minimal pairs (was: PIE e/o Ablaut)

[Larry Trask]

Pete Gray writes:

>  Despite a number of pairs (where:wear etc) some writers deny voiceless w as
>  a phoneme, and analyse it as h+w, which to my ears is daft.

Speakers who retain the 'where'/'wear' contrast have different
intuitions about the voiceless sound.

Some -- apparently including Pete -- feel strongly that voiceless [w]
is a single segment, and hence a phoneme in its own right.

Others -- certainly including me  -- feel equally strongly that
voiceless [w] represents the cluster /hw/.  As far as I'm concerned,
'whine' is phonemically /hwain/, while 'wine' is phonemically /wain/.
I have had this intuition since childhood, and I still have it now,
even though I recognize that I typically pronounce this /hw/ as
a single phonetic segment.

>  My dialect might originally  have pronounced "hue" as /h-yu:/, but it
>  certainly no longer does.  Such a pronunciation would not even be
>  recognised.  The consonant has to be the ich-laut.   But still, some people
>  (such as Pat, who on this occasion is in good company) deny its phonemicity.

This time it is not only intuitions, but pronunciations, which
differ.

In my western NY State accent, I can't possibly pronounce 'hue' with
the ich-Laut.  That's because, for me, the phonemic structure is not
/hju:/, but rather /hIw/, where 'I' stands for small capital <i>.
For me, 'hue' and similar words do not rhyme with 'you', which is
definitely /ju:/.  Likewise, 'fuse' (/fIwz/) does not rhyme with
the verb 'use' (/ju:z/), and so on.  If I drawl these words, 'hue'
and 'fuse' get a lengthened [I], while 'you' and 'use' get a lengthened
[u].

I think this is typical of everybody in my area.  One of my brothers
is named 'Hugh', and absolutely nobody back home calls him anything
but [hIw].

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk