Re: Phoneme winnowing continues

On Thu, Jun 05, 2003 at 01:08:41PM -0400, John Cowan wrote:
> Mark J. Reed scripsit:
>
> > (English has both sounds but they're not phonemically distinct; initial
> > and medial "th" is always [D] while final "th" is always [T])..
>
> It's not quite so simple, and there are minimal pairs like thy/thigh.
D'oh!  I sit corrected.  I should have known it wasn't as simple as I
thought; this is English we're talking about. :)

Now that I think about it, there's also [Dau] "thou (you singular)" vs.
[Tau] "thou (short for 'thousand')".  But that and thy/thigh are the only
minimal pairs I can think of.

-Mark

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