Re: /T/ -> /t_d/?

On Sat, 30 Oct 2004 07:49:56 +0200, Philip Newton <philip.newton@...> wrote:
>> [It's a bit pedantic maybe, but the rule usually given by people who want
>> to say that /D/ is not a phoneme is that it seems to occur instead of /T/
>> at certain morpheme boundaries.)
>
> Does that mean that "bathe" is made up of two morphemes? Since for me,
> I have "bathe" [bEjD] contrasthing with "bath" [bA:T] and if the rule
> that selects [D] vs [T] is related to morphemes, I suppose that means
> that that the -e is a verb-producing morpheme, or something?
I'm a bit hazy on it, not quite being a deep believer in it myself, but
roughly...  probably not the "-e" per se.   The voicing itself may be a
verb-producing morpheme; not just in "breath/breathe", "cloth/"clothe"
(which also undergo vowel changes) but in "half/halve", "house/house",
"use/use", etc. which, to bolster the point, demonstrate verbal voicing
even outside of [T] ~ [D].    I suppose that the morpheme in full may be
to lengthen the vowel before a single fricative, which is to be voiced,
("half" being exempt by virtue of an earlier "l" blocking it, I guess).

I suppose the reasoning is if it's possible that a verb can have such a
voicing rule associated, so can a pronoun; not just in "thy", but also in
the demonstrative series with "th-" ("there", "then", cf. "where", "when"),
which rule would not otherwise be visible since these pronouns are a
closed class.


	*Muke!
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