LINGUIST List 14.2071

Mon Aug 4 2003

Qs: Old Russian Phonemes; 'Graphology/Graphonomy'

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  1. Yuri Tambovtsev, is there any data on the phonemic freguency in OLd Russian?
  2. Earl Herrick, Chas Hockett reference

Message 1: is there any data on the phonemic freguency in OLd Russian?

 Date: Sat, 2 Aug 2003 18:09:07 +0600
From: Yuri Tambovtsev <yutambmail.cis.ru>
Subject: is there any data on the phonemic freguency in OLd Russian?

Dear colleagues, I have computed the data on the frequency of
occurrence of phonemes in the sound chain of 111 world languages and I
found the data on 42 languages in literature. However, I failed to
find any data of the frequency of occurrnce of sounds in Old
Russian. I wonder if there were published these data? May be some
American slavist got it published in some local working papers? If the
OLd Russian "Russkaja pradva, Povest' Vremennyh Let" and other OLd
RUssian texts have not been computed, then I may do it, if I see the
interest among the world linguists. Surely, after computing Old
Russian texts, we can investigate the sound picture of Old Russian and
compare the OLd Russian sound picture to those of modern Slavonic
languages to find out the similarities. So far, our investigations
showed that modern Russian is closer to Ukrainian, then to
Belorussian, then Czech and so on. I guess it is interesting to find
out the phonological distances between Old Russian and Russian, or the
other Slavonic languages. Unfortunately, I failed to find a bursary to
travel to the linguistic congress in Prague where I wanted to share my
ideas on languages distances between Slawonic, as well as
Tungus-Manchurian, Paleo-Asiatic, Turkic, Finno-Ugric and some other
language families. I'd very much appreciate hearing your opinion to my
e-mail address: yutambhotmail.com Remain yours sincerely Yuri
Tambovtsev, Novosibirsk, Russia
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Message 2: Chas Hockett reference

 Date: Sun, 3 Aug 2003 15:23:26 -0500
From: Earl Herrick <eherrickgcol.net>
Subject: Chas Hockett reference


In his 1958 textbook, Chas Hockett refers to the study of writing
systems as "graphonomy", but he gives no motivation for choosing that
word. I seem to remember that somewhere he once said that he preferred
"graphonomy" over "graphology" for our science because the "-logy"
word was already in use by fortunetellers, and so we linguists would
have to choose the "-nomy" word, just as astronomers once had to
choose the "-nomy" word "astronomy" over "astrology" for their science
because fortunetellers were already using the "-logy" word. Is my
memory playing tricks on me? Did Chas Hockett ever say that? And if
so, where? 

Thanks, 
Earl Herrick 
e-herricktamuk.edu
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