minimal pairs are not always there

[Herb Stahlke]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

>>> mclasutt at brigham.net 04/13/00 11:49PM >>>
[Larry Trask]
> This is *a* method [finding minimal pairs] of establishing phonemes.  But it
> is not *the only* method of establishing phonemes.  If the distribution of
> two sounds cannot be stated by rule, then they can't be assigned to a single
> phoneme.

[Robert Whiting]
> I would say that even a minimal pair is not a sufficient condition to
> establish two sounds as separate phonemes.

[Pat Ryan]
> I would have to say that you are wrong.  There is no phoneme in any language
> which has not been established as a component of a minimal pair.

I have to disagree with all three of you.  If you have a minimal pair, there is
no question that you have a phonemic contrast.  However, you can have a
phonemic contrast without having a minimal pair and with a rule for the
distribution.  Aside from the familiar English angma vs. h, which is a good if
peculiar example, there is the matter of /n/ vs. /l/ in Yoruba.  Ladefoged
argued in 1964 that these were in complementary distribution, [l] before oral
vowels and [n] before nasal vowels.  (Yoruba has a phonemic contrast between
oral and nasal vowels, and nasal consonants can occur in roots only before
nasal vowels.)  However, I argued in a 1971 paper that the contrast had to be
phonemic because the only cases of alternation were in CV words of the shape
niN, where -N is an ASCII diacritic marking the preceding vowel as nasal.  In
these cases, if the vowel elided before a vowel-initial noun, a very common
occurrence, the /n/ became /l/.  There are, however, verbs beginning with /n/
but with one of the other nasal vowels, /aN/ or /uN/.  With these verbs, if the
vowel elides, the initial /n/ remains /n/.  The /n/~/l/ alternation, then, is
morphophonemic and /n/ and /l/ are separate phonemes even though their
distribution can be stated by rule and they are in complementary distribution.
There is, incidentally, dialect evidence to indicate the Standard Yoruba /niN/
forms represent a diachronic merger of what survive as /li/ and /niN/ forms in
those dialects.

[Robert Whiting]
> The distribution by rule takes precedence.  Take the English > minimal pair:
> 'thigh'  /  'thy'.  Most people would not insist on phonemic status for both
> [th] and [dh] in English on the basis of this minimal pair (although some
> would doubtless claim that there has been a phonemic split similar to what
> occurred with /s/ and /z/).

English /th/ vs. /dh/ is a curious case.  The contrast didn't become phonemic
till the 18th c., and even then the conditions for it were strange and
non-phonological.  There were already some final cases of the contrast, as in
those dialects that had lost final schwa, so that "breath/breathe",
"wreath/wreathe" and the like were in contrast, but there was no initial
contrast until the function words, largely deictics and largely unstressed,
laxed the initial /th/ to /dh/.  However, there was a sizable set of content
words, like "theology" that had initial unstressed syllables beginning with
/th/, and none of these voiced.  An oddity is that the function word "thither",
which is rare in contemporary ModE, has initial /th/ for all AmE speakers I've
consulted.  American dictionaries regularly show /dh-/ as a second
pronunciation, and British dictionaries I've checked either give only /dh-/ or
give /th-/ as a second choice.  Apparently Americans who know the word
generally don't treat it as a function word.  Given that the /s~z/ and /f~v/
contrasts had phonemicized early in ME and that SE English initial voicing had
little influence, the late phonemicization of initial /th~dh/ looks rather like
a nice example of pattern congruity.

Herb Stahlke