minimal pairs (was: PIE e/o Ablaut)

[Rick Mc Callister]

	I haven't seen much in the way of dialect differences with dh/th
but a possible anomaly is <blythe> which in most of the US I've heard
pronounced /blayTH/ but in the South [south of the /griysi-griyzi/ line] I
usually hear it as /blayDH/. I've heard /wIDH/ as an allophone of /wITH/
<with> in many places in the US and off the top of my head can't pin it
down to one place.

[snip]

>These are morphophonemic variants.  One method of forming verbs
>from nouns in English is by voicing a final unvoiced spirant.

>   noun (adj.)          verb

[snip]

	Why the exception for pronouns, pronominal adjectives/deictics?

>In summary, if you find [dh] in initial position in a native
>English word it tells you that the word is a pronoun or a deictic
>word (this, that, thou, then, there).  If you find [th] in a
>voiced environment in English this screams that the word is a
>loan ([insert here list of loan words given above]).  If you find
>[dh] in final position it tells you that the word is part of a
>noun-verb or a singular-plural pair.  What is needed to show that
>[th] and [dh] are distinct phonemes is a clear example where they
>mark an arbitrary distinction in a non-contrastive environment
>that is completely independent of the environment or any rule.

>Bob Whiting
>whiting at cc.helsinki.fi

Rick Mc Callister
W-1634
Mississippi University for Women
Columbus MS 39701