Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site sphinx.UChicago.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!whuxlm!whuxl!houxm!ihnp4!gargoyle!sphinx!mmar From: mmar@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP (Mitchell Marks) Newsgroups: net.nlang Subject: Re: Credibility (really 'phonetic' spelling schemes for English) Message-ID: <770@sphinx.UChicago.UUCP> Date: Thu, 4-Jul-85 05:59:29 EDT Article-I.D.: sphinx.770 Posted: Thu Jul 4 05:59:29 1985 Date-Received: Fri, 5-Jul-85 05:40:10 EDT References: <271@sri-arpa.ARPA> <483@oliveb.UUCP>, <380@spar.UUCP> Organization: U Chicago -- Linguistics Dept Lines: 46 [][][] Michael Ellis and I have now both independently posted argument number 3 against a one-sound-one-symbol scheme for reforming English spelling (independent postings that crossed. I agree with michael so often here, why do I think he's so wrong in net.philosop? I'm counting as follows: 1. 'Lyrical qualities'. 2. Preserve historical heritage. 3. Loss of indications of synchronic relatedness. Rather than `phonetic' I'm calling the proposals `one sound one symbol' to be neutral about whether the proposal would be narrow phonetic, broad phonetic, phonemic, or something else. The objections apply to all of those variations; and they don't apply to more modest, piecemeal reform schemes. Now I'd like to add argument #4: What regional / social dialect would you take as the standard on which spelling would be based? Then what about children from other dialects? Are they going to miss out on all the supposed benefits of of the reform scheme? I suppose they'll just have to learn to spell according to someone else's pronunciation. Or better yet, get them to talk according to the new standard dialect that's been enshrined in the spelling. After all, everything would be so much neater and cleaner if we all spoke the same way. Possible attempted response: The symbols would have different values for different dialects. Consider people who say `pen' with a rather high vowel, like 'pin'. For them, the symbol chosen to represent the "epsilon vowel" would just mean a higher vowel than for the, um, majority dialect. But everybody would still have a self-consistent system, with one-sound-one-symbol. Answer to possible response: Nice try, but phonological variation isn't that regular. The way a sound varies from one dialect to another depends a great deal on its phonological environment within the word. In other words, you cannot simultaneously attain the following two goals: a) uniform orthography for all English speakers (or even all American English speakers) b) each speaker or each dialect community has a self-consistent system of mapping the uniform symbols one-to-one into local sounds. -- -- Mitch Marks @ UChicago ...ihnp4!gargoyle!sphinx!mmar