LINGUIST List 5.1311

Sat 19 Nov 1994

Qs: Info re. W. von Timroth, Universals, Writing and phonology

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. Mark Pepevnak, Info re: Wilhelm von Timroth
2. , Universals
3. Helen Fraser, Query: writing and phonology

Is there somebody who could help me to get in touch with Wilhelm von
Timroth, a German slavist/sociolinguist? I've checked lists and
nameservers that I know of, without success. I have a copy of his
(translated) dissertation from the Philosophy Faculty of
Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich and believe he may still be in
Munich. Many thanks in advance.

Mark Pepevnak
Department of Linguistics
University of Toronto

(pepevnakepas.utoronto.ca)

Suppose I have a language which inflects verbs for person, number,
and sometimes gender of subject, inflects NPs for case and number,
has freeish word order, and commonly "drops" subject pronouns and
in which there is a special inflection on verbs which indicates that
the understood subject is impersonal and no overt subject phrase
(full NP or pronoun) can then occur, but otherwise everything is
the same as with normal verb forms. Would such a language violate
anybody's favorite universals in any current framework.

are there many languages with contrastive vowel length which dont represent
vowel length in the writing system? this does happen when someone with a
poor understanding of the language devises a writing system for it from
outside, or when a vowel length language adopts a writing system from a
non-vowel-length language, but i would be interested to hear of cases of
indigenous writing systems that ignore such an important aspect of
phonology.

the reason for my interest is korean. it is often said to have contrastive
vowel length, at least in certain word-pairs, and yet it does not show it
in the script. the fact it doesnt - coupled with the fact that native
speakers have difficulty picking which word has the long vowel - seems to
me like an argument for treating the distinction as one of accent or stress
rather than vowel length. but the argument depends on how common it is for
writing systems to ignore vowel length.

what do people think? reply to me and i'll make a summary of responses if
there are several.

thanks
helen

___________________
hfrasermetz.une.edu.au (129.180.4.1)

Helen Fraser (Dr)
Dept of Linguistics
University of New England
Armidale
NSW 2351
AUSTRALIA

Phone 067 73 2128/3189
Fax 067 73 3735