dot-calm

[Laurence Horn]

At 10:42 AM -0500 1/2/07, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:
>On 1/2/07, Mark A. Mandel <mamandel at ldc.upenn.edu> wrote:
>>
>>It doesn't take a minimal pair to decide that two phones are different
>>phonemes. English voiced and voiceless <th> (/th, dh/) should be distinct in
>>any analysis even without such marginal minimal pairs as "thy/thigh" and
>>"this'll/thistle". So would /sh, zh/ (do those two have any minimal pairs at
>>all?).
>
>There's "mesher" vs. "measure", "Asher" vs. "azure", "Aleutian" vs.
>"allusion", "cash" vs. "cazh" (short for "casual"), "shush" vs.
>"zhuzh" (a Queer Eye-ism), etc.
>

One more, although I acknowledge it's a bit of a stretch.  If you
pronounce "Raj" (as in the name for the British tenure as colonial
rulers of India, or the hypocoristic of one of our current grad
students) with the typical hyperforeignism as [raZ], it contrasts
minimally with [raS], as in either Rosh [Hashanah] (on one
pronunciation), or--even better--one of the four primordial syllables
from which all language can be reconstructed, according to the
Japhetological theory of the prominent Marxist linguist N. Ya. Marr,
later denounced by Stalin himself (Stalin's 1951 anti-Marrist
monograph _Marxism and Linguistics_ was, believe it or not, required
reading when I was an undergraduate linguistics major).  The other
three ur-syllables, if you're keeping score, are "sal", "ber", and
"yon".  (As if it weren't obvious.)

LH

P.S. He's sometimes referred to as "N. Y. Marr", but he was no New Yorker.

P.P.S.  Of course in the original, the vowel in "rosh" is rounded,
but then the consonant in "raj" in the original is an affricate.  I
did say it was a bit of a stretch.)

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