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

[Tom Zurinskas]

I see your point, although a "long e" isn't usually thought of as a schwa.

How about when different pronunciations of a word cause changes of meaning, like homonyms, e.g. pronouncing "caught" the same as "cot".  Would that not be a "phonemic" change?  I think so.  However, the meaning has not changed, just the pronunciation; just the phonemes.

So I prefer the simple original definition of phoneme as a basic speech sound, not getting into "meaning".  The "meaning" of words is a step beyond.  For example, someone could say "Just great" and mean exactly the opposite.

Between "sun" and "sung" I would say there is an extra "g" sound there in "sung"; Perhaps diminished but surely there, no?  And if you put it in a sentence "I've sung a song" the "g" pops out stongly.

Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
see truespel.com













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> Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2009 12:21:24 +0800
> From: strangeguitars at GMAIL.COM
> Subject: Re: 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: Randy Alexander
> Subject: Re: All 40 USA English phonemes (Was Re: Eggcorn? "warn">
> "worn")
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 2:29 AM, Tom Zurinskas wrote:
>> My bad. I've guess I must have reversed them.
>
> Good that you're admitting this.
>
>> What amazes me is that folks call these two n's different phonemes and yet they think schwa is one phoneme when it is in reality many.
>
> A phoneme is the smallest unit of speech sound that affects *meaning*
> in a word. So /n/ and /ng/ are separate phonemes because "sun" and
> "sung" have different meanings.
>
> The different realizations of the schwa don't affect meaning. You can
> say "believe" with the first syllable realized as /bee/ or /buh/ or
> /bih/, without changing the meaning of the word.
>
> --
> Randy Alexander
> Jilin City, China
> My Manchu studies blog:
> http://www.bjshengr.com/manchu
>
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