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

[Laurence Horn]

At 7:08 PM -0500 2/14/09, RonButters at AOL.COM wrote:
>Nonsense. Elementary contrary evidence is found in scores of minimal pairs,
>e.g., "thin" and "thing."
>Allophones by definition do not contrast in minimal pairs.

Ah, but we've been around and around that block with Tom Z., Ron.  He
"hears" a final /g/ in "thing", which thus conditions the shift from
alveolar to velar (or vice versa, depending on the day), besides
which he claims there's a phonemic vowel difference between the two,
although he concedes there isn't any for "sun" vs. "sung", but then
that's just a minor detail his system doesn't really need to worry
about).  Nothing we say is going to convince him otherwise.

LH

>
>In a message dated 2/13/09 2:51:03 PM, truespel at HOTMAIL.COM writes:
>
>
>>  The front or velar n and back or alveolar n are just allophones of one
>>  another.
>>
>
>
>
>
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