Return of the minimal pairs

[Robert Whiting]

On Thu, 10 May 2001, Larry Trask wrote:

> --On Sunday, May 6, 2001 2:29 pm +0300 Robert Whiting
> <whiting at cc.helsinki.fi> wrote:

>> To make it clear what my statement was about:  My entire point was that
>> [T] and [D] do not contrast in initial position in English.  My
>> statement was not about whether [T] and [D] are phonemes in English or
>> not.  The two are not necessarily related ([T] and [D] can still be
>> phonemes even if they don't contrast in some environments).

> OK; I'll bite.  I will argue that [T] and [D] *do* contrast in initial
> position in English.  It is merely that we happen to have no good minimal
> pairs for /T/ and /D/ in the language at present -- a completely different
> matter.

> To begin with, 'thigh' and 'thy' are a perfect minimal pair, *if* we accept
> that 'thy' is a word of modern English -- which you may not want to accept.

I'm perfectly happy to accept 'thy' as a ModE word.  But 'thigh' and 'thy'
are as perfect a minimal pair as German 'Kuhchen' and 'Kuchen' or
'Tauchen' and 'tauchen'.  If [T] and [D] contrast in 'thigh' and 'thy',
then so do [c,] and [x] in German.

> But there are a number of near-minimal pairs:

>   this / thistle
>   they / Thalia (also 'theta' in US accents)
>   that / thatch
>   these / thesis
>   thus / thumb
>   though / Thor

> The absence of minimal pairs is a historical accident, no more.  I have
> come across an actress with the first name 'Thandy'.  I see no reason to
> suppose her friends would hesitate to call her 'Than', with /T/, producing
> a perfect minimal pair with 'than' (strong form).

It is not a minimal pair as long as there is a morpheme boundary involved.
Unless, of course, you claim that morpheme boundaries are not phonological
conditions.  And every one of your near minimal pairs involves a morpheme
boundary after [D].

> The point is not whether minimal pairs exist.  The point is whether the
> distribution of [T] and [D] can be stated purely in terms of phonological
> environments.  Since no such distributional rule exists, /T/ and /D/
> contrast in word-initial position, in spite of the lack of minimal pairs.

You stick by your contention that morpheme boundaries are not phonological
conditions then?

> The observation that initial [D] occurs only in "grammatical" words and
> initial [T] only in "lexical" words is just that: an observation.

Quite true.  But the observation that morphemes are units of meaning is,
I think, more than an observation.  It is a basic principle of how human
language works.  Duality of patterning says that morphemes are made up of
phonemes and that morphemes have meaning (iconically, indexically, or
symbolically) but that phonemes do not have any inherent meaning.  Initial
[D] in English is a morpheme because it has meaning associated with it.
Admittedly, it is grammatical meaning rather than lexical meaning, but
meaning nonetheless.

> It is not, so far as I can see, a rule of English phonology.

No, the fact that these are all function words is not particularly
phonologically significant.  The fact that they all begin with a
functional morpheme is.

> As an observation, it is on a par with the observation that the
> diphthong /oi/ never occurs in native English words, but only in
> borrowed words.

But is the diphthong /oi/ a morpheme?  What morphemic function do you
claim it has?

> If we English-speakers had first encountered Greek a couple of millennia
> later than we did, is there any reason to suppose that we would shrink from
> calling a certain Greek letter 'thelta' -- with /D/ -- instead of 'delta'?
> Or from extending this word to the mouth of a river?

If I had a brother, would he like mayonnaise?  If the universe didn't work
the way it does, would it work some other way?  Are questions about the
way things might be applicable to the way things are?

What you need to establish your point is not answers to questions like
"What would the world be like if Napoleon had conquered Russia?" but an
example of an initial [D] in English that is not a deictic or a pronoun
(i.e., does not begin with the pronominal/deictic morpheme).  It doesn't
even have to contrast with a word with initial [T].  Any word that begins
with [D] in which the [D] is not a morpheme would be sufficient to justify
your claim that the fact that all words in English that begin with [D] are
pronouns or deictics is mere coincidence and that the distribution of
initial [T] and [D] is not predictable by any phonological rule.

> By the way, is everybody happy that 'thus' is beyond question a grammatical
> word, and not a lexical word?

I have no problem with 'thus'.  It is as much a grammatical word as
'hence' or 'so', and it is clearly a deictic.  I have more problem with
'though' as a deictic, which I think is a borderline case.

> Take another case.  It is extremely difficult to find minimal pairs for
> [esh] and [ezh] in *any* position -- and all the pairs I can think of
> involve involve either proper names of foreign origin or obscure Scrabble
> words.  Would anybody therefore want to argue that [esh] and [ezh] are not
> two distinct phonemes -- just because we have no good minimal pairs, or
> just because the second occurs only in words of foreign origin?  If not,
> why should theta and eth be treated differently?

But whether [T] and [D] are separate phonemes is not the issue.  I thought
I had at least made that much clear.  Have you not had your second cup of
coffee yet?  Since you quoted my statement to this effect at the opening
of your posting, I don't see how else you could have missed it.  So any
arguments about whether lack of contrasts proves lack of phonemicity will
not be entertained because in the long run, there is no such thing as
"proof" that two sounds are not phonemes any more than there is "proof"
that two languages are not related.  One can only say that the evidence
that they are is inadequate.  So arguments about the lack of contrasts of
[S] and [Z] and whether this affects their phonemic status are completely
irrelevant to whether initial [T] and [D] contrast in English.

> Finally, I note that /n/ and [eng] *really* do not contrast in word-initial
> position in English, even though they contrast elsewhere.  The case of
> theta and eth does not appear to me to be similar.

No, it is not similar at all.  [eng] is prohibited phonotactically from
appearing in initial position in English (except in loan words; we've done
this before).  In this instance, [eng] behaves like a cluster rather than
a single segment.

Bob Whiting
whiting at cc.helsinki.fi