Re: YAEPT (was Re: Stress and consonants)
| From: | Philip Newton <philip.newton@...> |
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| Date: | Wednesday, October 25, 2006, 10:02 |
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On 10/25/06, David J. Peterson <dedalvs@...> wrote:
> This phenomenon is known as the near merger: sounds that
> almost merge, but which, technically, remain distinct.
[snip snip]
> the idea is that these are cases where a native speaker
> can't tell the difference, but they *produce* the difference,
> consistently.
That reminds me of something I recently read in Wikipedia, on the
pronunciation of |th|, which suggested that those who front(?) the
sound to [f] or [v] don't merge it completely since people still know
which sound a given word "should" have even if they (think they)
pronounce them identically.
Wonder whether that's the same effect.
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
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