th/dh: minimal pairs

[Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen]

On Mon, 3 Apr 2000, Robert Whiting wrote:

> [Quote from earlier posting:]

>>> Most people would not insist on phonemic status for both [th]
>>> and [dh] in English on the basis of this minimal pair
[...] because
>>> otherwise the sounds are in complementary distribution, [dh]
>>> occuring in voiced environments and in deictic words and
>>> pronouns, [th] otherwise.

Stanley Friesen <sarima at friesen.net>:]
>> Personally, I have trouble with this analysis.  "Deictic words
>> and pronouns" is NOT what I would call a phonetic condition, so
>> I would rule it out as a possible rule for governing allophones.

Robert Whiting:
> []   The question becomes how
> much grammatical information do you allow to affect the
> phonology. [...]

This is an illustrative discussion. Basically, it boils down to asking
what the term phoneme means. And if you have only phonemes and
non-phonemes in a black-and-white world, and everybody is at liberty to
draw the line as he pleases, you are not likely to reach any kind of
agreement. But as soon as you enter the world of nuances and degrees, you
can soon agree on HOW close English th and dh are to being phonemically
identical. That is the objective stuff progress is made of. There are
similar impossible, and so eternal, discussions about the placing of
syllable boundaries, about syllabicity vs. lack of it, the number of vowel
phonemes demanded by a language, or even same-language : dialect :
different-language. Such matters must be viewed on a scale to make any
sense beyond the reason for quarrels.

Jens