minimal pairs (was: PIE e/o Ablaut)

[Stanley Friesen]

At 03:33 PM 3/28/00 +0100, Larry Trask wrote:

>There is one minimal pair that works for most of my British students:

>         'assure' / 'azure'

>But this doesn't work at all in my American accent, since I stress
>'azure' on the first syllable -- a pronunciation that invokes giggles
>or scowls from my students.

Also, in my variant of American, I actually use a different vowel in the
last syllable. (Syllabic-r in the first, a short 'oo' sound in the second).

>Clearly, the choice of [esh] or [ezh] cannot be governed by rule.
>In fact, there is probably no more economical way to account for
>the distribution of these two sounds than to give lists of the
>words containing them.  This observation is enough to establish
>thet they must be distinct phonemes -- even if we have no minimal
>pairs.

And this is why I maintain /o/ and /e/ are distinct phonemes in PIE as
reconstructed.  There is no *rule* for predicting them, unless one uses the
very presence of /o/ to infer some conditioning factor (which is circular).

>>  [PR]

>> Could you name a "best text on phonology", and cite a relevant definition of
>> phoneme from it?

>I suggest the following:

>Francis Katamba (1989), An Introduction to Phonology, London: Longman.
>pp. 22-23.

Thanks.  My library is in such disarray I just couldn't find the right books.

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com