Minimal pairs

[Laurence Horn]

At 1:15 PM -0400 10/17/08, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>My minimal instruction in minimal pairs (I took one semester of
>comparative linguistics) taught me that "light-house keeper" and
>"light house-keeper" were one (was one? were two?).  I now offer
>another (here, since I no longer remember the name of the author of
>the textbook, who included in it a solicitation of minimal pairs from
>his readers):
>
>"small-business woman" and "small business-woman".
>
>(I do actually intend to say the former in conversation today.)
>
One difference is that the members of your pair are often pronounced
(e.g. by me) the same, while the classic one is distinguished
suprasegmentally.  So that would make yours a minimal pair in its
morphology and semantics, but not phonologically.

I just heard a commercial for Optimum Business that referred
repeatedly to "small business owners", and there was really no way
(except for context, of course) to tell which bracketing was intended.

LH

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