Return of the minimal pairs

[Stanley Friesen]

At 11:28 AM 5/24/01 +0100, Larry Trask wrote:

>Let me clarify this.  The point I was trying to make is this: not everything
>which is *true* of English is linguistically significant.  ...

How true.

>Take another case or two.  The rules governing the possible word-initial
>consonant clusters in English clearly permit the initial clusters /skl-/
>and /gj-/ (second = US /gy-/).  ..., and the obsolescent and
>possibly expressive word 'gewgaw' -- 'obsolescent', because my students
>don't know it.

Hmm, I do not pronounce this with /gj/.  But perhaps because it *is*
obsolescent, and my pronunciation comes only from seeing it in writing.  (I
pronounce it goo-gah);

>And I was arguing that the seeming absence of initial [D] in English
>lexical items is likewise a historical accident, and not a significant fact
>about English phonology.

This seems likely to me, at least in most dialects.  One post just
distributed suggests that in at least one Australian dialect /D/ and /T/
are still allophones.

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May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at friesen.net