All 40 USA English phonemes (Was Re: Eggcorn? "warn" > "worn")

[Laurence Horn]

At 7:27 PM -0600 2/11/09, Scot LaFaive wrote:
>  >Your looking for the "ng" phoneme.  That's treated in truespel as merely n
>and g.  Granted the n is velar rather than alveolar, but that kind of thing
>goes on with other phonemes so it's not biggie.
>
>So are you saying that /ng/ is not a separate phoneme and instead is
>pronounced /n/ then /g/??
>
>Scot

I think he's saying it's pronounced [N] and then
[g].  (For him, [N] isn't a separate phoneme,
just a velar allophone of /n/ that shows up
before velars; see his comment below.)  Of
course, he claims that there is a phonetic [g] in
"sing", and you're not going to convince him
otherwise, so he sees "sing" and "sink" being
entirely parallel, but if you alter his
"analysis" into a slightly more abstract version
in which the /g/ velarizes the /n/ to an [N] and
then deletes, you basically have a Chomsky &
Halle (1968) process theory of velar nasals.  (A
similar analysis is plausible for nasal vowels in
French.)  In other words, it's not implausible as
a morphophonemic account, although that's not
what he's proposing it as.  This sort of reminds
me of those debates about the abstractness of
phonological solutions back in the late 1960s.

LH

>
>On 2/11/09, Tom Zurinskas <truespel at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>  -----------------------
>>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>  Poster:       Tom Zurinskas <truespel at HOTMAIL.COM>
>>  Subject:      Re: All 40 USA English phonemes (Was Re: Eggcorn? "warn" >
>>               "worn")
>>
>>
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>  Your looking for the "ng" phoneme.  That's treated in truespel as merely n
>>  and g.  Granted the n is velar rather than alveolar, but that kind of thing
>>  goes on with other phonemes so it's not biggie.  As mentioned before, the
>>  real biggie is the vowel sound before the velar n.
>>
>>
>>  Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
>>  see truespel.com
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>  ----------------------------------------
>>  > Date: Wed, 11 Feb 2009 11:46:17 -0500
>>  > From: nwhitman at AMERITECH.NET
>>  > Subject: All 40 USA English phonemes (Was Re: Eggcorn? "warn"> "worn")
>>  > To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>>  >
>>  > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>  -----------------------
>>  > Sender: American Dialect Society
>>  > Poster: Neal Whitman
>>  > Subject: All 40 USA English phonemes (Was Re: Eggcorn? "warn"> "worn")
>>  >
>>
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>  >
>>  > I think a phoneme is missing. Am I wrong? Dang, I know it's something;
>>  it's
>>  > on the tip of my tongue.
>>  >
>>  > Neal
>>  >
>>  > ----- Original Message -----
>>  > From: "Tom Zurinskas"
>>  > To:
>>  > Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2009 2:54 PM
>>  > Subject: Re: Eggcorn? "warn"> "worn"
>>  >
>>  >
>>  >> Here's a good sentence to use that I made up containing all 40 USA
>>  English
>>  >> phonemes.
>>  >>
>>  >> That quick beige fox jumped in the air over each thin dog. Look out, I
>>  >> shout, for he's foiled you again.
>>  >
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