Russell Bateman wrote:
[more way off topic comments]
"...some linguists say that those silent letters are not artifacts, but
reflect __phonemes__ (is that the word?) that are still present in the
mental representation of the language..."
--__morphemes__, actually, from a written point of view (you did say
"letters"). They are what's left of the word eroded from Latin and, like
"night" in English, demonstrate (just as you have pointed out) the
word's philology (etymology is somewhat correct, but focuses more on
semantics than the morphemic transformation). Note: I studied Latin,
Greek and Linguistics at Université de Paris X in the late 70s.
I haven't studied linguistics, other than as an amateur, so I have to
defer to you. By "etymology" I meant here (as you understood) what might
be called the word's "linguistic history": "night" is the English form
of the Germanic word which gave Dutch and German "nacht" where the -ch-
is still pronounced as a guttural consonant. Similarly "light" (NL/DE
licht), "though" (DE doch), "through" (DE durch), etc.
Many French nouns, for example, evolve from the accusative (direct
object) singular form in Latin with further erosion, rosam > rose,
templum > temple, calculus > calcule. This also accounts partially for
what others see as French's tendency to accentuate the final syllable of
a word; actually, there isn't really a tonic accent in French (I won't
go into this), but the final of the word was often the penultimate in
Latin, often the part receiving the tonic accent in that language (just
as now in Italian, Spanish, etc.) and therefore could not be lost
without compromising the word itself.
Phonemes are (very) roughly equivalent to syllables and exist at the
oral or phonetic level. French has the peculiarity, more than most other
Western languages in my observation, of its end of word phonemes being
greatly ambiguous due to the erosion from Latin already mentioned.
Hence, it's easier to find rhymes both rich and otherwise in French even
across gender boundaries (whereas Italian and Spanish have kept the o/a
alternance when French erodes both feminine am and masculine um to
silent e). The resulting explosion in "jeux de mots" (puns), so looked
down upon or at least smirked at in English, is inexplicably prized in
French (where it is so much more common in the first place): "Le
_saint_ père, _sain_ de corps et d'esprit, _ceint_ de vertu, couvait le
mal dans son _sein_." (The _holy_ father, while _healthy_ in body and
spirit, and _girded_ with virtue, nourished evil in his _breast_. All
these underlined words are pronounced identically. There's yet another
word or two in French pronounced the same way, but it's been too many
years and I can't seem to conjure them up at the moment.
"Gentlemen, that reminds me":
Un _sot_ à la potrine étriquée chevauchait un âne. Il tenait dans sa
main droite le _sceau_ destiné à marquer le _seau_ qu'il tenait de sa
main gauche. Subitement, l'âne fait un écart et [letrwasotõb]. Comment
écrivez-vous [letrwaso]?
Réponse: l'étroit sot.
-- Again, not really translatable.
A narrow-chested _fool_ [so] was riding an ass. He was holding in his
right hand the _seal_ [so] with which to mark the _bucket_ [so] he was
holding in his left. Suddenly, the ass shies and (the three [so] fall).
How do you write (the three [so])? Answer: the narrow fool (because "the
three" and "the narrow" are also homonymous, and so are the 3rd persons
sg. & pl. of "to fall" in the indicative present).
If Linguistics paid a decent wage, I probably wouldn't be writing C code
for a living.
:D
Is this off-topic or what?
Russ
Yes, it is, but it's fun, isn't it?
Best regards,
Tony.
