Re: USAGE: Stress in English
| From: | Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, February 26, 2004, 13:05 |
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On Wed, Feb 25, 2004 at 07:41:24PM -0500, Shreyas Sampat wrote:
> I interpret "phonemic" to mean not only providing distinction, but also,
> crucially, unpredictable. Here there's a systematic alternation; that
> doesn't do any work to prove phonemicity in this sense. If you were to
> have two nouns /'pr=mIt/ and /pr='mIt/, then I'd be persuaded.
But what's systematic about it? Other noun/verb pairs don't do that;
"ticket" /'tI.k@t/, "billet" /'bI.l@t/, "filet" /f@'lej/ or /'fI.l@t/ =
all have the same pronunciation whether verb or noun. A single instance
does not a system make. Nor is it predictable; without already knowing
the answer, you would not be able to predict the verb pronunciation
from the noun, or vice versa.
-Mark