LINGUIST List 7.13

Thu Jan 4 1996

Qs: Linguistics?,Phonemic Spelling,Folia Linguistica Hist.

Editor for this issue: Annemarie Valdez <avaldezemunix.emich.edu>

Directory

1. Dilworth B. Parkinson, Linguistics Needed!
2. Hartmut Haberland, Re: 6.1790, Disc: Phonemic Spelling
3. Alexis Manaster Ramer, Q: Folia Linguistica Historica

A year or so ago it was noted on LINGUIST that the army uses the term
"linguist" for job classifications involving interrogation, translation,
voice intercept, etc., i.e. jobs involving knowledge of another language,
but not necessarily involving any other background in the field of
Linguistics.
I thought you might be interested in the poster that recently appeared
around our university, advertising the fact that the Naval Reserve Unit in
our area currently has openings for persons who speak Bulgarian, Burmese,
Cambodian, Kurdish, etc. etc. The large bold heading on this poster reads:

 LINGUISTICS NEEDED

Although this is most likely a typo, it would be interesting if the word
"linguistic" had actually developed the meaning "a person who speaks a
language well" in military circles. You know: "He's a really good
linguistic." and "You'd better be careful with your grammar. There's a
roomful of linguistics in there." So although I'm sure most of you agree
that Linguistics is/are needed, I will leave it to my fellow linguistics to
figure out all the ramifications.
Dilworth Parkinson

Message 2: Re: 6.1790, Disc: Phonemic Spelling

Is Japanese hiragana spelling phonemic? The test case would be potential
minimal pairs like kuu 'sky' - kuu 'eat' where uu in the first case usually
is considered to be a long u but a sequence u+u in the second, a difference
marked in some versions of standard Western transliterations but not in
hiragana. Of course, mora pitch is not marked in hiragana either,
so the spelling is somewhat defective
at any rate, but at least kuu 'eat' is HL and kuu 'sky' is either HL or LH
according to my dictionary, so there should be a chance to have a real
minimal pair here (the existence of which I doubt, though).
Hartmut Haberland

Sorry to bother everybody, but does anyone know how to get a hold of
the editors of the same; their email address appears to have changed
and I can't seem to locate the new one.
 
Alexis MR