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17 KiB
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'(body (section ((id "what-is-language")) (hgroup (h2 "thinking about what language is for a moment")) (p "by way of an opening query: what does a language need? naturally our base case spoken languages have sounds and our base case signed languages have gestures. for each of these, we have an articulatory mechanism: the vocal tract, or the face and hands and arms; and a perceptual mechanism: the auditory system, or the visual system. the unique thing about language among other forms of communication is how languages use time. it might seem basic, but it's easy to forget that 'my cat scratched the post' and 'the post scratched my cat' mean very different things. and the same sounds in a different sequence can become a smattering of ideas as in 'the my scratched cat post' or even lose meaning all together as in 'cra catsm sde thymst opsh'. languages differ on how they use time--some languages allow more freedom for word order than others, but relationships between articulations through time are essential to all known languages. for now, let's start with those articulatory bits! (more on time and on meaning later)") (section ((id "phonemes")) (hgroup (h3 "phonemes") (p (em "what even are they?"))) (p "no talk of letters here! no " (q ((style "font-family: serif; font-style: italic; padding: 1px 2px;")) "'ghoti' is pronounced 'fish'") " jokes! instead, let's imagine how to describe the difference in articulation and in reception between 'mine' and 'fine' and 'wine' and 'dine' or between '" "'. these words rhyme! which (for short words) is a way of saying that most of their sounds are the same, and the similar bits come at the end. " (footnote "rhyme is a little more complicated than that, encompassing stress patterns") "" "it is uncontroversial to suggest that there is a basic articulatory/perceptual unit in any given modality which, when strung together, produces the basic units of meaning. this basic unit, no matter the modality, is called the 'phoneme'." (footnote "historically, called a 'chereme' in sign languages") "in selecting the words i have, i've already hinted at how linguists support the existence of these phonemes. 'dine' and 'fine' together form a 'minimal pair' of words with a different meaning whose difference is found in only one perceptually distinct part of their articulation. because we know from english language usage that 'mine' and 'fine' and 'wine' and 'dine' are distinct words with distinct meaning, we have a clue that there is some phonemic difference between /m/ and /f/ and /w/ and /d/. by collecting more examples of these minimal pairs ('do' and 'moo' and 'wed' and 'dead' and on and on) we can begin to describe the physical sounds associated with each phoneme and how each is articulated.") (p "human bodies are inexact things--perception is important here! it does us no good to describe an extra-tightly clenched middle finger in a closed hand shape as indicative of a distinct phoneme as it would be unlikely to be perceptible to an interlocutor and so could never disambiguate between two signs. environments are noisy and so articulation is also important! in my dialect of english the word 'put' /pʊt/, in a noisy environment, might be pronounced roughly [pʰʊtʰ]. in casual speach, however this same word is frequently realized as [pʰɵʔ] with the only audible consonant at the end being the glottal closure of 'uh-oh'. the only ghost of the exaggerated realization is typically an inaudible tongue placement behind the alveolar ridge. a speaker recognizes what the phoneme 'could be' with more effort, but typically such effort is unnecessary for understanding. this suggests that there phonemes are not simply sounds or handshapes or mouth movements. something must be underlying the equality of meaning between [pʰʊtʰ] and [pʰɵʔ]") (p "there's a fairly wide consensus amongst linguists that, despite being the minimal constituent needed to represent meaning in language, phonemes are " (strong "not atomic.") " a phoneme can be decomposed into constituent features and minimal pairs of phonemes can be
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