Re: Phonetics vs. Phonemics (was: apparently bizarre 'A's)
| From: | Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, February 23, 2006, 15:08 |
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On 2/23/06, John Vertical <johnvertical@...> wrote:
> That reminds me - what's the most different allophones of a single phoneme
> you know of (either qualitively or quantitively)?
The most different-seeming to me are [h] and [f] for Japanese /h/, but
those aren't all that far apart really.
> (I think it's been suggested that English /h/ and /N/ would be the same
> phoneme, but that's a little too far IMO.)
I'm pretty sure that suggestion has never been made seriously. It's
just an observation that /N/ never occurs initially and /h/ never
finally in English, so they're allegedly in complementary
distribution. (Which makes it hard for us native English speakers to
pronounce those sounds in those positions - I personally have no
trouble with initial /N/, but final /h/ still eludes me; it always
tries to turn into /x/.)
Sorry about the TOFU in my last post, btw. Failed to uncheck the checkbox.
--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>
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