Re: CHAT: Phonemic status of English interdentals

Josh Roth wrote:

>In a message dated 10/9/02 12:56:52 AM, morg0072@FLINDERS.EDU.AU writes:
>
>
>
>>Tristan wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>Much easier to tell the difference between [&] and [&:] (which only
>>>have one debatable minimal pair---can and can)
>>>
>>>
>>1. "banner" (one who bans) vs "banner" (flag)
>>
>>2. "banning" (participle of ban) / "Banning" (surname of former South
>>  Australian premier.
>>
>>
>I also have "have" vs. "halve", which are on the same level as "can" and
>"can".
>
Not for me; 'halve' is /ha:v/.

> Then there are more dubious ones like "shall" vs. "shale", "Val"
>(short for Valerie) vs. "veil", "gal" vs. "gale", etc.
>
All those words with 'long A's' are /&i@l/ for me. However, I was
reminded of another: L (name of the letter)/Elle vs Al. (And I guess
that /&l/ < /el/ never gets lengthened to /&:l/ suggests something...
unless you analyse [&l] as /el/, which doesn't explain why 'shall' and
'shell' are homophones. Not that I know a lot about phonemes... I'm
hoping to learn some more at Uni. Argh, a touch over a fortnight till
the end of school; a month and a half till my last exam...)

>About the interdentals - I guess it's one of those things that makes you
>think things are really on a continuum rather than being absolutely one or
>the other. They're phonemes in the sense that many people can hear the
>difference and "feel" that they are different, and even people who claim they
>can't hear the difference will pronounce them correctly - i.e., they will
>used the voiced one in certain words and the voiceless one in other words,
>and not dependent on some phonetic condition. On the other hand, there are
>few if any good minimal pairs, they can sometimes be interchanged, and people
>often can't tell the difference on demand (this may be due to the lack of
>minimal pairs and the fact that they are neither written differently nor
>[usually, at least, I assume] taught as distinct sounds in school, whereas
>other phonemes are). So maybe on a scale of phonemes to non-phonemes, they're
>somewhere in the middle. Maybe one day they will completely merge into /T/.
>
Much more likely to merge into /f/ and /v/. Over on this side of
Melbourne, you hear people talking of veir maffs... I guess these people
are aware of the difference...

Tristan.