Return of the minimal pairs

[Larry Trask]

--On Thursday, May 17, 2001 2:17 pm +0300 Robert Whiting
<whiting at cc.helsinki.fi> wrote:

> 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.

No.  The German contrast depends crucially on the presence of a morpheme
boundary.  The English one does not.

[on my minimal pair 'Than' (for 'Thandy') and 'than']

> It is not a minimal pair as long as there is a morpheme boundary involved.

But there isn't.

> Unless, of course, you claim that morpheme boundaries are not phonological
> conditions.

I do not.

[on my list of near-minimal pairs like 'this' / 'thistle']

> And every one of your near minimal pairs involves a morpheme
> boundary after [D].

Certainly not.

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

No.  I never said any such thing.  It is beyond dispute that morpheme
boundaries can have phonological consequences.  Accordingly, it seems to be
in order for our theories of phonology to take morpheme boundaries into
account.

[LT]

>> 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.

I'm sorry, but I must disagree flatly.  I have no problem with grammatical
morphemes, or even with semantically and functionally empty morphemes.  But
I cannot see that word-initial [D] is ever a morpheme at all.

First, word-initial [D] has no recognizable meaning or function.

Second, if we segment it away as a morpheme, then we are left with all
those unanalyzed residues like <-is>, <-en>, <-ere> and <-e>.  These must
now also be analyzed as morphemes, or as sequences of morphemes, and the
position is impossible.  Remember, a morpheme boundary has to have a
morpheme on each side of it -- not just on one side.

It is reasonable to take initial [D] as a *marker* of closed-class
membership, perhaps.  But it is not reasonable to take it as a morpheme.

> 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.

I've just denied this.

[on my /oi/ example]

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

It is not a morpheme.  It is merely a marker -- in this case, a marker of
non-native origin, as is the consonant [ezh].

[on my hypothetical example of a Greek 'dhelta']

> 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.

Indeed.  Let me clarify my point.

Word-initial [eng] is prohibited by English phonology and is wholly
unpronounceable by most English-speakers.  When we borrow foreign words or
names containing initial [eng], it is always eliminated in one way or
another.

But initial [D] is not unpronounceable in English at all, and I cannot see
that it is prohibited by English phonology.  So, what we need as a test
case is a noun or a name with initial [D] borrowed into English from a
language that permits it.

Unfortunately, there appear to be few such languages, and English seldom
borrows anything from most of them.  But I've pinned my hopes on Greek, the
one contemporary language which both permits initial [D] and lends words
into English.  But Greek is not ideal, because of our long-standing
tradition of converting Greek words and names into English by conventions
which are more appropriate to classical Greek than to the modern language.
The chief exception is food and drink, in which modern Greek pronunciations
are usually the basis of the English form, as with 'souvlaki' and
'tzatziki'.  So, what we need is for the Greeks to come up with a prince of
a dish which we English-speakers will delightedly take up -- and which has
a name starting with [D].  Sadly, Greek chefs have not so far obliged us on
this matter -- at least as far as I can think.  C'mon, Greek chefs: we need
you! ;-)

[on my example of no good minimal pairs for [esh] and [ezh]]

> 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.

I did not miss your point, and I was not suggesting that [T] and [D] do not
contrast at all.  I was merely making the quite different point that an
absence of minimal pairs is not at all the same thing as an absence of
contrast.

Let me close with another example.  English freely permits the cluster /ts/
in certain positions, notably finally, as in 'wits' and 'cats'.  But,
traditionally, it does not permit this cluster initially.  However, lots of
other languages do, and we have borrowed a number of words which have
initial /ts/ (cluster or affricate) in the source language.  What happens?

In my experience, educated speakers have little difficulty pronouncing
initial /ts/ in words like 'tsunami', 'Zeitgeist' and 'tsar'.  But most
uneducated speakers either do not use these words or do not pronounce them
with /ts/, which they find difficult.  I well recall the agonized struggles
of a pub quizmaster who was trying to read the word 'tsunami' off his
question sheet. He simply couldn't do it, and his attempts were so
disastrous that we, the contestants, couldn't even guess what word he was
trying to say.

On the other hand, 'tsetse fly' seems to be very widely pronounced with
initial /ts/ by Americans -- though not by Brits, who invariably call the
creature a 'tetsy fly'.  The American word 'tsuris' seems to offer no
difficulty to those speakers who use it -- though not all do.  And
everybody I know pronounces 'tzatziki' with initial /ts/ -- though my
British dictionaries assure me that initial /t/ is also very common in
Britain, even in educated speech.  (I've never heard it.)

I conclude, therefore, that initial /ts/ is still not firmly a part of
English phonology, but that it is beginning to penetrate our phonology.
Interestingly, the word that seems to be most widely used with initial /ts/
is 'tzatziki' -- the name of an item of Greek cuisine.  Well done, those
Greek chefs!  (All right, I know the name is really of Turkish origin, but
it was the Greeks who passed it on to us.)

So, we need one or two comparable test cases with initial [D].  I'm waiting.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk

Tel: (01273)-678693 (from UK); +44-1273-678693 (from abroad)
Fax: (01273)-671320 (from UK); +44-1273-671320 (from abroad)