Re: more English orthography

Nik Tailor wrote:

>I suppose it depends on which definition you use of "phoneme".  The
>definitions I learned and use do not allow two phonemes to share an
>allophone (at least in the same environment).
That is a definition I haven't heard before.  What would you do about the case
of Japanese /d/ and /z/, both of which become [dZ] befure /u/?  There is no
phoneme /dZ/ in the language, so while this is certainly a neutralization of a
contrast, I would have to say that it is also a mutual allophone.

>To put it another way, how would you distinguish between phonemic
>neutralization and allophony, or would you?
I see the two terms as covering different domains.  As I've always understood
it (phonology is not my thing, so maybe I've got it all wrong), "allophone" is
for describing variation within a phoneme's possible pronunciations;
"neutralization" is for describing relations between phonemes.

Marcus