LINGUIST List 7.1073

Thu Jul 25 1996

Qs: Engl articles, Sound files conversion, th substitution

Editor for this issue: Ann Dizdar <dizdartam2000.tamu.edu>

Directory

1. "Peter Burton", Handbook on English articles
2. doctorcdac.ernet.in, Conversion of Sound files from WAV/VOC to MIDI
3. cpeustgwdg.de, Qs: Substitution of th

Dear Linguists

A friend from Slovakia speaks English very well except for some errors
in using the articles. If you know of a useful handbook on English
articles would you please let me know.

Thanks


Peter R. Burton
MacLaurin Institute
burto009maroon.tc.umn.edu

Dear Linguists,
 Does anyone know of any utility for conversion of
WAV/VOC to MIDI format. I have been tiold that it is not possible and
I agree with the arguments given, but still hoping against hope, if
anyone knows of a site where such a converter is available, could you
please mail to me the answer. I'll put up a summary if such a
converter is available or for that matter if any useful information is
available. Thanks in advance Raymond Doctor doctorparcom.ernet.in

Dear list members,

Most languages appear to lack a dental spirant as the english th is (I
mean basically the voiceless variant here), so when speakers of such
languages try to imitate such a spirant they are likely to replace it
by something else. But by what? German natives generally tend to use
/s/ instead when speaking English improperly, while it can be observed
that in Russian, at least at an earlier period, /f/ was used, so
Athenes, mythos etc. from Greek were taken over as Afina, mif etc. In
Arabic, the classical th-sound developed into /t/ in the modern
dialects but today the same sound is regularly substituted as /s/ in
secondary loans from Classical Arabic. Ancient Egyptian obviously
replaced the sound by /t/ (e.g. in the Persian name Mithras). I
wonder whether the choice of t, s or f respectively can tell us
something about the internal structure of the phonemic system of the
receiving language. I would be glad if you 1) could give me more
facts about th-substitution in various languages 2) know of a
treatment of this question in the literature. I will post a summary
on the list if I receive enough answers. Thank you,
 
Carsten Peust
Seminar of Egyptology and Coptology
Goettingen
cpeustgwdu20.gwdg.de or cpeustgwdg.de