----- Original Message -----
From: "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Thursday, June 05, 2003 6:38 PM
Subject: 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.
"thistle" and "this'll". [TISl=] and [DISl=]. And maybe teeth and teethe
[tiT] vs [tiD].
> -Mark
>