FW: Minimal pairs

[ronbutters at AOL.COM]

I don't see any problem extending the use of the term "minimal pairs" to characterize stress, pitch, and juncture. Phonologically,

REGular rank faculty

differs minimally from

regular RANK faculty.

However, as Larry Horn noted, there is considerable difference semanically & morphologically (I'd add syntactically as well).
------Original Message------
From: Janet Marting
Sender: ADS-L
To: ADS-L
ReplyTo: ADS-L
Sent: Oct 18, 2008 9:11 AM
Subject: [ADS-L] FW: Minimal pairs

To me, they seem to be examples of
resyllabification/suprasegmentals/pause/juncture, features of intonation.
Minimal pairs was one difference in a phone/sound that appears in the same
position (e.g. sip-dip-lip-tip).

Jinny Marting



-----Original Message-----
From: Joel S. Berson [mailto:Berson at ATT.NET]
Sent: Friday, October 17, 2008 1:15 PM
Subject: Minimal pairs

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.)

Joel

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