minimal pairs (was: PIE e/o Ablaut)

[Stanley Friesen]

At 08:38 PM 4/6/00 +0100, petegray wrote:
>Pat said:

>> I think the pair when:wen is minimal for voiceless /w/.

>> In 'hue', the glide belongs with the vowel, as it does in 'hew'.

>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.

Well, in my dialect they are identical, so the issue doesn't come up.  But
where they are distinct, I would indeed treat them as allophones.  For one
thing, English does not have rising diphthongs starting in 'w', so an
analysis similar to the "hew" case is unavailable.

>My dialect might originally  have pronounced "hue" as /h-yu:/, but it
>certainly no longer does.

That is not what was claimed.  Allophonic status does not really require
that sort of situation.

>   Such a pronunciation would not even be
>recognised.  The consonant has to be the ich-laut.

Of course it does.  The ich-laut is an allophone, that means it is governed
by a rule.

>    But still, some people
>(such as Pat, who on this occasion is in good company) deny its phonemicity.

I base this on several factors:
  - The sound ONLY occurs before a former long-u, even in Modern English.
  - The normal reflex of old [u:] in Modern English is [yu:].
  - It is almost impossible to pronounce [h] before a [y].

Thus, it is easily treated as a synchronic rule of English
pronunciation.  That makes the sound an allophone of [h] in that
environment - before a [y].

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com