Newsgroups: sci.lang
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!news.mathworks.com!newshost.marcam.com!uunet!eskimo!rickw
From: rickw@eskimo.com (Richard Wojcik)
Subject: Re: languages with phonetic alphabets
X-Nntp-Posting-Host: eskimo.com
Message-ID: <D6q1JD.6xK@eskimo.com>
Sender: usenet@eskimo.com (News User Id)
Organization: Eskimo North (206) For-Ever
References: <199504071537.KAA07224@dlep1.itg.ti.com> <3m3qc1$6ap@kralle.zdv.Uni-Mainz.DE>
Date: Sat, 8 Apr 1995 14:57:12 GMT
Lines: 35

In article <3m3qc1$6ap@kralle.zdv.Uni-Mainz.DE>,
Joerg Knappen <knappen@vkpmzd.kph.Uni-Mainz.DE> wrote:
>In article <199504071537.KAA07224@dlep1.itg.ti.com>, sinh@dlep1.itg.ti.com
(Arun Sinha) writes: 
>:Hindi (the national languge of Bharat (India)), and most  Bharatiya
>:languages are arranged phonetically.
>
>The devanagari alphabet (and other indic alphabets) has the remarkable
>property of featuring some letters, which distinguish allophones of the
>same phoneme, but don't represent true phonemes. This is the case with
>the letters [ng] and [nj].
>
>There are other deviations from the phonemic principle.

This is not necessarily a deviation from the phonemic principle, although
the allophonic status of the sounds corresponding to those letters is
correct.  The question is not whether the letters appear to correspond to
distinct allophones, but whether writers associate the letters with the
palatal or velar articulation.  It could be that they conceive of the
letters as just conventional spellings for another sound before certain
consonant letters.  To make a claim one way or the other, you need to look
at the way devanagari writers make spelling errors or represent
corresponding sounds in foreign words.  For example, would a devanagari
writer transliterate Spanish "man~ana" with the palatal "nj" or with a
combination of letters?  What kind of spelling errors do you find people
making with these symbols?  The existence of the symbols alone is not
sufficient to make the case.

I should say that the devanagari alphabet may well be exceptional in these
cases.  After all, India is the source of linguistic theory, and the
ancients had a strong tradition of articulatory phonetics.  They understood
the difference between phonemes and allophones.
-- 
Rick Wojcik  rickw@eskimo.com     Seattle (for locals: Bellevue), WA
             http://www.eskimo.com/~rickw/
