Re: E and e (was: A break in the evils of English (or, Sturnan is beautiful))

Tristan wrote:

>> >Consider an hypothetical language. It has the following consonants:
>> >[x s t_D p] (and no others). None are allophones for the other; each are
>> >individual sounds. Nor do any have any (important) allophones. What is
>> >the primary distinction between [x] and [p]? POA or TOA? Should they be
>> >phonematicised as /x/ and /k/ or /k/ and /p/? Or as /x/ and /p/
                                    ^^^^^^^^
/x/ and /k/? That I don't understand.
Using the criteria in Pike's "Phonemics" (as best I recall them) one would
simply go with / p t s x / -- to say that [x] was phonemic /k/ would be
introducing an unwarranted level of abstraction, and to include the
information "dental" or "D-offglide" with /t/ is unnecessary-- such
information belongs in the description of how the phonemes are realized
phonetically.

If you can find a copy of Pike's book, it's full of interesting questions
and problems to solve.

A slightly greater problem in phonemics arises when a language has, say, [f]
in a certain number of specifiable environments, and [p] in a certain number
of different envinronments -- and you have concluded that they represent a
single phoneme.  How to symbolize it? /p/ with [p ~f] allophones? or /f/
with [p ~f] allophones? In one sense, it wouldn't matter;  but then some
linguistic rules of thumb (or "universal tendencies" if you will) come into
play.  It is more common for languages to have only a stop system (with
fricative allophones), than to have only a fricative system (with stop
allophones)-- so you would call the phoneme /p/.

>Can anyone think of a word that has <ors(C)#>, where the <or> is any
>sequence of sounds that would render as /O:/ other than <au>-style
>things, <s> is unvoiced, C is an unvoiced stop and # the end of a
>syllable other than 'Forster'? It might help prove or disprove whether
>the 'r' is completely gone when the next sound is a consonant, or if
>it's just a phonemic rendering. (I'm excluding 'Forster' because it's a
>name and has the conflicting 'Foster'.)
Do Forster and Foster contrast for you, or are they the same?  I'd guess
Forster might have a longer vowel, or a schwa offglide???

There aren't many other ...orsC# words, and they tend to be past tense
forms, like forced, coursed, (contrast with "cost"?); a few more -ors#
horse, force, course, gorse, source (vs. sauce?), Morse (vs. moss?), Norse;
and lots with -orC#

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