Re: OT: Definitely Not YAEPT: English phoneme inventory?

En réponse à Mark J. Reed :


>How about "see her" vs. "singer"?   (In my 'lect, at least, the 'i'
>in "-ing" is [i], not [I]).
Examples involving word breaks are always a bit weak for me ;))) .


>A native speaker's intuition. specifically.
Of course! I thought that was obvious :)) .


>Ok, I'll buy that the absence of a minimal pair is not sufficient
>to disprove phonemicity.  I don't, however, accept that a native
>speaker's intuition is sufficient to prove it.  Sometimes native
>speakers recognize allophonic differences (even if they can't
>describe exactly what the difference is), but that doesn't make
>such allophonic pairs distinct phonemes.
Example here. Because I've never met any speaker of any language
recognising allophonic differences in his L1. When they recognised
differences, it always ended up as phonemic differences.

BTW, while thinking about it this morning, I discovered that there *is* a
minimal pair distinguishing /o/ and /O/. Namely the pair "Maud(e)" /mod/, a
first name (both orthographies are possible, and the name is always
feminine) and "mode" /mOd/: fashion. So replace my /o/-/O/ example with
/2/-/9/. In this case there is really no minimal pair (however, I
discovered that /2/ could appear in closed syllables, like in "Meuse"
/m2z/, the name of a French river, "meule" /m2l/: millstone, stack, rick,
and "veule" /v2l/, a slightly archaic adjective meaning "spineless". So
despite the absence of minimal pair, /2/ and /9/ are *not* truly in
complementary distribution, and thus cannot be considered one phoneme).

Christophe Grandsire.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang.

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