minimal pairs (was: PIE e/o Ablaut)

[Ross Clark (FOA LING)]

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-----Original Message-----
From: Robert Whiting [mailto:whiting at cc.helsinki.fi]
Sent: Monday, 16 October 2000 12:54 a.m.

RW> On Fri, 28 Apr 2000 Ross Clark <r.clark at auckland.ac.nz> wrote:

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RC>> I trust that we share the assumptions that (i) we are talking about the
RC>> synchronic phonology of modern English, and (ii) the reality that we are
RC>> trying to get at is what is in speakers' heads.

RW> First, let me assure you that we are indeed talking about the synchronic
RW> phonology of modern English.  About the second point, I am much less
RW> sanguine.  I think it is possible to describe how language works
RW> linguistically (some areas are easier than others), but I don't think that
RW> we are in a position to say what goes on in a speaker's head to produce
RW> language.  While it would certainly be nice to know, I think that the
RW> cognitive processes that produce language are beyond our reach at the
RW> moment.  Speakers themselves don't know how they produce language, so you
RW> can't find out by just asking them.  So the only reality that we can get at
RW> is the language that speakers produce.

RW> Historical grammar, when we have a written record, is based on empirically
RW> verifiable facts.  Synchronic grammar is based on a hypothesis about how
RW> native speakers produce their language.  A hypothesis is not a fact.  It is
RW> an explanation put forward to account for observable facts.  People tend to
RW> forget this and consider synchronic grammar a fact.  But whatever reality
RW> may exist in the speaker's head just can't be gotten at at the present time
RW> with our present knowledge.  In general, I agree that what we are trying to
RW> get at is the reality in speakers' heads, but it is a roundabout road that
RW> we have to take and we have to have a realistic picture of language before
RW> we are likely to get there.

I'm not sure what you mean by "historical grammar" here. If it is an account of
changes in the language, then it is surely an account of transitions from one
synchronic grammar to another, and hence subject to the same epistemological
vulnerability you attribute to the latter.

So, in your view, we have, on the one hand, "the language that speakers
produce" -- texts, I guess. Presumably the "empirically verifiable facts" on
which you see historical grammar as being based are of the same sort. On the
other hand we have "the cognitive processes that produce language", "whatever
reality may exist in a speaker's head", which is at present unknowable. Yet
apparently we are able to describe "how language works linguistically", "a
realistic picture of language". And what criteria do we have as to what is
"realistic" in this description? Is this what was once called the Hocus Pocus
view -- that a linguistic description is simply an efficient and elegant
description of a body of data, without reference to any possible mental
reality?

RC>> The rest of your post is entirely dependent on the further assumption that
RC>> native speakers of modern English (in general, not just linguists)
RC>> distinguish "foreign" from "native" words, and that the words I listed
RC>> with /th/ in voiced environments are marked as "foreign". Since I don't
RC>> share this assumption, I would like to know what evidence leads you to it.
RC>> Do you have any such evidence, other than the fact that by excluding these
RC>> hundreds of words you can arrive at a nice phonological generalization?

RW> Let me answer this from back to front.

RW> You ask what evidence I have that native speakers distinguish by rule the
RW> [th] of loan words from the [dh] of native words other than hundreds of
RW> examples and the fact that it produces a nice phonological generalization.

This is not quite what I said. I said that in order to arrive at your nice
generalization you need to *exclude* hundreds of English words, and I asked
what independent evidence you had that these words are somehow marginal to
the structure of English?

RW> This seems rather like asking what evidence I have for Grimm's Law or
RW> Verner's Law other than hundreds of examples and the fact that they provide
RW> a nice phonological generalization.

No, because you are not presenting this as a historical law. As a historical
explanation of why /th/ occurs in certain places and /dh/ in others, it is
not in dispute.

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RW> As for what evidence I have that native speakers are able to keep track of
RW> foreign words (although not necessarily specifically as "foreign" words), I
RW> have already quoted Hock 1986 elsewhere, but for the sake of overkill, I
RW> will quote it here again:

RW>    The importance of the Old Irish example is twofold.  First it
RW>    suggests that 'nativization by adoption' is qualitatively
RW>    different from the other nativization processes:  It does not
RW>    really nativize at all, but merely 'admits' foreign words into
RW>    the language without losing track of the fact that they are
RW>    and remain foreign.  It is only after these words have been
RW>    around for quite some time, have been used often enough, and
RW>    in enough different and novel contexts, that speakers may
RW>    slowly begin to lose the feeling that they are not native.
RW>    Nativization by adoption, then, is not an immediate process,
RW>    but one of slow, gradual, even grudging acceptance.

RW>        Hock, _Principles of Historical Linguistics_ (1986), 396-97

RW> This is only one person's opinion, but I don't doubt that similar
RW> statements could be found in other textbooks of historical linguistics, so
RW> I will consider it as evidence that native speakers can recognize foreign
RW> words, if they have not been phonologically nativized, for a considerable
RW> time after they have entered the language, by their phonological
RW> peculiarities.


The general possibility is not in question; the question is about particular
examples. Hock offers evidence in the Old Irish case, namely the failure of
p-initial words "for some time" to participate in the lenition process. This
would certainly mark them as exceptional in that respect. But note that he
does not argue that the mere fact of having initial p- is evidence of their
"foreign" status.

RW> If not, how can one account for the un-Anglicized pronunciation of
RW> 'chanson' in English at least 400 years after it entered the language
RW> (first attested in 1601 according to my dictionary).

Actually, my American Heritage dictionary gives a fully anglicized
pronunciation /S'æns at n/ (initial sh-, rhymes with "Manson"), but I admit I've
never heard it. The word has probably been re-introduced once or twice since
1601, but the persistence of the nasal-vowel pronunciation is no mystery: the
word refers to specifically French things (medieval epic poems or 19th-20th
century popular songs), and it is used almost entirely by people who have some
familiarity with French and could tell you (if you would allow this as data)
that it's a French word.

RW> But ultimately, it is unimportant whether speakers can still recognize
RW> foreign words after several centuries or not. The pronunciation rules are
RW> marked in the lexicon.  The native speaker learns these rules and follows
RW> them.  It is these rules that produce the pattern, not the speaker's
RW> perception of the words as native or non-native.

RW> For other evidence that native speakers distinguish by rule the [th] of
RW> loan words from the [dh] of native words I offer the pattern created by the
RW> presence of intervocalic [th] and [dh] in English words.

This is not "other evidence". This *is* your evidence.

RW> But first it is necessary to show that a pattern actually exists.  If there
RW> is no pattern, which the theory relies on, then the theory is falsified.
RW> While the fact that the six typical English words that you offered as
RW> examples (pathology, authority, anathema, mathematics, Gothic, Arthur) are
RW> indeed all loan words is suggestive, it is not really sufficient.

RW> To see if there is a pattern, I have taken a lemmatized list of English
RW> words based on the British National Corpus (BNC) available on the web at

RW>   http://www.itri.brighton.ac.uk/~Adam.Kilgarriff/bnc-readme.html

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RW> One thing that can be noticed is that there are only 15 lemmata with
RW> intervocalic [th] that can be marked as non-native (and 5 of these are
RW> clearly derivative).  You say that there are hundreds of these words in the
RW> language (and so there are, if not thousands).  This makes one point quite
RW> clear.  While there may be quite a large number of loan words in English,
RW> the core vocabulary -- the most commonly used words -- remains primarily
RW> native.  Thus a search of 6318 lemmata with over 800 occurrences in a
RW> corpus of over 6 million words turns up only 15 (10 if you eliminate
RW> derivatives) of these lemmata.

I'm not sure this elaborate demonstration was necessary. Nobody disputes that
the pattern exists in words of OE origin. Nor is it any secret that non-OE
words are less frequent in basic vocabulary than in the lexicon at large.

RW> This further suggests that the knowledge of many of the lemmata with
RW> intervocalic [th] is a function of vocabulary size.  The larger one's
RW> vocabulary the more such lemmata (not simply as an absolute, but as a
RW> percentage of the total) one is likely to know.  Vocabulary size is also
RW> correlated with educational level.  Hence by the time that one has acquired
RW> a large number of such lemmata, one is likely to be sufficiently educated
RW> to realize that such words are loans.  Poorly educated native speakers are
RW> not likely to realize that these words are loans.  They may even
RW> mispronounce them; but then, dictionaries are not written (nor often
RW> consulted) by native speakers of this educational level.  Thus my test of
RW> the pronunciation of these words may not be entirely accurate, since I am
RW> relying on my own pronunciation and on the pronunciation given by the
RW> dictionary.  As a turnabout, if you have evidence that native speakers
RW> regularly mispronounce these words because they don't know that they are
RW> loans, that would be germane.

I'm puzzled by you asking me for this evidence. As I understand your position,
you are claiming that there is a single phoneme, say /th/, with a realization
rule that says (among other things) that /th/ is realized as [dh]
intervocalically, except in certain exceptional words. Only the more educated
and literate speakers may realize that these exceptional words are loans.
(Surely, however, this is not a function of the number of such words in one's
vocabulary, but of things one reads or is taught.) Meanwhile, how do we know
that children and the less educated actually formulate the rule this way? If
they did, one would expect that errors consisting of pronouncing [dh]
intervocalically in words which should have [th] would be common. I don't
recall any such tendency from my experience as a native speaker of English, but
surely it's you that should be looking for such evidence.

By the way, 6318 words is a pretty basic vocabulary. And your list doesn't
include some words (arithmetic, ether, various personal names) that were part
of my vocabulary and that of all my contemporaries by the age of 10.

RW> The best evidence that the pattern is created by rule by the speakers of
RW> the language is the fact that the pattern exists.  For if there is a
RW> pattern in a language, synchronically it must be created by its speakers
RW> because that is the only place that language comes from.  If the pattern is
RW> not created by rule, then it is simple coincidence.

No, this is where you go wrong. The pattern has been created by historical
changes in the language. That is what creates the distribution of [dh] and [th]
that is the input to each speaker's language-learning task. There is no general
principle that speakers must recognize (consciously or unconsciously) any such
pattern, or make use of it in their rule-governed language behaviour.

RW> You said above that

RC>>    The rest of your post is entirely dependent on the further
RC>>    assumption that native speakers of modern English (in general,
RC>>    not just linguists) distinguish "foreign" from "native" words,
RC>>    and that the words I listed with /th/ in voiced environments
RC>>    are marked as "foreign". Since I don't share this assumption,
RC>>    ...

RW> You are saying that this pattern can't be based on the fact that words in
RW> English with intervocalic [th] are overwhelmingly loan words because the
RW> speakers of the language are unaware that these are loans.  As I mentioned
RW> above, this is not just a weak argument, it is a spurious one.  It may be
RW> true that most speakers do not know that these are loans, but that is
RW> irrelevant to the phonemic analysis of the language.  Were it not, then
RW> most linguistic analyses would have no validity because speakers of a
RW> language are in general woefully ignorant of the linguistic mechanisms of
RW> their language.

Actually, I am arguing that English speakers do not consider words like
"author", "Ethel", or "method" to be unusual in any way. Your only basis for
disagreement seems to be that your single-phoneme analysis requires them to be
marked as exceptions. Other evidence one might imagine, such as deviant
morphophonemic behaviour, acquisition difficulties, or the existence of more
"nativized" variants, appears to be entirely lacking.

Excuse me. I'm tired, and I see there are at least a dozen paragraphs left.
I'll snip them for now, and perhaps we can return to them another time, if this
has not drifted too far off-topic for IE.

Ross Clark