On Monday, July 3, 2023 at 3:57:08 PM UTC-4, Ross Clark wrote:
> On 4/07/2023 1:39 a.m., Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > On Sunday, July 2, 2023 at 4:36:22 PM UTC-4, Ross Clark wrote:
> >> On 3/07/2023 12:58 a.m., Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> >>> On Sunday, July 2, 2023 at 7:00:19 AM UTC-4, Ross Clark wrote:
> >>>> On 2/07/2023 8:49 a.m., Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> >>>>> On Saturday, July 1, 2023 at 10:14:41 AM UTC-4, Ruud Harmsen wrote:
> >>>>>> Sat, 1 Jul 2023 06:42:24 -0700 (PDT): "Peter T. Daniels"
> >>>>>> <gram...@verizon.net> scribeva:
> >>>>>>> On Friday, June 30, 2023 at 9:47:44?PM UTC-4, Dingbat wrote:

> >>>>>>>> In this video:
> >>>>>>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEQcDiSbxHc
> >>>>>>>> Narrator Hannah Jewell claims a difference of Keeyev vs. Keeyive..
> >>>>>>>> Putin belies her claim by pronouncing it Keeyive, the Ukrainian way,
> >>>>>>>> in the same video!
> >>>>>>> Your attempts at pronunciation-respellings are incomprehensible.
> >>>>>> Kee-yive, rhymes with see-give. I think.
> >>>>>> Except that final v in Ukranian is probably bilabial, not labiodental.
> >>>>>>>> So, it seems that at least some Russians don't pronounce it
> >>>>>>>> differently from Ukrainians.
> >>>>>>>> Either way, Ukrainians' preferred transliteration to English of
> >>>>>>>> Kyiv might or might not get Anglophones to pronounce it
> >>>>>>>> their way, whereas Keeyive would get Anglophones to
> >>>>>>>> pronounce it the Ukrainian way, IMHO.
> >>>>>>> That cannot remotely come out like the Ukrainian pronunciation of the name.
> >>>>>> OK, KeyYieve then, like key and sieve?
> >>>>> In Engish, the expected ("unmarked") pronunciation of VCe# is the
> >>>>> "long" version of the vowel, i.e. when it "says its name," as in
> >>>>> cake Peke mike poke cuke dyke.
> >>> Unfortunately it doesn't work for cook Cooke, booth smoothe(s).
> >>>>> As in five, hive, swive, wive(s).
> >>>>> "give" confuses because the e is there to keep the v from ending an
> >>>>> orthographic word.
> >>>> This sounds like a functional explanation: someone does something in
> >>>> order to prevent something undesirable from happening. But who is
> >>>> supposed to have put the -e there with this intention? And why is having
> >>>> -v at the end of an orthographic word a bad thing?
> >>> As Martin Joos said, "Children want explanations."
> >> Sorry, you've already worn out this lame riposte.
> > ? Didn't you do Phonology with Jim Gair? We pretty much worked through
> > RiL for phonological theory.
> >> You were the one who offered an "explanation" of why there was an -e at
> >> the end of "give". I'm calling your bluff.
> > I did?
> > How is recognizing a fact "giving an explanation"?
>
> Your words: "...the e [in 'give'] is there to keep the v from ending an
> orthographic word."

You think it's doing something else there?

Christian gave a historical account. Is that a better "explanation"?

> If there's a fact there, it's that "give" is spelled with a final -e.
> Your "to keep..." is a purported explanation of why the -e is there -- a
> statement of its purpose or function. That's what I'm questioning.

Ok, what's _your_ "explanation"?

> >>> Richard Venezky's
> >>> _synchronic_ description of English orthography identifies, IIRC, four
> >>> different functions of final -e (he calls them "markers"). These are the
> >>> two most widespread ones.
> >> So Venezky has made up a "function" to explain why words don't end in
> >> -v. Why do you cite this as though it were a scientific discovery?
> > Why don't you try reading what he wrote?
>
> Some day I may have time. Meanwhile, I'm happy to accept your account of it.

Sure doesn't look like it.

You didn't explain why identifying the functions of final -e in Standard
English orthography is an "explanation."

> > He might have been Hockett's student at just about the same time you
> > were there, or possibly a little earlier. His. M.A. was an early bit of
> > computational linguistics, analyzing the spelling of something like
> > 20,000 English words; he then went to Stanford to work with Ruth
> > Weir. His dissertation was published as a Janua Linguarum in 1970
> > (The Structure of English Orthography), revised much later as The
> > American Way of Spelling.
> > Unfortunately I never met him; I became aware of his work a few months
> > after he died; he would have been at the 2004 Antwerp meeting where I was
> > one of the keynoters.
> > https://www.readinghalloffame.org/sites/default/files/deceased_member_files/history_of_literacy_obituary_richard_l._venezky_1938-2004.pdf
> >
> > The University of Delaware has not taken down his web page.
> >>>>> live and live go the two ways,

On 4/07/2023 8:23 a.m., Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> On Monday, July 3, 2023 at 3:57:08 PM UTC-4, Ross Clark wrote:
>> On 4/07/2023 1:39 a.m., Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>> On Sunday, July 2, 2023 at 4:36:22 PM UTC-4, Ross Clark wrote:
>>>> On 3/07/2023 12:58 a.m., Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>>>> On Sunday, July 2, 2023 at 7:00:19 AM UTC-4, Ross Clark wrote:
>>>>>> On 2/07/2023 8:49 a.m., Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>>>>>> On Saturday, July 1, 2023 at 10:14:41 AM UTC-4, Ruud Harmsen wrote:
>>>>>>>> Sat, 1 Jul 2023 06:42:24 -0700 (PDT): "Peter T. Daniels"
>>>>>>>> <gram...@verizon.net> scribeva:
>>>>>>>>> On Friday, June 30, 2023 at 9:47:44?PM UTC-4, Dingbat wrote:
>
>>>>>>>>>> In this video:
>>>>>>>>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEQcDiSbxHc
>>>>>>>>>> Narrator Hannah Jewell claims a difference of Keeyev vs. Keeyive.
>>>>>>>>>> Putin belies her claim by pronouncing it Keeyive, the Ukrainian way,
>>>>>>>>>> in the same video!
>>>>>>>>> Your attempts at pronunciation-respellings are incomprehensible.
>>>>>>>> Kee-yive, rhymes with see-give. I think.
>>>>>>>> Except that final v in Ukranian is probably bilabial, not labiodental.
>>>>>>>>>> So, it seems that at least some Russians don't pronounce it
>>>>>>>>>> differently from Ukrainians.
>>>>>>>>>> Either way, Ukrainians' preferred transliteration to English of
>>>>>>>>>> Kyiv might or might not get Anglophones to pronounce it
>>>>>>>>>> their way, whereas Keeyive would get Anglophones to
>>>>>>>>>> pronounce it the Ukrainian way, IMHO.
>>>>>>>>> That cannot remotely come out like the Ukrainian pronunciation of the name.
>>>>>>>> OK, KeyYieve then, like key and sieve?
>>>>>>> In Engish, the expected ("unmarked") pronunciation of VCe# is the
>>>>>>> "long" version of the vowel, i.e. when it "says its name," as in
>>>>>>> cake Peke mike poke cuke dyke.
>>>>> Unfortunately it doesn't work for cook Cooke, booth smoothe(s).
>>>>>>> As in five, hive, swive, wive(s).
>>>>>>> "give" confuses because the e is there to keep the v from ending an
>>>>>>> orthographic word.
>>>>>> This sounds like a functional explanation: someone does something in
>>>>>> order to prevent something undesirable from happening. But who is
>>>>>> supposed to have put the -e there with this intention? And why is having
>>>>>> -v at the end of an orthographic word a bad thing?
>>>>> As Martin Joos said, "Children want explanations."
>>>> Sorry, you've already worn out this lame riposte.
>>> ? Didn't you do Phonology with Jim Gair? We pretty much worked through
>>> RiL for phonological theory.
>>>> You were the one who offered an "explanation" of why there was an -e at
>>>> the end of "give". I'm calling your bluff.
>>> I did?
>>> How is recognizing a fact "giving an explanation"?
>>
>> Your words: "...the e [in 'give'] is there to keep the v from ending an
>> orthographic word."
>
> You think it's doing something else there?

I don't think it's necessarily "doing" anything.

> Christian gave a historical account. Is that a better "explanation"?

A historical explanation would be fine. Lots of things about present day
English orthography can only be explained historically.

>> If there's a fact there, it's that "give" is spelled with a final -e.
>> Your "to keep..." is a purported explanation of why the -e is there -- a
>> statement of its purpose or function. That's what I'm questioning.
>
> Ok, what's _your_ "explanation"?

I'm not offering one. There may not be one, synchronically.

>>>>> Richard Venezky's
>>>>> _synchronic_ description of English orthography identifies, IIRC, four
>>>>> different functions of final -e (he calls them "markers"). These are the
>>>>> two most widespread ones.
>>>> So Venezky has made up a "function" to explain why words don't end in
>>>> -v. Why do you cite this as though it were a scientific discovery?
>>> Why don't you try reading what he wrote?
>>
>> Some day I may have time. Meanwhile, I'm happy to accept your account of it.
>
> Sure doesn't look like it.
>
> You didn't explain why identifying the functions of final -e in Standard
> English orthography is an "explanation."

If you don't see why it would be one, I can't help you.
What I'm questioning is whether V has actually "identified a function"
of the -e in give, love, have, etc.

>>> He might have been Hockett's student at just about the same time you
>>> were there, or possibly a little earlier. His. M.A. was an early bit of
>>> computational linguistics, analyzing the spelling of something like
>>> 20,000 English words; he then went to Stanford to work with Ruth
>>> Weir. His dissertation was published as a Janua Linguarum in 1970
>>> (The Structure of English Orthography), revised much later as The
>>> American Way of Spelling.
>>> Unfortunately I never met him; I became aware of his work a few months
>>> after he died; he would have been at the 2004 Antwerp meeting where I was
>>> one of the keynoters.
>>> https://www.readinghalloffame.org/sites/default/files/deceased_member_files/history_of_literacy_obituary_richard_l._venezky_1938-2004.pdf
>>>
>>> The University of Delaware has not taken down his web page.
>>>>>>> live and live go the two ways,

On Monday, July 3, 2023 at 4:53:47 PM UTC-4, Ross Clark wrote:
> On 4/07/2023 8:23 a.m., Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > On Monday, July 3, 2023 at 3:57:08 PM UTC-4, Ross Clark wrote:
> >> On 4/07/2023 1:39 a.m., Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> >>> On Sunday, July 2, 2023 at 4:36:22 PM UTC-4, Ross Clark wrote:
> >>>> On 3/07/2023 12:58 a.m., Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> >>>>> On Sunday, July 2, 2023 at 7:00:19 AM UTC-4, Ross Clark wrote:
> >>>>>> On 2/07/2023 8:49 a.m., Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> >>>>>>> On Saturday, July 1, 2023 at 10:14:41 AM UTC-4, Ruud Harmsen wrote:
> >>>>>>>> Sat, 1 Jul 2023 06:42:24 -0700 (PDT): "Peter T. Daniels"
> >>>>>>>> <gram...@verizon.net> scribeva:
> >>>>>>>>> On Friday, June 30, 2023 at 9:47:44?PM UTC-4, Dingbat wrote:
> >
> >>>>>>>>>> In this video:
> >>>>>>>>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEQcDiSbxHc
> >>>>>>>>>> Narrator Hannah Jewell claims a difference of Keeyev vs. Keeyive.
> >>>>>>>>>> Putin belies her claim by pronouncing it Keeyive, the Ukrainian way,
> >>>>>>>>>> in the same video!
> >>>>>>>>> Your attempts at pronunciation-respellings are incomprehensible..
> >>>>>>>> Kee-yive, rhymes with see-give. I think.
> >>>>>>>> Except that final v in Ukranian is probably bilabial, not labiodental.
> >>>>>>>>>> So, it seems that at least some Russians don't pronounce it
> >>>>>>>>>> differently from Ukrainians.
> >>>>>>>>>> Either way, Ukrainians' preferred transliteration to English of
> >>>>>>>>>> Kyiv might or might not get Anglophones to pronounce it
> >>>>>>>>>> their way, whereas Keeyive would get Anglophones to
> >>>>>>>>>> pronounce it the Ukrainian way, IMHO.
> >>>>>>>>> That cannot remotely come out like the Ukrainian pronunciation of the name.
> >>>>>>>> OK, KeyYieve then, like key and sieve?
> >>>>>>> In Engish, the expected ("unmarked") pronunciation of VCe# is the
> >>>>>>> "long" version of the vowel, i.e. when it "says its name," as in
> >>>>>>> cake Peke mike poke cuke dyke.
> >>>>> Unfortunately it doesn't work for cook Cooke, booth smoothe(s).
> >>>>>>> As in five, hive, swive, wive(s).
> >>>>>>> "give" confuses because the e is there to keep the v from ending an
> >>>>>>> orthographic word.
> >>>>>> This sounds like a functional explanation: someone does something in
> >>>>>> order to prevent something undesirable from happening. But who is
> >>>>>> supposed to have put the -e there with this intention? And why is having
> >>>>>> -v at the end of an orthographic word a bad thing?
> >>>>> As Martin Joos said, "Children want explanations."
> >>>> Sorry, you've already worn out this lame riposte.
> >>> ? Didn't you do Phonology with Jim Gair? We pretty much worked through
> >>> RiL for phonological theory.
> >>>> You were the one who offered an "explanation" of why there was an -e at
> >>>> the end of "give". I'm calling your bluff.
> >>> I did?
> >>> How is recognizing a fact "giving an explanation"?
> >>
> >> Your words: "...the e [in 'give'] is there to keep the v from ending an
> >> orthographic word."
> >
> > You think it's doing something else there?
> I don't think it's necessarily "doing" anything.
> > Christian gave a historical account. Is that a better "explanation"?
> A historical explanation would be fine. Lots of things about present day
> English orthography can only be explained historically.
> >> If there's a fact there, it's that "give" is spelled with a final -e.
> >> Your "to keep..." is a purported explanation of why the -e is there -- a
> >> statement of its purpose or function. That's what I'm questioning.
> > Ok, what's _your_ "explanation"?
>
> I'm not offering one. There may not be one, synchronically.

What's the difference between hat and hate? How is that expressed
in the spelling?

What's the difference between live and shiv? (Answer: chronology.
v is no longer prohibited from ending a word. Maybe because of
lots of loans from Russian and Hebrew. Molotov, mazel tov.)

What's the difference between sooth and soothe? How is that
expressed in the spelling?

All three of those "markers" (and at least another, minor, one) are
found fairly systematically in the lexicon. That makes them real.

> >>>>> Richard Venezky's
> >>>>> _synchronic_ description of English orthography identifies, IIRC, four
> >>>>> different functions of final -e (he calls them "markers"). These are the
> >>>>> two most widespread ones.
> >>>> So Venezky has made up a "function" to explain why words don't end in
> >>>> -v. Why do you cite this as though it were a scientific discovery?
> >>> Why don't you try reading what he wrote?
> >> Some day I may have time. Meanwhile, I'm happy to accept your account of it.
> > Sure doesn't look like it.
> > You didn't explain why identifying the functions of final -e in Standard
> > English orthography is an "explanation."
>
> If you don't see why it would be one, I can't help you.

Maybe "explanation" means something different to you. Joos said
that our teachers were _describing_, not _explaining_, languages.
(Chomsky tried to go a different way and explained all languages
as deviating from the patterns found in English.)

> What I'm questioning is whether V has actually "identified a function"
> of the -e in give, love, have, etc.

Why don't you ask _him_? If 100-odd pages of his 1970 is too much for
you, try his chapter in the Cambridge History of the English Language
(either vol. 5 [Modern] or vol. 6 [outside Britain]).

> >>> He might have been Hockett's student at just about the same time you
> >>> were there, or possibly a little earlier. His. M.A. was an early bit of
> >>> computational linguistics, analyzing the spelling of something like
> >>> 20,000 English words; he then went to Stanford to work with Ruth
> >>> Weir. His dissertation was published as a Janua Linguarum in 1970
> >>> (The Structure of English Orthography), revised much later as The
> >>> American Way of Spelling.
> >>> Unfortunately I never met him; I became aware of his work a few months
> >>> after he died; he would have been at the 2004 Antwerp meeting where I was
> >>> one of the keynoters.
> >>> https://www.readinghalloffame.org/sites/default/files/deceased_member_files/history_of_literacy_obituary_richard_l._venezky_1938-2004.pdf
> >>>
> >>> The University of Delaware has not taken down his web page.
> >>>>>>> live and live go the two ways,

On 5/07/2023 3:27 a.m., Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> On Monday, July 3, 2023 at 4:53:47 PM UTC-4, Ross Clark wrote:
>> On 4/07/2023 8:23 a.m., Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>> On Monday, July 3, 2023 at 3:57:08 PM UTC-4, Ross Clark wrote:
>>>> On 4/07/2023 1:39 a.m., Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>>>> On Sunday, July 2, 2023 at 4:36:22 PM UTC-4, Ross Clark wrote:
>>>>>> On 3/07/2023 12:58 a.m., Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>>>>>> On Sunday, July 2, 2023 at 7:00:19 AM UTC-4, Ross Clark wrote:
>>>>>>>> On 2/07/2023 8:49 a.m., Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>>>>>>>> On Saturday, July 1, 2023 at 10:14:41 AM UTC-4, Ruud Harmsen wrote:
>>>>>>>>>> Sat, 1 Jul 2023 06:42:24 -0700 (PDT): "Peter T. Daniels"
>>>>>>>>>> <gram...@verizon.net> scribeva:
>>>>>>>>>>> On Friday, June 30, 2023 at 9:47:44?PM UTC-4, Dingbat wrote:
>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>> In this video:
>>>>>>>>>>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEQcDiSbxHc
>>>>>>>>>>>> Narrator Hannah Jewell claims a difference of Keeyev vs. Keeyive.
>>>>>>>>>>>> Putin belies her claim by pronouncing it Keeyive, the Ukrainian way,
>>>>>>>>>>>> in the same video!
>>>>>>>>>>> Your attempts at pronunciation-respellings are incomprehensible.
>>>>>>>>>> Kee-yive, rhymes with see-give. I think.
>>>>>>>>>> Except that final v in Ukranian is probably bilabial, not labiodental.
>>>>>>>>>>>> So, it seems that at least some Russians don't pronounce it
>>>>>>>>>>>> differently from Ukrainians.
>>>>>>>>>>>> Either way, Ukrainians' preferred transliteration to English of
>>>>>>>>>>>> Kyiv might or might not get Anglophones to pronounce it
>>>>>>>>>>>> their way, whereas Keeyive would get Anglophones to
>>>>>>>>>>>> pronounce it the Ukrainian way, IMHO.
>>>>>>>>>>> That cannot remotely come out like the Ukrainian pronunciation of the name.
>>>>>>>>>> OK, KeyYieve then, like key and sieve?
>>>>>>>>> In Engish, the expected ("unmarked") pronunciation of VCe# is the
>>>>>>>>> "long" version of the vowel, i.e. when it "says its name," as in
>>>>>>>>> cake Peke mike poke cuke dyke.
>>>>>>> Unfortunately it doesn't work for cook Cooke, booth smoothe(s).
>>>>>>>>> As in five, hive, swive, wive(s).
>>>>>>>>> "give" confuses because the e is there to keep the v from ending an
>>>>>>>>> orthographic word.
>>>>>>>> This sounds like a functional explanation: someone does something in
>>>>>>>> order to prevent something undesirable from happening. But who is
>>>>>>>> supposed to have put the -e there with this intention? And why is having
>>>>>>>> -v at the end of an orthographic word a bad thing?
>>>>>>> As Martin Joos said, "Children want explanations."
>>>>>> Sorry, you've already worn out this lame riposte.
>>>>> ? Didn't you do Phonology with Jim Gair? We pretty much worked through
>>>>> RiL for phonological theory.
>>>>>> You were the one who offered an "explanation" of why there was an -e at
>>>>>> the end of "give". I'm calling your bluff.
>>>>> I did?
>>>>> How is recognizing a fact "giving an explanation"?
>>>>
>>>> Your words: "...the e [in 'give'] is there to keep the v from ending an
>>>> orthographic word."
>>>
>>> You think it's doing something else there?
>> I don't think it's necessarily "doing" anything.
>>> Christian gave a historical account. Is that a better "explanation"?
>> A historical explanation would be fine. Lots of things about present day
>> English orthography can only be explained historically.
>>>> If there's a fact there, it's that "give" is spelled with a final -e.
>>>> Your "to keep..." is a purported explanation of why the -e is there -- a
>>>> statement of its purpose or function. That's what I'm questioning.
>>> Ok, what's _your_ "explanation"?
>>
>> I'm not offering one. There may not be one, synchronically.
>
> What's the difference between hat and hate? How is that expressed
> in the spelling?

That's a good example of a _real_ function. The "silent e" (in hundreds
of words) indicates a different value for the preceding vowel letter.
The system would be much worse without it.

> What's the difference between live and shiv? (Answer: chronology.
> v is no longer prohibited from ending a word. Maybe because of
> lots of loans from Russian and Hebrew. Molotov, mazel tov.)

So the -e in "live" no longer has a function, since there is no longer a
prohibition. In fact, as you said above, it "confuses" by violating the
"silent e" pattern.

> What's the difference between sooth and soothe? How is that
> expressed in the spelling?

That's useful to mark the voiced "th" sound, since English has no other
way to indicate this difference. Used in "bathe", "tithe" and a few
other words, but for some reason not in "smooth" or "mouth (v)". (All
these have long vowels, so there is no problem of confusion with the
"silent e" system.)

> All three of those "markers" (and at least another, minor, one) are
> found fairly systematically in the lexicon. That makes them real.

No. We have just agreed that the purported original function of the -e
in "live" etc. no longer applies. So it has no real function; in fact it
has a negative value in the present system.

Words with short vowels ending in -ve: give, live (v), sieve (what's
that other -e- doing there??), have, love, dove, glove, shove, above,
plus a few compounds of these. Could be spelled better.

>>>>>>> Richard Venezky's
>>>>>>> _synchronic_ description of English orthography identifies, IIRC, four
>>>>>>> different functions of final -e (he calls them "markers"). These are the
>>>>>>> two most widespread ones.
>>>>>> So Venezky has made up a "function" to explain why words don't end in
>>>>>> -v. Why do you cite this as though it were a scientific discovery?
>>>>> Why don't you try reading what he wrote?
>>>> Some day I may have time. Meanwhile, I'm happy to accept your account of it.
>>> Sure doesn't look like it.
>>> You didn't explain why identifying the functions of final -e in Standard
>>> English orthography is an "explanation."
>>
>> If you don't see why it would be one, I can't help you.
>
> Maybe "explanation" means something different to you. Joos said
> that our teachers were _describing_, not _explaining_, languages.

Of course they did so using phonemic theory, which very nicely
_explains_ a mass of otherwise bewildering phonetic facts.

> (Chomsky tried to go a different way and explained all languages
> as deviating from the patterns found in English.)
>
>> What I'm questioning is whether V has actually "identified a function"
>> of the -e in give, love, have, etc.
>
> Why don't you ask _him_? If 100-odd pages of his 1970 is too much for
> you, try his chapter in the Cambridge History of the English Language
> (either vol. 5 [Modern] or vol. 6 [outside Britain]).

Does V "identify" some function other than the one you've now admitted
no longer exists?

>>>>> He might have been Hockett's student at just about the same time you
>>>>> were there, or possibly a little earlier. His. M.A. was an early bit of
>>>>> computational linguistics, analyzing the spelling of something like
>>>>> 20,000 English words; he then went to Stanford to work with Ruth
>>>>> Weir. His dissertation was published as a Janua Linguarum in 1970
>>>>> (The Structure of English Orthography), revised much later as The
>>>>> American Way of Spelling.
>>>>> Unfortunately I never met him; I became aware of his work a few months
>>>>> after he died; he would have been at the 2004 Antwerp meeting where I was
>>>>> one of the keynoters.
>>>>> https://www.readinghalloffame.org/sites/default/files/deceased_member_files/history_of_literacy_obituary_richard_l._venezky_1938-2004.pdf
>>>>>
>>>>> The University of Delaware has not taken down his web page.
>>>>>>>>> live and live go the two ways,

Wed, 5 Jul 2023 09:25:19 +1200: Ross Clark <benlizro@ihug.co.nz>
scribeva:

>On 5/07/2023 3:27 a.m., Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>> What's the difference between hat and hate? How is that expressed
>> in the spelling?

>That's a good example of a _real_ function. The "silent e" (in hundreds
>of words) indicates a different value for the preceding vowel letter.
>The system would be much worse without it.

Mi wuns prapozed but no longger supportid praprozal for Ingglish
spelling reform relide on that.
https://rudhar.com/lingtics/englspel.htm

>> What's the difference between sooth and soothe? How is that
>> expressed in the spelling?
>
>That's useful to mark the voiced "th" sound, since English has no other
>way to indicate this difference. Used in "bathe", "tithe" and a few
>other words, but for some reason not in "smooth" or "mouth (v)". (All
>these have long vowels, so there is no problem of confusion with the
>"silent e" system.)

The soft and hard th in English are almost allophones of a single
phoneme. https://rudhar.com/lingtics/dhth_eng.htm

On Tuesday, July 4, 2023 at 5:25:29 PM UTC-4, Ross Clark wrote:
> On 5/07/2023 3:27 a.m., Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > On Monday, July 3, 2023 at 4:53:47 PM UTC-4, Ross Clark wrote:
> >> On 4/07/2023 8:23 a.m., Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> >>> On Monday, July 3, 2023 at 3:57:08 PM UTC-4, Ross Clark wrote:
> >>>> On 4/07/2023 1:39 a.m., Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> >>>>> On Sunday, July 2, 2023 at 4:36:22 PM UTC-4, Ross Clark wrote:
> >>>>>> On 3/07/2023 12:58 a.m., Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> >>>>>>> On Sunday, July 2, 2023 at 7:00:19 AM UTC-4, Ross Clark wrote:
> >>>>>>>> On 2/07/2023 8:49 a.m., Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> >>>>>>>>> On Saturday, July 1, 2023 at 10:14:41 AM UTC-4, Ruud Harmsen wrote:
> >>>>>>>>>> Sat, 1 Jul 2023 06:42:24 -0700 (PDT): "Peter T. Daniels"
> >>>>>>>>>> <gram...@verizon.net> scribeva:
> >>>>>>>>>>> On Friday, June 30, 2023 at 9:47:44?PM UTC-4, Dingbat wrote:
> >>>
> >>>>>>>>>>>> In this video:
> >>>>>>>>>>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEQcDiSbxHc
> >>>>>>>>>>>> Narrator Hannah Jewell claims a difference of Keeyev vs. Keeyive.
> >>>>>>>>>>>> Putin belies her claim by pronouncing it Keeyive, the Ukrainian way,
> >>>>>>>>>>>> in the same video!
> >>>>>>>>>>> Your attempts at pronunciation-respellings are incomprehensible.
> >>>>>>>>>> Kee-yive, rhymes with see-give. I think.
> >>>>>>>>>> Except that final v in Ukranian is probably bilabial, not labiodental.
> >>>>>>>>>>>> So, it seems that at least some Russians don't pronounce it
> >>>>>>>>>>>> differently from Ukrainians.
> >>>>>>>>>>>> Either way, Ukrainians' preferred transliteration to English of
> >>>>>>>>>>>> Kyiv might or might not get Anglophones to pronounce it
> >>>>>>>>>>>> their way, whereas Keeyive would get Anglophones to
> >>>>>>>>>>>> pronounce it the Ukrainian way, IMHO.
> >>>>>>>>>>> That cannot remotely come out like the Ukrainian pronunciation of the name.
> >>>>>>>>>> OK, KeyYieve then, like key and sieve?
> >>>>>>>>> In Engish, the expected ("unmarked") pronunciation of VCe# is the
> >>>>>>>>> "long" version of the vowel, i.e. when it "says its name," as in
> >>>>>>>>> cake Peke mike poke cuke dyke.
> >>>>>>> Unfortunately it doesn't work for cook Cooke, booth smoothe(s).
> >>>>>>>>> As in five, hive, swive, wive(s).
> >>>>>>>>> "give" confuses because the e is there to keep the v from ending an
> >>>>>>>>> orthographic word.
> >>>>>>>> This sounds like a functional explanation: someone does something in
> >>>>>>>> order to prevent something undesirable from happening. But who is
> >>>>>>>> supposed to have put the -e there with this intention? And why is having
> >>>>>>>> -v at the end of an orthographic word a bad thing?
> >>>>>>> As Martin Joos said, "Children want explanations."
> >>>>>> Sorry, you've already worn out this lame riposte.
> >>>>> ? Didn't you do Phonology with Jim Gair? We pretty much worked through
> >>>>> RiL for phonological theory.
> >>>>>> You were the one who offered an "explanation" of why there was an -e at
> >>>>>> the end of "give". I'm calling your bluff.
> >>>>> I did?
> >>>>> How is recognizing a fact "giving an explanation"?
> >>>>
> >>>> Your words: "...the e [in 'give'] is there to keep the v from ending an
> >>>> orthographic word."
> >>>
> >>> You think it's doing something else there?
> >> I don't think it's necessarily "doing" anything.
> >>> Christian gave a historical account. Is that a better "explanation"?
> >> A historical explanation would be fine. Lots of things about present day
> >> English orthography can only be explained historically.
> >>>> If there's a fact there, it's that "give" is spelled with a final -e..
> >>>> Your "to keep..." is a purported explanation of why the -e is there -- a
> >>>> statement of its purpose or function. That's what I'm questioning.
> >>> Ok, what's _your_ "explanation"?
> >>
> >> I'm not offering one. There may not be one, synchronically.
> >
> > What's the difference between hat and hate? How is that expressed
> > in the spelling?
> That's a good example of a _real_ function. The "silent e" (in hundreds
> of words) indicates a different value for the preceding vowel letter.
> The system would be much worse without it.
> > What's the difference between live and shiv? (Answer: chronology.
> > v is no longer prohibited from ending a word. Maybe because of
> > lots of loans from Russian and Hebrew. Molotov, mazel tov.)
> So the -e in "live" no longer has a function, since there is no longer a
> prohibition. In fact, as you said above, it "confuses" by violating the
> "silent e" pattern.
> > What's the difference between sooth and soothe? How is that
> > expressed in the spelling?
> That's useful to mark the voiced "th" sound, since English has no other
> way to indicate this difference. Used in "bathe", "tithe" and a few
> other words, but for some reason not in "smooth" or "mouth (v)". (All
> these have long vowels, so there is no problem of confusion with the
> "silent e" system.)
> > All three of those "markers" (and at least another, minor, one) are
> > found fairly systematically in the lexicon. That makes them real.
>
> No. We have just agreed that the purported original function of the -e
> in "live" etc. no longer applies. So it has no real function; in fact it
> has a negative value in the present system.

So. You;'ve become a pure Hallean -- everything can and must be
"explained" historically, and if it's not "historically" justified, it should
be discarded?

Then why don't you write giv as if you use Txtspk?

> Words with short vowels ending in -ve: give, live (v), sieve (what's
> that other -e- doing there??), have, love, dove, glove, shove, above,
> plus a few compounds of these. Could be spelled better.

Well, they're not.

You could start the New Zealand Academy for the Purification
of English and impose your spellings.

Robert Bridges and some buddies tried that in England a century ago.

> >>>>>>> Richard Venezky's
> >>>>>>> _synchronic_ description of English orthography identifies, IIRC, four
> >>>>>>> different functions of final -e (he calls them "markers"). These are the
> >>>>>>> two most widespread ones.
> >>>>>> So Venezky has made up a "function" to explain why words don't end in
> >>>>>> -v. Why do you cite this as though it were a scientific discovery?
> >>>>> Why don't you try reading what he wrote?
> >>>> Some day I may have time. Meanwhile, I'm happy to accept your account of it.
> >>> Sure doesn't look like it.
> >>> You didn't explain why identifying the functions of final -e in Standard
> >>> English orthography is an "explanation."
> >> If you don't see why it would be one, I can't help you.
> > Maybe "explanation" means something different to you. Joos said
> > that our teachers were _describing_, not _explaining_, languages.
>
> Of course they did so using phonemic theory, which very nicely
> _explains_ a mass of otherwise bewildering phonetic facts.

They might be surprised to see that.

On Wednesday, July 5, 2023 at 3:17:48 AM UTC-4, Ruud Harmsen wrote:

> The soft and hard th in English are almost allophones of a single
> phoneme. https://rudhar.com/lingtics/dhth_eng.htm

"Soft" and "hard"????

The voicing distinction in that pair of phonemes has a low _functional load_.

Auto-didact.

You'd enjoy Halle's *Sound Pattern of Russian* (1959), in which he used
that sort of fact to claim that "phoneme" is an unneeded concept.

Wed, 5 Jul 2023 06:20:40 -0700 (PDT): "Peter T. Daniels"
<grammatim@verizon.net> scribeva:

>On Wednesday, July 5, 2023 at 3:17:48?AM UTC-4, Ruud Harmsen wrote:
>
>> The soft and hard th in English are almost allophones of a single
>> phoneme. https://rudhar.com/lingtics/dhth_eng.htm
>
>"Soft" and "hard"????

You quite understood what I meant, didn't you?

>The voicing distinction in that pair of phonemes has a low _functional load_.

You could also state it that way. If etymology and grammar are
included as factors, the sound becomes almost 100% predictable.

>Auto-didact.

Don’t care.

>You'd enjoy Halle's *Sound Pattern of Russian* (1959), in which he used
>that sort of fact to claim that "phoneme" is an unneeded concept.

I can imagine that, seeing the treatment of the /o/ and /a/ phonemes
when unstressed, and the endless debate about whether certain vowels
palatalise consonants, or the vowels sound differently as a result of
being near palatal (or soft; will I be allowed to used that word now?)
consonants. The answer is immaterial: just describe what happens in
the language. It is systematic. Whether it is phonological according
to this or that theory or school or thought, has no bearing on reality
at all.
--
Ruud Harmsen, https://rudhar.com

On Wednesday, July 5, 2023 at 1:27:33 PM UTC-4, Ruud Harmsen wrote:
> Wed, 5 Jul 2023 06:20:40 -0700 (PDT): "Peter T. Daniels"
> <gram...@verizon.net> scribeva:
> >On Wednesday, July 5, 2023 at 3:17:48?AM UTC-4, Ruud Harmsen wrote:

> >> The soft and hard th in English are almost allophones of a single
> >> phoneme. https://rudhar.com/lingtics/dhth_eng.htm
> >"Soft" and "hard"????
>
> You quite understood what I meant, didn't you?

I saw that you mde sa mistake, as usual.

> >The voicing distinction in that pair of phonemes has a low _functional load_.
>
> You could also state it that way. If etymology and grammar are
> included as factors, the sound becomes almost 100% predictable.

You really and truly absolutely do not understand "phoneme."

> >Auto-didact.
>
> Don’t care.

You may well be able to learn something about linguistics by taking
a class ir three, even on-line ones.

> >You'd enjoy Halle's *Sound Pattern of Russian* (1959), in which he used
> >that sort of fact to claim that "phoneme" is an unneeded concept.
>
> I can imagine that, seeing the treatment of the /o/ and /a/ phonemes
> when unstressed, and the endless debate about whether certain vowels
> palatalise consonants, or the vowels sound differently as a result of
> being near palatal (or soft; will I be allowed to used that word now?)
> consonants. The answer is immaterial: just describe what happens in

No, that is not at all what Halle focused on. That is simple phonetics.

> the language. It is systematic. Whether it is phonological according
> to this or that theory or school or thought, has no bearing on reality
> at all.

It has a bearing on the practical things linguistics is used for -- such
as recording unrecorded languages before they become entirely extinct.

On 6/07/2023 1:17 a.m., Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> On Tuesday, July 4, 2023 at 5:25:29 PM UTC-4, Ross Clark wrote:
>> On 5/07/2023 3:27 a.m., Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>> On Monday, July 3, 2023 at 4:53:47 PM UTC-4, Ross Clark wrote:
>>>> On 4/07/2023 8:23 a.m., Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>>>> On Monday, July 3, 2023 at 3:57:08 PM UTC-4, Ross Clark wrote:
>>>>>> On 4/07/2023 1:39 a.m., Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>>>>>> On Sunday, July 2, 2023 at 4:36:22 PM UTC-4, Ross Clark wrote:
>>>>>>>> On 3/07/2023 12:58 a.m., Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>>>>>>>> On Sunday, July 2, 2023 at 7:00:19 AM UTC-4, Ross Clark wrote:
>>>>>>>>>> On 2/07/2023 8:49 a.m., Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>> On Saturday, July 1, 2023 at 10:14:41 AM UTC-4, Ruud Harmsen wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>> Sat, 1 Jul 2023 06:42:24 -0700 (PDT): "Peter T. Daniels"
>>>>>>>>>>>> <gram...@verizon.net> scribeva:
>>>>>>>>>>>>> On Friday, June 30, 2023 at 9:47:44?PM UTC-4, Dingbat wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> In this video:
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEQcDiSbxHc
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Narrator Hannah Jewell claims a difference of Keeyev vs. Keeyive.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Putin belies her claim by pronouncing it Keeyive, the Ukrainian way,
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> in the same video!
>>>>>>>>>>>>> Your attempts at pronunciation-respellings are incomprehensible.
>>>>>>>>>>>> Kee-yive, rhymes with see-give. I think.
>>>>>>>>>>>> Except that final v in Ukranian is probably bilabial, not labiodental.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> So, it seems that at least some Russians don't pronounce it
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> differently from Ukrainians.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Either way, Ukrainians' preferred transliteration to English of
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Kyiv might or might not get Anglophones to pronounce it
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> their way, whereas Keeyive would get Anglophones to
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> pronounce it the Ukrainian way, IMHO.
>>>>>>>>>>>>> That cannot remotely come out like the Ukrainian pronunciation of the name.
>>>>>>>>>>>> OK, KeyYieve then, like key and sieve?
>>>>>>>>>>> In Engish, the expected ("unmarked") pronunciation of VCe# is the
>>>>>>>>>>> "long" version of the vowel, i.e. when it "says its name," as in
>>>>>>>>>>> cake Peke mike poke cuke dyke.
>>>>>>>>> Unfortunately it doesn't work for cook Cooke, booth smoothe(s).
>>>>>>>>>>> As in five, hive, swive, wive(s).
>>>>>>>>>>> "give" confuses because the e is there to keep the v from ending an
>>>>>>>>>>> orthographic word.
>>>>>>>>>> This sounds like a functional explanation: someone does something in
>>>>>>>>>> order to prevent something undesirable from happening. But who is
>>>>>>>>>> supposed to have put the -e there with this intention? And why is having
>>>>>>>>>> -v at the end of an orthographic word a bad thing?
>>>>>>>>> As Martin Joos said, "Children want explanations."
>>>>>>>> Sorry, you've already worn out this lame riposte.
>>>>>>> ? Didn't you do Phonology with Jim Gair? We pretty much worked through
>>>>>>> RiL for phonological theory.
>>>>>>>> You were the one who offered an "explanation" of why there was an -e at
>>>>>>>> the end of "give". I'm calling your bluff.
>>>>>>> I did?
>>>>>>> How is recognizing a fact "giving an explanation"?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Your words: "...the e [in 'give'] is there to keep the v from ending an
>>>>>> orthographic word."
>>>>>
>>>>> You think it's doing something else there?
>>>> I don't think it's necessarily "doing" anything.
>>>>> Christian gave a historical account. Is that a better "explanation"?
>>>> A historical explanation would be fine. Lots of things about present day
>>>> English orthography can only be explained historically.
>>>>>> If there's a fact there, it's that "give" is spelled with a final -e.
>>>>>> Your "to keep..." is a purported explanation of why the -e is there -- a
>>>>>> statement of its purpose or function. That's what I'm questioning.
>>>>> Ok, what's _your_ "explanation"?
>>>>
>>>> I'm not offering one. There may not be one, synchronically.
>>>
>>> What's the difference between hat and hate? How is that expressed
>>> in the spelling?
>> That's a good example of a _real_ function. The "silent e" (in hundreds
>> of words) indicates a different value for the preceding vowel letter.
>> The system would be much worse without it.
>>> What's the difference between live and shiv? (Answer: chronology.
>>> v is no longer prohibited from ending a word. Maybe because of
>>> lots of loans from Russian and Hebrew. Molotov, mazel tov.)
>> So the -e in "live" no longer has a function, since there is no longer a
>> prohibition. In fact, as you said above, it "confuses" by violating the
>> "silent e" pattern.
>>> What's the difference between sooth and soothe? How is that
>>> expressed in the spelling?
>> That's useful to mark the voiced "th" sound, since English has no other
>> way to indicate this difference. Used in "bathe", "tithe" and a few
>> other words, but for some reason not in "smooth" or "mouth (v)". (All
>> these have long vowels, so there is no problem of confusion with the
>> "silent e" system.)
>>> All three of those "markers" (and at least another, minor, one) are
>>> found fairly systematically in the lexicon. That makes them real.
>>
>> No. We have just agreed that the purported original function of the -e
>> in "live" etc. no longer applies. So it has no real function; in fact it
>> has a negative value in the present system.
>
> So. You;'ve become a pure Hallean -- everything can and must be
> "explained" historically, and if it's not "historically" justified, it should
> be discarded?

I don't think you've understood either me or Halle.

> Then why don't you write giv as if you use Txtspk?
>
>> Words with short vowels ending in -ve: give, live (v), sieve (what's
>> that other -e- doing there??), have, love, dove, glove, shove, above,
>> plus a few compounds of these. Could be spelled better.
>
> Well, they're not.
>
> You could start the New Zealand Academy for the Purification
> of English and impose your spellings.
>
> Robert Bridges and some buddies tried that in England a century ago.
>
>>>>>>>>> Richard Venezky's
>>>>>>>>> _synchronic_ description of English orthography identifies, IIRC, four
>>>>>>>>> different functions of final -e (he calls them "markers"). These are the
>>>>>>>>> two most widespread ones.
>>>>>>>> So Venezky has made up a "function" to explain why words don't end in
>>>>>>>> -v. Why do you cite this as though it were a scientific discovery?
>>>>>>> Why don't you try reading what he wrote?
>>>>>> Some day I may have time. Meanwhile, I'm happy to accept your account of it.
>>>>> Sure doesn't look like it.
>>>>> You didn't explain why identifying the functions of final -e in Standard
>>>>> English orthography is an "explanation."
>>>> If you don't see why it would be one, I can't help you.
>>> Maybe "explanation" means something different to you. Joos said
>>> that our teachers were _describing_, not _explaining_, languages.
>>
>> Of course they did so using phonemic theory, which very nicely
>> _explains_ a mass of otherwise bewildering phonetic facts.
>
> They might be surprised to see that.
>
>>> (Chomsky tried to go a different way and explained all languages
>>> as deviating from the patterns found in English.)
>>>> What I'm questioning is whether V has actually "identified a function"
>>>> of the -e in give, love, have, etc.
>>> Why don't you ask _him_? If 100-odd pages of his 1970 is too much for
>>> you, try his chapter in the Cambridge History of the English Language
>>> (either vol. 5 [Modern] or vol. 6 [outside Britain]).
>>
>> Does V "identify" some function other than the one you've now admitted
>> no longer exists?
>
> Your claim that no one writes <give> any more is ridiculous.

Wed, 5 Jul 2023 11:32:36 -0700 (PDT): "Peter T. Daniels"
<grammatim@verizon.net> scribeva:

>On Wednesday, July 5, 2023 at 1:27:33?PM UTC-4, Ruud Harmsen wrote:
>> Wed, 5 Jul 2023 06:20:40 -0700 (PDT): "Peter T. Daniels"
>> <gram...@verizon.net> scribeva:
>> >On Wednesday, July 5, 2023 at 3:17:48?AM UTC-4, Ruud Harmsen wrote:
>
>> >> The soft and hard th in English are almost allophones of a single
>> >> phoneme. https://rudhar.com/lingtics/dhth_eng.htm
>> >"Soft" and "hard"????
>>
>> You quite understood what I meant, didn't you?
>
>I saw that you mde sa mistake, as usual.

Bitte?

>> >The voicing distinction in that pair of phonemes has a low _functional load_.
>>
>> You could also state it that way. If etymology and grammar are
>> included as factors, the sound becomes almost 100% predictable.
>
>You really and truly absolutely do not understand "phoneme."
>
>> >Auto-didact.
>>
>> Don’t care.
>
>You may well be able to learn something about linguistics by taking
>a class ir three, even on-line ones.
>
>> >You'd enjoy Halle's *Sound Pattern of Russian* (1959), in which he used
>> >that sort of fact to claim that "phoneme" is an unneeded concept.
>>
>> I can imagine that, seeing the treatment of the /o/ and /a/ phonemes
>> when unstressed, and the endless debate about whether certain vowels
>> palatalise consonants, or the vowels sound differently as a result of
>> being near palatal (or soft; will I be allowed to used that word now?)
>> consonants. The answer is immaterial: just describe what happens in
>
>No, that is not at all what Halle focused on. That is simple phonetics.

Oké, so it isn't.

>> the language. It is systematic. Whether it is phonological according
>> to this or that theory or school or thought, has no bearing on reality
>> at all.
>
>It has a bearing on the practical things linguistics is used for -- such
>as recording unrecorded languages before they become entirely extinct.

Sure.

Thu, 6 Jul 2023 09:19:21 +1200: Ross Clark <benlizro@ihug.co.nz>
scribeva:

>On 6/07/2023 1:17 a.m., Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>> No. We have just agreed that the purported original function of the -e
>>> in "live" etc. no longer applies. So it has no real function; in fact it
>>> has a negative value in the present system.
>>
>> So. You;'ve become a pure Hallean -- everything can and must be
>> "explained" historically, and if it's not "historically" justified, it should
>> be discarded?
>
>I don't think you've understood either me or Halle.

What a remarkably short article!:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Hall_Jr.

On Thursday, July 6, 2023 at 12:56:02 AM UTC-4, Ruud Harmsen wrote:

> What a remarkably short article!:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Hall_Jr.

Hark! You've discovered a bug in Wikipedia!

I don't know why you were looking for him, but when I searched
with the comma, Google deleted the comma and found a number
of appropriate hits (bizarrely, his papers, or some of them, are at
Chicago).

When I searched < Robert A. Hall linguist > it sent me to this Wikiparticle:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Hall_Jr.

which does have a brief bio and partial bibliography.

(And the url gives the actual article, not the little one your seemingly
identical url leads to.)

Ah. The link in yours after "Do you mean" takes you to the right article.

On 2023-07-05 22:55, Ruud Harmsen wrote:
> Thu, 6 Jul 2023 09:19:21 +1200: Ross Clark <benlizro@ihug.co.nz>
> scribeva:
>
>> On 6/07/2023 1:17 a.m., Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>>> No. We have just agreed that the purported original function of the -e
>>>> in "live" etc. no longer applies. So it has no real function; in fact it
>>>> has a negative value in the present system.
>>>
>>> So. You;'ve become a pure Hallean -- everything can and must be
>>> "explained" historically, and if it's not "historically" justified, it should
>>> be discarded?
>>
>> I don't think you've understood either me or Halle.
>
> What a remarkably short article!:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Hall_Jr.

You do realize that Robert A. Hall and Morris Halle are entirely
different people, right?

André

--
To email remove 'invalid' & replace 'gm' with well known Google mail
service.

Thu, 6 Jul 2023 06:37:40 -0700 (PDT): "Peter T. Daniels"
<grammatim@verizon.net> scribeva:

>On Thursday, July 6, 2023 at 12:56:02?AM UTC-4, Ruud Harmsen wrote:
>
>> What a remarkably short article!:
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Hall_Jr.
>
>Hark! You've discovered a bug in Wikipedia!
>
>I don't know why you were looking for him, but when I searched
>with the comma, Google deleted the comma and found a number
>of appropriate hits (bizarrely, his papers, or some of them, are at
>Chicago).
>
>When I searched < Robert A. Hall linguist > it sent me to this Wikiparticle:
>
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Hall_Jr.
>
>which does have a brief bio and partial bibliography.

That is the same one that I mentioned, but the final stop is not
included in my Usenet reader, but should in order to get to the right
Wikipedia page.

Would this work?
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Hall_Jr.>
No.

>(And the url gives the actual article, not the little one your seemingly
>identical url leads to.)
>
>Ah. The link in yours after "Do you mean" takes you to the right article.

--
Ruud Harmsen, https://rudhar.com

Thu, 6 Jul 2023 08:27:02 -0600: Ymir <agisaak@gm.invalid> scribeva:

>On 2023-07-05 22:55, Ruud Harmsen wrote:
>> Thu, 6 Jul 2023 09:19:21 +1200: Ross Clark <benlizro@ihug.co.nz>
>> scribeva:
>>
>>> On 6/07/2023 1:17 a.m., Peter T. Daniels wrote:
>>>>> No. We have just agreed that the purported original function of the -e
>>>>> in "live" etc. no longer applies. So it has no real function; in fact it
>>>>> has a negative value in the present system.
>>>>
>>>> So. You;'ve become a pure Hallean -- everything can and must be
>>>> "explained" historically, and if it's not "historically" justified, it should
>>>> be discarded?
>>>
>>> I don't think you've understood either me or Halle.
>>
>> What a remarkably short article!:
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Hall_Jr.
>
>You do realize that Robert A. Hall and Morris Halle are entirely
>different people, right?

No, I don't.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_Halle
Didn't, now do.
--
Ruud Harmsen, https://rudhar.com

On 2023-07-03, Ruud Harmsen <rh@rudhar.com> wrote:

>>[u:] is <ou> in Greek and French too.
>
> In Greek: from an early [o:] pronunciation. In parallel, espilon-iota
> presented [e:], contrasted with eta, which was [E:].

But a source of [e:] and [o:] were earlier [ei] and [ou], respectively,
or so much I gather from...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek_phonology
.... and that presumably explains the spelling.

> How it came about in French, I don't know.

The phonological history of French is notoriously complex. I have
managed to find three sources of modern [u] <ou>:

(1) Proto-Romance [o] in stressed open syllables diphthongized
to [ou] in early Old French. That was short-lived, as the
diphthong then further changed to [eu], modern [ø], [œ].
However, it remained [ou] before labials, e.g. lupa > louve,
before eventually becoming [u] there.

(2) French has many alternations -l/-u. This goes back to a
sound change in Old French, where velarized l between a vowel
and a non-l consonant vocalized to [w], e.g. falsus > faux.
This created a lot of diphthongs or even triphthongs that would
monophthongize later on. It also created abundant alternations
in inflectional and derivational paradigms. The inflectional
alternations were largely leveled out, but some remain, e.g.,
fou/fol/folle. This is an ample source of [ou] > [u].

(3) With earlier [u] > [y], there was a shift [o] > [u]. This
appears to be straight raising without an intervening diphthongal
stage. I've seen it described as the fate of Proto-Romance [o]
in stressed closed syllables (cortem > court), but it must have
also affected unstressed [o] (*formicem > fourmi).

I'll note that there appears to be considerable overlap between the
positional environments that underwent (2) and (3). Leveling,
back-formation, dialect mixing, and whatnot have made a mess.
Without examining the orthographic history of Old French I can't
be certain, but I still think that (2) is the principal source of
the <ou> spelling for [u], which was then generalized.

--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber naddy@mips.inka.de

On Tuesday, July 4, 2023 at 11:27:43 AM UTC-4, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> On Monday, July 3, 2023 at 4:53:47 PM UTC-4, Ross Clark wrote:
> > On 4/07/2023 8:23 a.m., Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > > On Monday, July 3, 2023 at 3:57:08 PM UTC-4, Ross Clark wrote:
> > >> On 4/07/2023 1:39 a.m., Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> > >>> On Sunday, July 2, 2023 at 4:36:22 PM UTC-4, Ross Clark wrote:

> > >>>> You were the one who offered an "explanation" of why there was an -e at
> > >>>> the end of "give". I'm calling your bluff.
> > >>> I did?
> > >>> How is recognizing a fact "giving an explanation"?
> > >> Your words: "...the e [in 'give'] is there to keep the v from ending an
> > >> orthographic word."

(Still not an explanation. Jut an observation.)

> > > You think it's doing something else there?
> > I don't think it's necessarily "doing" anything.
> > > Christian gave a historical account. Is that a better "explanation"?
> > A historical explanation would be fine. Lots of things about present day
> > English orthography can only be explained historically.
> > >> If there's a fact there, it's that "give" is spelled with a final -e..
> > >> Your "to keep..." is a purported explanation of why the -e is there -- a
> > >> statement of its purpose or function. That's what I'm questioning.
> > > Ok, what's _your_ "explanation"?
> > I'm not offering one. There may not be one, synchronically.
>
> What's the difference between hat and hate? How is that expressed
> in the spelling?
>
> What's the difference between live and shiv? (Answer: chronology.
> v is no longer prohibited from ending a word. Maybe because of
> lots of loans from Russian and Hebrew. Molotov, mazel tov.)
>
> What's the difference between sooth and soothe? How is that
> expressed in the spelling?
>
> All three of those "markers" (and at least another, minor, one) are
> found fairly systematically in the lexicon. That makes them real.

I remembered the other one last night.

lung lunge, sing singe, fang flange

(Part of a pattern operative elsewhere in English and throughout
Romance orthography.)

> > >>>>> Richard Venezky's
> > >>>>> _synchronic_ description of English orthography identifies, IIRC, four
> > >>>>> different functions of final -e (he calls them "markers"). These are the
> > >>>>> two most widespread ones.
> > >>>> So Venezky has made up a "function" to explain why words don't end in
> > >>>> -v. Why do you cite this as though it were a scientific discovery?
> > >>> Why don't you try reading what he wrote?
> > >> Some day I may have time. Meanwhile, I'm happy to accept your account of it.
> > > Sure doesn't look like it.
> > > You didn't explain why identifying the functions of final -e in Standard
> > > English orthography is an "explanation."
> > If you don't see why it would be one, I can't help you.
>
> Maybe "explanation" means something different to you. Joos said
> that our teachers were _describing_, not _explaining_, languages.
> (Chomsky tried to go a different way and explained all languages
> as deviating from the patterns found in English.)