Re: CHAT: Phonemic status of English interdentals

Padraic Brown wrote:

>> On Mon, Oct 07, 2002 at 07:00:51PM -0700, Josh
>> Brandt-Young wrote:
>> > I was thinking about our discussion some time ago
>> of whether [T] and [D]
>> > should be considered separate phonemes in English,
>> citing "minimal pairs"
>> > and whatnot, and decided to do a test on my
>> (non-linguistically-savvy)
>> > girlfriend to see what I could see.
>>
>
>It may be because I'm more linguistically aware, but
>reading that story with thorns and edhs reversed
>sounds funny; but doesn't seem to affect
>understandability so much.
>
>I had a similar experience recently, trying to explain
>the difference between thorn and edh to a lady who's
>studying Old Norse. Just giving bare examples like
>"thin" and "then" didn't work. Explaining the "buzzy
>throat" (voiced) v. "no buzz" (voiceless) didn't work.
>After a while she was able to sort it out herself.
>
<snide>
One dislikes to appear snotty, snobbish or elitist, but....... It is a sad
fact, which ought to be universally acknowledged, that the average speaker
of a language has no idea what their vocal organs are doing when they speak.
That's what linguists are for.  And Average Speaker will likely reply, "If
you're so smart, why aren't you rich?"   ;-)))))))))))

With respect to Engl. /T/ and /D/, if they are not phonemic/contrastive,
what conditions their occurrence?  (Actually, IIRC there are conditions,
lost in the mists of history, and again, not known to Average Speaker.) And
how does it happen that in those dialects where they're pronounced as stops
(and one might suspect, in those dialects, rather minimal acquaintance with
the written form), /T/ is still realized as /t/, /D/ as /d/?  </snide>

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