LINGUIST List 16.481

Wed Feb 16 2005

Qs: Linguistic Knowledge for Teachers; Click Origins

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Directory

         1.    Helen Harper, Linguistic Knowledge for Primary Teachers
        2.    Mark Jones, Click Origins, Labio-velars, and Fortition

Message 1: Linguistic Knowledge for Primary Teachers

 Date: 15-Feb-2005
From: Helen Harper <helen.harpercdu.edu.au>
Subject: Linguistic Knowledge for Primary Teachers


I'm attempting to devise a questionnaire to find out how much my first year
undergraduate teacher education students know about language (grammar,
phonology, language variation in our community). The purpose of the
questionnaire is to find out what we need to teach the students so that
they will eventually be able to graduate as effective teachers.

Does anyone know of any questionnaires that have been used for such a
purpose? Can anyone point me to any similar studies or to any recent
literature about levels of metalinguistic knowledge amongst primary school
teachers in general?

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics

Message 2: Click Origins, Labio-velars, and Fortition

 Date: 15-Feb-2005
From: Mark Jones <markjjoneshotmail.com>
Subject: Click Origins, Labio-velars, and Fortition



Dear all,

I'm currently working on a paper discussing the proposed origins for click
consonants.

One theory on click origins could be that due to the similarity in the
combined use of two lingual gestures, clicks may arise from a mistiming in
the articulation of labio-velar stops. Kohler (1998: 267) speculates about
this, and Ladefoged and Maddieson (L&M 1996: 340) seem to argue against it, but
I wondered whether a labio-velar origin for clicks has ever been
entertained more widely.

It should be noted that the resulting click would be labial, and labial
clicks seem to be the rarest type encountered. I think this observation
works against a labio-velar origin, though if other click types arise from
perceptual reanalysis or articulatory restructuring (via a triple closure -
L&M: 352) of labial clicks, labials might be rarer and yet be the original
source.

An origin for clicks in labio-velar stops also simply displaces the problem
onto accounting for labio-velar stops. I wondered therefore whether a
theory of the origin of labio-velars might be extant somewhere. One
possibility could be fortition from /w/.

Any information on origins of clicks from labio-velars, possible
labio-velar origins and fortition of /w/ much appreciated. I will post a
summary if responses warrant it.

Thanks

Mark

Mark J. Jones
Department of Linguistics
University of Cambridge
http://kiri.ling.cam.ac.uk/mark/

Kohler, Klaus J. (1998) 'The development of sound systems in human
language.' In James R. Hurford, Michael Studdert-Kennedy, and Chris Knight
(eds.) Approaches to the Evolution of Language. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, pp. 265-278.

Ladefoged, Peter, and Ian Maddieson (1996). Sounds of the World's
Languages. Blackwells.

Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics
Phonetics

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