An Idle Question
An Idle QuestionI've found in English the following:
So, I'd be very interested in examples - thank you. I will delete this page within days if it doesn't generate any interest, although my experience is that programmer types tend to have a passing interest in linguistics.
I presume the pattern you haven't described explicitly is "in (pseudo-)words with syllables that repeat consonant structure and vary only vowels, the syllable that contains the letter i will always be first"?
No, the pattern is that things more marked in obstruency come first. StephenPinker? has a discussion about this; it certainly has been studied. I don't recall whether anyone has done a good study in terms of language universals, as opposed to within individual languages like English, or not, but Pinker would be a good place to start - and has a pretty good bibliography. -- dm
I'm missing something. How is "tock" more markedly obstruent than "tick"?
Well, actually he said "...vowels where the tongue is high and in the front always come before the vowels for which the tongue is low and in the back. No one knows why they are aligned in this order, but it seems to be a kind of syllogism from two other oddities. The first is that words that connote me-here-now tend to have higher and fronter vowels than verbs that connote distance from "me": me versus you, here versus there, this versus that. The second is that words that connote me-here-now tend to come before words that connote literal or metaphorical distance from "me" (or a prototypical generic speaker): here and there (not there and here), this and that, now and then, father and son, man and machine, friend or foe, [and so on...] The syllogism seems to be: "me" = high front vowel; me first; therefore, high front vowel first. It is as if the mind just cannot bring itself to flip a coin in ordering words; if meaning does not determine the order, sound is brought to bear, and the rationale is based on how the tongue produces the vowels."
But we also put on our "shoes and socks", even though doing so in that order is sub-optimal. -- EricHodges
Are you saying that "shoes and socks" is an exception to the pattern? Or are you listing it as another agreement with the pattern? Or are you saying Pinker shouldn't have implied that meaning always gets first priority? The latter was already said above.
If "lock and load" follows the pattern (and if it does, I don't understand the pattern) then I can't see how "shoes and socks" follows it, too. "load" feels farther back in my mouth than "lock", but maybe I'm saying it in some odd way.
How about "drop-kick", "top-hat" or "hatpin"? -- vk
I think the pattern is supposed to apply to nonsense, repetitive words.
How about "Top cat" then? But nothing was said about nonsense words before - why should normal words be different? -- vk
No no, not at all, it's not just about nonsense words, it's about phrases where the order isn't otherwise forced by grammar.
But those 4 examples absolutely cannot go in a different order, because they are noun phrases with a head, and the head must go last in noun phrases (when a head exists), as dictated by English grammar. Here we're talking about a type of kick, a type of hat, a type of pin, and a type of cat, thus they are uncontroversially heads, and must come last in the noun phrase, preceded by their modifiers.
The other examples are headless phrases...in "tick tock" we're not talking about the type of a "tock" known as a "tick", not at all, they're just parallel words that have to go in some order, and since there isn't a head, grammar doesn't force the order, but it turns out there is a rule that then determines the order, and it is the odd phenomenon that Pinker is talking about above.
I think when Pinker mentioned "meaning" determining order, he only meant in this sense grammar (and particularly of headed versus headless phrases), actually.
As whether "lock and load" and "shoes and socks" follow or violate the pattern, I think both my ear, and my sense of tongue position, are confused right now. If I weren't so lazy I'd go upstairs and check some reference books, but... :-) --dm
"Mork and Mindy," but that's supposed to sound alien.
I don't know if it's a British thing, or just something that was in my household, but I grew up saying "socks and shoes". -- EarleMartin
I'm Canadian and I say "socks and shoes" also. -- KarlKnechtel
You guys might be on to something here. I like the syllogism from two other oddities theory - these two oddities (explained above) might very well span lots of languages! I'm a native German speaker [but I'm not German ;-)] and this pattern looks very familiar ... 'dies und das' (this and that), hier und da (here and there) ... you're even often tempted to say 'ich und du' (me and you), although the rules of politeness require you to say 'du und ich'. So my questions is, are there any native speakers of other languages here and can they find this pattern in their language? By the way, there doesn't seem to be a precedence between all pairs of vowels in German: It's 'Max und Moritz', but 'Soll und Haben'. Here the pattern seems to be that the word with one syllable comes first, then the longer one.
I did notice that the first sounds are ones that can be made without opening the mouth much, while the second sounds need a more open mouth to utter at the same volume. Perhaps an economy of movement.
Match the vowels to musical notes, then the higher-pitched note comes first - it just sounds better. This might not be the case for a question in English, but questions would normally be longer.
Aha, then it sounds like a musical cadence (the final two chords of a piece), with the final note always being the tonic. (Think of the sounds of a doorbell too). That makes it easier to generalize as a Western pattern. What about Asian languages though?
I'm not sure, but despite the fascination with the supposed differences of other cultures, by the close of the 20th century it had been determined that the fundamental perception of melody is biologically based and universal to all humans (to some extent parts of this are practically forced by Fourier Transform theory, for that matter), so that even some native of Papua New Guinea who had never heard Western music before can immediately perceive that there are harmonic relationships in e.g. Bach. They may or may not like Bach, just like an American may prefer country western, but they perceive it just fine. Similarly with speakers of tonal languages such as Cantonese.
On the other hand, there's no question but that other melodic structures such as microtonality have evolved on top of the biological structures in some cultures but not others.
So it's not immediately that obvious, after all, that this is necessarily a Western pattern. It might or might not be. More data needed. -- DougMerritt
Question is - can you find any examples in any language where the vowel structure goes the other way around? I for one can't imagine anyone saying "Tock-Tick".
Tweedledum and Tweedledee?
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