minimal pairs are not always there

[Dr. John E. McLaughlin]

[ moderator re-formatted ]

[I, John McLaughlin, wrote]

>> I think that you truly have to consider teeth/teethe to be a minimal
>> pair.

[Robert Whiting wrote]

> I think that you truly have to consider both 'teeth' and 'teethe' as
> morphophonemic variants of 'tooth'.

This is not a productive rule of Modern English.  You really must
distinguish between diachrony and synchrony.  I can no longer make a noun
into a verb by adding Germanic *-jan to it and then change the vowel by
umlaut.  It hasn't been a productive rule for about a thousand years.
Therefore they are NOT synchronic morphophonemic variants.

[I wrote]

>> Historically, yes, these two forms were not (the 'e' on the end of
>> teethe was a phonetic element which put the voiceless /th/ in a
>> voicing environment, but synchronically, there is no distinction
>> between the two except for the final voicing of th/dh (the lengthening
>> of [i] in 'teethe' is due to the voicing of dh, it does not cause the
>> voicing).

[Robert wrote]

> Historically, this is nonsense.  the lengthing of [i:] in 'teethe'
> is a matter of stress.  It is a matter of vowel quantity, not vowel
> quality.  Both 'teeth' and 'teethe' have [i:] and if the ending is
> not stressed, both have the same vowel quality.  The [i:] in both
> 'teeth' and 'teethe' is the result of umlaut caused by the addition of
> the plural ending (beginning with '-i') and the verbal suffix
> (beginning with '-j'; exactly the same change that took place in
> 'doom' - 'deem'), respectively.  The fact that many speakers introduce
> this additional distinction by stressing the ending of the verb
> suggests that they do not consider the [th] - [dh] distinction to be
> sufficient (i.e., they do not consider it phonemic).  If 'tooth' had
> not preserved its umlaut plural (i.e., if 'tooth' [+ plural]  -->
> *'tooths'), the question wouldn't arise.

Sorry, Robert, but you're mixing up all kinds of diachronic/synchronic and
phonetic/phonemic levels here.  Ask any phonetician of English and he or she
will gladly tell you that vowels in Modern English preceding a voiced
consonant are measurably longer in duration that vowels preceding a
voiceless consonant.  I'm not at all talking about the "long/short" vowel
distinctions of Old English, nor the diachronic processes that you believe
are still operating in Modern English morphology and morphophonemics.
Phonemically, both teeth and teethe have /i:/ (or /i/ if you prefer
distinguishing between /i/ and /I/ rather than using length as the
distinguishing feature), but phonetically, the /i:/ of 'teeth' is not as
long as the /i:/ in 'teethe'.  There's no debate about this among
phoneticians.

[I wrote]

>> But there are several good minimal pairs in (at least American)
>> English for th/dh--ether/either, thigh/thy, wreath/wreathe,
>> sooth/soothe, etc.

[Robert wrote]

> 'ether' [borrowed word] - 'either' [native word]
> 'thigh' [non-pronoun] - 'thy' [pronoun]
> 'wreath' [noun] - 'wreathe' [verb]
> 'sooth' [noun] - 'soothe' [verb]

Both here (and in your previous posts) you are marking way too many words in
English as "borrowed".  There are many words in English that are clearly
marked as "borrowed" in the usage of most speakers (you mentioned 'padre',
for example), but you are not at all careful in drawing the line between
words that are perceived and used as borrowed terms and words that have been
completely Anglicized.  Should we mark 'copper', 'mint', 'mile' and 'church'
as "borrowed"?  Or how about 'seal (the animal)', 'auk', 'herring', and
'sea'?  After a thousand years, borrowed words will have suffered one of two
fates generally:  1) they will be so few in number that they will have been
completely adapted to the borrowing language's phonology so that they are no
longer identifiable as borrowed words, or 2) they will be so many in number
that they will have changed the phonological structure of the borrowing
language and might be identifiable to a linguist as an old borrowing, but to
no native speaker.  The latter is the case in English with much of our
borrowed vocabulary.  Take, for example, -(o)logy.  It follows a Greek
stress pattern.  Originally, it was borrowed and only used with Greek stems.
It soon was also used with Latin stems, but we can now say that -ology is
completely part of the English "native" vocabulary because it is productive
with any kind of stem--whether of Greek, Latin, English, or Hindustani
origin.  One needs only to listen to college students talk for any length of
time to hear myriads of -ology words.  It's a productive native suffix now.

To do a phonological analysis of a language based on establishing an
artificial distinction between ancient borrowings and so-called "native"
words is weak, at best.  If your only criteria for linking [th] and [dh] as
allophones of a single phoneme in MODERN English is a morphophonemic rule
that hasn't been productive for over a thousand years, and a distinction
between very old borrowed words and "native" words, then you haven't proven
the relationship.  There is, indeed, a diachronic relationship between the
two, and the two were, indeed, allophones of a single phoneme in Old
English.  But in Modern English, the two have split into two phonemes.

[I wrote]

>> However, because of the very complex morphophonemics of Central Numic
>> and the historical changes that have further obscured them in
>> Comanche, this language is full of pairs that look very much like
>> minimal pairs on the surface, but are not.  For example, [papi] 'head'
>> and [pavi] 'older brother' look very much like a minimal pair.
>> However, they represent /pa=pi/ and /papi/ respectively.  (The = is a
>> phoneme in Comanche that prevents the lenition of a following stop.
>> It is fully justified on morphophonemic grounds without relying on the
>> historical presence of /n/ in Panamint and Shoshoni which is cognate.)
>> There are a bundle of these:  [ata] 'different' /a=ta/ versus [ara]
>> 'uncle' /ata/, etc.

[Robert wrote]

> Fascinating.  Please, sir, what is the phonetic realization of this
> phoneme [=]?  Oh, I just realized -- it can't have a phonetic
> realization or else [papi] and [pavi] wouldn't seem to be a minimal
> pair.  It just blocks some normal phonetic change.  I'm sorry, John,
> but this looks like a device to create a phonetic environment to
> explain why some stops don't undergo lenition when the conditioning
> environment that prevented it has been lost historically.  I'll tell
> you what:  Let's assume that English has a phoneme (let's call it [=]
> just for consistency) that prevents an intervocalic dental spirant
> from being voiced.  Now let's insert this phoneme in a word like
> 'ether' which shows an unvoiced intervocalic dental spirant /i:=ther/.
> Good -- now we no longer have a minimal pair 'ether' - 'either'.  Now
> let's assume that English inserts this phoneme in all loanwords that
> have an unvoiced dental spirant in a voiced environment.  Voila -- a
> phonetic environment that explains why loanwords have unvoiced
> intervocalic [th].  Now all we need is a rule that says /=th/ -->
> [dh] /__ m# and all intervocalic [th] in English is accounted for by
> phonological rules.  Hey, this is fun.

Well, Robert, you've fallen into the trap that countless other non-Numicists
have blundered into.  But it is also illustrative of how different your
morphophonemic evidence for lumping [th]/[dh] in English is from the
Comanche problem at hand.  Here's some very basic data to show that /=/ has
a phonemic status.

1)  Start with these noun stems which are representative of the entire body
of nominal stems:  [waa] 'cedar', [pyjy] 'duck', and [tyhyja] 'deer'

2)  Now add the postposition /-pa/ 'on' to each of them:  [waahpa] 'on the
cedar', [pyjypa] 'on the duck', and [tyhyjava] 'on the deer'.  Notice how
the phonetic realization is different for each of these (remember that each
of these words represents a class of nouns that operate exactly the same
way).

3)  Now add the postposition /-tu/ 'through' to each of them:  [waahtu]
'through the cedar', [pyjytu] 'through the duck', and [tyhyjaru] 'through
the deer'.  Notice how the initial consonants of each of these suffixes
changes in the same ways on the same stems.

4)  Now incorporate each of these nouns on the verbal stem /-pa'i/ 'have':
[waahpa'i] 'have a cedar', [pyjypa'i] 'have a duck', and [tyhyjava'i] 'have
a deer'

5)  Now compound each of these nouns with the nominal /puku/ 'pet':
[waahpuku] 'pet cedar' (think bonzai), [pyjypuku] 'pet duck', and
[tyhyjavuku] 'pet deer'

By now you should realize that this is not some feature of the second
element, but a feature of the stem that causes the initial consonant of the
second element to be preaspirated, nonlenited, and lenited.  Unlike the
voicing of /th/ to [dh], it is fully productive in (at least preobsolescent)
Comanche.  There is something following each of these nominal stems which is
neutralized in word final position.  From Shoshoni evidence, we know that
these "final features" are -C (an undifferentiated consonant that causes
gemination in Shoshoni and preaspiration in Comanche), -n or -=
(prenasalization in Shoshoni, a nonlenited stop in Comanche), and zero
(allows lenition in both Shoshoni and Comanche).

Now this does bring up an important point that I'm sure you'll agree with.
There is not a clear boundary line that demarcates when a phoneme has split
or when morphophonemic distinctions have ceased productivity or when any
number of changes have finally and irreversibly taken place.  Comanche is a
very clear borderline case.  The phonemic status of = (Shoshoni /n/) is not
completely black or white.  Such is also the case with the phonemic split
between [th] and [dh].  (Now's the part where we disagree.)  Because of the
fully productive nature of the (morpho)phonemic final features in Comanche
(including /=/), they must be set up as phonemes in the language, although
admitting that their life expectancy is low.  Because of the completely
non-productive nature of the old morphophonemic processes which gave rise to
[th] versus [dh], because [th] in [dh]'s environments has become firmly
fixed by old loan words that have become nativized, and because the voicing
environments for [dh] have been lost without the subsequent devoicing of
[dh] to [th], then we must set up two phonemes in Modern English--/th/ and
/dh/, although admitting that they are only recently distinguishable from
one another.

There was a whole lot more in Robert's last post, but it really just
reiterates what has been said before.  What got my goat in his first post
was the comment that (not quoting directly), "No one doubts that Modern
English [th] and [dh] represent allophones of the same phoneme."  I doubt
it, and quite seriously.  I also realize that there are multiple levels of
"phonemic analysis" as represented by points of view ranging from pure SPE
(where much emphasis is placed on the "native"-"nonnative" distinction
between vocabulary) to the more structuralist approaches.  Perhaps when we
respond to Pat and other non-professionals who occassionaly tug our chain,
we can remember that professional linguists may all be walking in a westerly
direction, but we're not necessarily arm-in-arm and keeping in step.  :)

John E. McLaughlin, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
mclasutt at brigham.net

Program Director
Utah State University On-Line Linguistics
http://english.usu.edu/lingnet

English Department
3200 Old Main Hill
Utah State University
Logan, UT  84322-3200

(435) 797-2738 (voice)
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