or with emphasis on it.<br /><br />'Feel' with a 'light' l, if that is what you mean, would of course sound foreign, non-English (at least in the accents of English I am familiar with). But I insist---again, based on observation---that if you 'just' stress 'i' in 'partito' or 'o' in 'norma' without lengthening it, you don't sound foreign. (Unless for native speakers of northern dialects, perhaps.)<br /><br />There so many awesome parties in Britain, amongst these the Conservative Party---in this sentence, methinks, no matter how carelessly pronounced, you'll always hear the _relative_ vowel length in 'awesome' and 'parties', and 'these' and 'Conservative', in the latter I mean the 'er'-vowel. But saying 'In Itaalia ci soono molti partiiti, tra cuui anche il ceelebre Partiito Communista' is ridiculous (or making Italian appear ridiculous, caricature-like, plus italien que le Pape, mocking it ... or maybe something for a publicitity spot). I know an Italian, though, a 'big shot' in the academic world, who (because of his self-importance?) drawls the stressed the vowel of every second word, so he might pronounce that exactly that way....<br /><br />As I said, I am not a linguist, so I cannot really say if the factual lengthening of stressed vowels in Italian is para- or something-other-linguistic in this or that sense. In my perception, though, it lies on a different level of language (speech?) than the real vowel-length in, say, English, or Czech, or Finnish, or German. It's rather like speaking in a 'whiney' tone of voice which (it is sometimes said) many Russians are in the habit of using for their native idiom (and sometimes for others). You can speak non-whineily and thereby speak not exactly like many or most Russians, but speak perfect Russian nonetheless, without sounding 'weird' or 'foreign' or sumpin'....Podpora społeczeństwahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08339088245843399386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-13557015468394571822011-06-23T15:55:48.614+01:002011-06-23T15:55:48.614+01:00I meant stress as in intonational-group-level prim...I meant stress as in intonational-group-level primary stress, not as in word-level stress, Of course <i>partito</i> would receive no primary stress in such a sentence, but neither would English <i>Party</i> in <i>many parties, amongh which the Communist Party</i>.<br /><br />As for the lack of lenghtening in <i>comunista</i>, that's one of the reasons why I'd syllabify it as /ko.mu'nis.ta/ rather than /ko.mu'ni.sta/ as the hyphenation rules suggest (and I know I'm not the only one).<br /><br /><i>even without lengthening the sentence would sound perfectly OK.</i><br />Huh, that also depends on what you mean by <i>OK</i>. Would English <i>feel</i> pronounced an unvelarized L sound “OK” to you?<br /><br /><i>Italians also sometimes 'sing' their words, quite often in fact. Shall we say they have tonal accents, like the Serbs or the Swedes? Clearly, no.</i><br />Well, that depends only on the general intonation of the sentence, not on the word itself. OTOH <i>tufo</i> would have a longer vowel than <i>tuffo</i> even in othewise identical sentences with otherwise identical prosody. (BTW, of course I'm not claiming that Italian has <em>phonemic</em> vowel length, only that is not an exclusively paralinguistic phenomenon any more than, say, de-aspiration of stops after /s/ is in English.)army1987https://www.blogger.com/profile/01166052755101226806noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-72374031817810353152011-06-22T15:30:04.077+01:002011-06-22T15:30:04.077+01:00the first edition of my LPD somehow didn’t include...<i>the first edition of my LPD somehow didn’t include the word </i>marathon<i>. I’m sure the DA will get its nuts sorted out</i><br /><br />So between you, you got your <i>Snickers</i> in a twist?Martin Barryhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04127666691711536810noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-57860860323279716042011-06-21T16:06:31.598+01:002011-06-21T16:06:31.598+01:00Ad Army1987
I am not a linguist so I can't ar...Ad Army1987<br /><br />I am not a linguist so I can't argue with you on a truly scholarly level; my opinion on the matter is based on years of observation, talking over the matter with Italians, including linguists, plus familiarity with languages which beyond doubt do have vowel quantity.<br /><br />No doubt Italians have a tendency to lengthen their stressed vowels, when they utter the word separately, for illustration purposes, or when they lay logical or emotional emphasis on it, and such. This varies from individual to individual, I know e.g. a guy who can't say 'noi' (we) without drawawawling it: nawawawi. But there is nothing incorrect in saying simply 'noi'. Or imagine a sentence like: 'In Italia ci sono moltissimi partiti, uno tra loro e` il partito communista' with EVERY stressed vowel lengthened, not just 'partiti' (before a pause) and 'communista' (final). It would sound ridiculous, or rather like mocking Italian, holding it up to ridicule (in fact, this _is_ done sometimes for this purpose). In normal speech, 'partiti' and 'communista' would get their stressed vowel slightly lengthened (my friend would say 'parteeeeeti', 'communeeeeeesta'), but even without lengthening the sentence would sound perfectly OK.<br /><br />Re tufo/tuffo --- in the Milanese dialect there is in fact a distinction like that, tufo has a long vowel and tuffo has a non-geminated consonant before the vowel.<br /><br />Italians also sometimes 'sing' their words, quite often in fact. Shall we say they have tonal accents, like the Serbs or the Swedes? Clearly, no.Podpora społeczeństwahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08339088245843399386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-92019666151266489002011-06-21T15:39:39.856+01:002011-06-21T15:39:39.856+01:00Of course Italian vowels can be lenghtened for all...Of course Italian vowels can be lenghtened for all kinds of paralinguistic reasons (as I guess they can in most other languages), but the lenghtening of vowels in stressed open syllables is an honest-to-goodness allophonic phenomomenon which occurs even in completely ordinary speech. IMO in <i>tufo</i> ['tu:.fo] / <i>tuffo</i> ['tuf.fo] the difference in vowel duration is almost as obvious as that in consonant duration, and ['tu.fo] with a short vowel would sound ‘weird’ to many speakers (though not many of them would misinterpret it as <i>tuffo</i>). I wouldn't omit the length mark except in broadest transcriptions (i.e., those where [ŋk] is transcribed as /nk/).army1987https://www.blogger.com/profile/01166052755101226806noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-69729906364126031452011-06-21T02:13:43.429+01:002011-06-21T02:13:43.429+01:00Hold on, just realized that maybe /ʋ/ may be consi...Hold on, just realized that maybe /ʋ/ may be considered syllabic in some languages. Duh! I'm sleepy today, sorry! At any rate, an IPA-check program would still be handy if it could be coded somehow.Glen Gordonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02440249042894225949noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-74929848344063066732011-06-21T00:44:04.237+01:002011-06-21T00:44:04.237+01:00Wojciech, you're so right. I just like to anal...Wojciech, you're so right. I just like to analyse the foreign accents of unsuspecting people around me to see how many traits I can identify from their native language affecting their unique expressions of English. If you pack a sandwich and drink, you can whisk off downtown to make a fun afternoon of it. LOL! (No seriously, my life isn't that boring, I swear!)<br /><br />But seriously, on the main topic now, it seems like computers have to get to the next level to iron out these typographical problems. We take for granted spell-check programs but should we not also have IPA-check programs designed to identify potential goof-ups in IPA? The example of [aʋ̯] seems to be an obvious and easy example that could be weeded out by such a program since naturally consonants shouldn't need the non-syllabic diacritic.Glen Gordonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02440249042894225949noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-33116133489317789372011-06-20T18:35:07.663+01:002011-06-20T18:35:07.663+01:00Ad Dinora
Italian has no vowel quantity. It has c...Ad Dinora<br /><br />Italian has no vowel quantity. It has consonant quantity, a.k.a. consonant gemination, but no vowel quantity. Neither does Spanish nor Portuguese. This does not mean that in these languages all vowels have identically the same length, because much depends on emphasis (logical or emotional), for instance, Italians often lengthen stressed vowels, especially in open syllables, when the word comes last in a sentence, or before a comma, and/or is the bearer of some sort of emphasis. But this is a phenomenon different from what standardly goes under the name of 'vowel quantity'.<br /><br />People whose native language has a trait, such as vowel quantity, have naturally the tendency to 'hear it into' other languages which do not. I have known Chinese persons who believed that German had word-tones, like Chinese... . Well, in a sense it does; depending on speech-context, Germans pronounce their words high, low, rising or falling or undulating... true enough, but this is not what Chinese tones are about. German, in its turn, has vowel-quantity, so Germans tend to 'hear' short and long vowels in Italian, and when they speak Italian they apply the imagined 'rules', making their Italian sound funny. I have no problem with that; what I think is mistaken is making a principle of such mis-interpretations and building them into API-transcriptions.Podpora społeczeństwahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08339088245843399386noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-40721825516024624282011-06-20T14:24:48.164+01:002011-06-20T14:24:48.164+01:00Italian doesn't have vowel quantity?
This Ge...Italian doesn't have vowel quantity? <br /><br />This German dictionary is a good book and a laudable project. But there are a few but's about it. Like the already mentioned fussiness, these new diphthong transcription choices and the fact that, unlike Max Mangold, it only has germanized pronunciations – which is a big minus in my book.Duchesse de Guermanteshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12198316853449400624noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-377103124456226005.post-12793998623886935502011-06-20T09:23:44.096+01:002011-06-20T09:23:44.096+01:00I am surprised that the Dictionary interprets (Ger...I am surprised that the Dictionary interprets (German?) long vowels (in 'Eusebio') into languages that simply don't have vowel quantity, Spanish and Portuguese. Germans usually imagine Italian has vowel quantity, which it has not (due to the habit of most Italians of lenghtening stressed vowels when under logical or emotional emphasis) but that now even the Iberic languages should have it... .Podpora społeczeństwahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08339088245843399386noreply@blogger.com