"Monday"

[Joel S. Berson]

At 7/29/2012 11:15 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
>On Jul 29, 2012, at 10:54 AM, W Brewer wrote:
>
> > Laurence Horn wrote: <<< I'd have used a barred-i if I knew the ascii for
> > it, but for me, unstressed barred-i and unstressed schwa are
> > basically indistinguishable.>>>
> > WB: Barred-eye should be an allophone of schwa before [n].
> Alveolar raising.
> >
>But in other environments they supposedly contrast.  In Gleason's
>old _Intro to Descriptive Linguistics_ that I was weaned on in the
>early 60s, there was a purported minimal pair, "Rosa's" (with schwa)
>vs. "roses" (with barred-i).  They always sounded like homophones to
>me, probably because they're both totally unstressed, although I
>certainly contrast them in the Bolinger way:  "No, I said "ros-uhz",
>not "rose-izz".  (Or George-uhz vs. Georg-izz, for "Georgia's" vs.
>"George's", which did come up when I was hanging out with both G.
>Lakoff and G. Green; if you cited a sentence from "Georg{e/ia}'s
>paper", I'd have had to ask whether you meant Georgia or
>George.)  For me, these are just spelling pronunciations.

If I knew what allophone was, I'd probably disagree.  :-)  Yes, no,
they're two phonemes for me.  I distinguish "Rosa's"and "roses", and
"Georgia's" and George's" -- and I swear the former was a minimal
pair in a linguistics course I took centuries ago, and was called
"Descriptive Linguistics", and probably used the same book that Larry
cites, and nyah! nyah! was at Harvard,* I distinguish "minster" and
"Munster".  Or are the vowels there both stressed, and everyone distinguishes?

* But then, I've been accused heretofore of being pretentious.

Joel

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