minimal pairs are not always there

[proto-language]

Dear John and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Dr. John E. McLaughlin" <mclasutt at brigham.net>
Sent: Thursday, April 13, 2000 11:49 PM

[PR]

First let me thank you for your thoughtful and interesting response.

<snip>

> [Pat Ryan]

> I would have to say that you are wrong.  There is no phoneme in any language
> which has not been established as a component of a minimal pair.

> [JM]

> This is not true, Pat, although I'm not ready to throw minimal pairs out
> with the bath water as Robert seems to be.  I think that you truly have to
> consider teeth/teethe to be a minimal pair.

[PR]

Is not the question being obscured by considering synchrony and diachrony
simultaneously?

I am perfectly willing to acknowledge that 'teeth' and 'teethe' had, in the
*past*, an identical voiceless fricative in root-final position, and that
only subsequent to the feature +Voice being transferred to it with the
suppression of the following final vowel, did it *become* voiced; but, at
*present*, the difference between the voiced and unvoiced fricatives signals
a semantic difference if minimal, i.e. the difference between a noun and a
verb. If I apply the same rationale to the question of *e/*o-Ablaut, I would
be forced to concede that both *e and *o were phonemic in earliest IE
(since, broadly, the alternation signals an analogous minimal semantic
[grammatical] difference), which I am not prepared to do at this time.

So, I would admit that 'teeth/teethe' does *not* establish two phonemes
(/th/, */dh/), and would have to say that /th/ has a historically
conditioned allophone of /dh/; 'historically', because obviously the
sequence CVC(e) does not currently condition voicing in the consonant before
the muted (e): e.g. 'safe'.

On the other hand, you have furnished below some examples that do, in my
opinion, establish /dh/ as an English phoneme: e.g. 'ether/either' on a
synchronic basis. The only example with which I would have a real problem is
'sooth/soothe' since 'sooth' in the sense of 'soft' is obsolescent.

[JM]

> Historically, yes, these two
> forms were not (the 'e' on the end of teethe was a phonetic element which
> put the voiceless /th/ in a voicing environment, but synchronically, there
> is no distinction between the two except for the final voicing of th/dh (the
> lengthening of [i] in 'teethe' is due to the voicing of dh, it does not
> cause the voicing).  But there are several good minimal pairs in (at least
> American) English for th/dh--ether/either, thigh/thy, wreath/wreathe,
> sooth/soothe, etc.

> However, because of the very complex morphophonemics of Central Numic and
> the historical changes that have further obscured them in Comanche, this
> language is full of pairs that look very much like minimal pairs on the
> surface, but are not.  For example, [papi] 'head' and [pavi] 'older brother'
> look very much like a minimal pair.  However, they represent /pa=pi/ and
> /papi/ respectively.  (The = is a phoneme in Comanche that prevents the
> lenition of a following stop.  It is fully justified on morphophonemic
> grounds without relying on the historical presence of /n/ in Panamint and
> Shoshoni which is cognate.)  There are a bundle of these:  [ata] 'different'
> /a=ta/ versus [ara] 'uncle' /ata/, etc.

[PR]

In my opinion, in defining a phoneme, we are only justified on operating
with synchronic data.

[JM]

> On the issue of requiring minimal pairs, 2Panamint is a good counterexample.
> In languages where typical roots are monosyllabic (like English), one may
> find many minimal pairs, but even in English, where there are 7392 possible
> one syllable words of the structure (C)V(C), there are only 1729 of these
> that actually occur in my dialect of English.  For example, the largest
> "minimal set" consists of the frame [_ir].  I have 'peer, tier, beer, deer,
> gear, cheer, jeer, fear, sear, sheer, hear, veer, mere, near, leer, rear,
> we're, year'.  Notice that [kir], [thir], [dhir], [zir], [zhir], [ngir], and
> [hwir] do not exist.

[PR]

We seem to be proceeding from very different outlooks. To me, that there is
no */hwir/ is not material to the question.

It suffices that pairs like /hwer/ ('where') and /wer/ ('wear') exist. But,
I believe we must have at least *one* minimal pair for a phoneme to be
established.

[JM]

> There are also no words in my dialect that start with a [g] and end in a
> voiceless alveopalatal affricate.  In Panamint, the typical root structure is
> CV(X)CV (X is a gemination marker, an /h/, or a nasal).  The bisyllabic
> structure of the typical root means that minimal pairs are far less likely
> than they are in English.  For example, there is a minimal pair tykka (y is
> barred i) 'eat'/nykka 'dance'/-pykka 'suffer' (this one, however, never
> occurs without a noun incorporated).  That's the largest one I've ever been
> able to find (and -pykka is an iffy inclusion since it never occurs in
> isolation).  There's no kykka, kwykka, ?ykka, sykka, hykka, tsykka, mykka,
> ngykka, ngwykka, jykka, or wykka.  With all the possibilities of root
> structure in Panamint, there just aren't many minimal pairs.  The phonemic
> inventory has had to be determined in other, more subtle ways, such as using
> permissible initial segments, morphophonemic alternations, etc.

[PR]

As you know from what I have written above, I cannot accept this.

> [Robert Whiting]

> The distribution by rule takes precedence.  Take the English > minimal pair:
> 'thigh'  /  'thy'.  Most people would not insist on phonemic status for both
> [th] and [dh] in English on the basis of this minimal pair (although some
> would doubtless claim that there has been a phonemic split similar to what
> occurred with /s/ and /z/).

> [JM]

> I disagree with Robert on this one.  The evidence for establishing /th/ and
> /dh/ as separate phonemes is no worse than that for establishing /zh/, /ng/,
> and /oj/ as phonemes (depending on whether or not one considers diphthongs
> to be on the same footing as other phonemes in the language).  All phonemes
> do not have to be equally common, nor the evidence equally impressive.
> Patterns of morphophonemic, environmental, and unpredictability factors all
> point toward them being separate phonemes.  While the evidence for
> separating /th/ and /dh/ is not as overwhelming as the evidence separating
> /s/ and /z/, it is still enough to compel a separation on synchronic
> grounds.

[PR]

Essentially, I would agree.

> [PRp]

> What in Heaven's name is a "voiced environment"? What is environmentally
> voiced in 'bathe' as opposed to 'bath'?

> [JM]

> Robert's referring to a historically "voiced environment".  This is not
> appropriate evidence for synchronic phonemicization unless the phonological
> or morphophonological rules are still productive.

[PR]

With this I would fully agree.

> [Robert Whiting]

> Thus it is not only as Larry says "If the distribution of two sounds cannot
> be stated by rule, then they can't be assigned to a single phoneme," but
> also 'If the distribution of similar sounds can be stated by rule, then they
> can't be assigned to separate phonemes.'

> [JM]

> The distribution of /th/ and /dh/ cannot be determined by the assignment of
> a PHONOLOGICAL rule.  There is an archaic MORPHOPHONEMIC rule (make a noun
> into a verb by voicing a final /th/), but this is no longer productive,
> e.g., 'path'/*'pathe', 'math'/*'mathe'.  Even the intervocalic voicing of
> /th/ isn't always productive, e.g., path [th] and paths [dh], but path's
> [th].  These two phonemes are NOT predictable, cp. ether/either and
> thigh/thy.  No phonological or morphophonological rule can account for these
> pairs.  Using semantic criteria ('if it's a pronoun, then') doesn't cut it
> in a theoretical sense.

[PR]

Again, I agree.

Pat

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