minimal pairs (was: PIE e/o Ablaut)

[Ross Clark (FOA LING)]

[For obvious reasons I have considerably shortened this exchange]

[Topic I went through a good deal of first-year linguistics stuff and ended
with a conclusion -- you need data to do historical grammar -- which I guess
we can agree on]

<snip>
[Topic II - mental reality]

>RW>Realistic means based on realia -- things that actually exist
>RW>as opposed to mental constructs.

[RC]
>This is not sufficient to make any discrimination among
>linguistic descriptions. Any linguist of any theoretical
>persuasion will claim that their description is "based on"
>"things that actually exist".

[RW]
Any theorist will tell you that his theories are based on things
that actually exist.  The problem is that for any given set of
data there are virtually an infinite number of hypotheses that
will account for it.  Some will just be more plausible than
others.  However, it is usually not too difficult to see how far
beyond the data any particular theory has gone, and, more
important, whether it is falsifiable or not.

[RC]
>As linguists, I think we should simply admit that insofar as our
>synchronic descriptions are any more than mere transcription,
>they are attempts to capture some aspect of mental reality.

[RW]
I don't say that we shouldn't; in fact, I think we pretty much
have to.  What I say is that such a thing is presently beyond our
reach.  Until we can get inside the human mind, there is no way
to verify whether what we have captured is "mental reality" or
not.  It may be a useful model to explain certain things (like
Niels Bohr's planetary model of the atom) but it also may have
nothing to do with reality (like Niels Bohr's planetary model of
the atom).  I don't say that we shouldn't try to get there, only
that there is no direct road there presently available.  So
whether all our rules of synchronic grammar actually reflect
something that actually goes on in the mind (which is what I
assume you mean by "mental reality") is something that remains to
be seen.

[RC]
Although I don't think we're getting very far with this quasi-philosophical
discussion, it may be important in understanding our disagreement. You seem
to be more pessimistic than I am about knowing anything about what actually
goes on in speakers' minds.

[Snip preamble to Topic III - Grimm & Verner]

RW>But I can see that I shouldn't expect connections to be made when
RW>these connections have not been expressly stated.  So let's start
RW>again.  Grimm's Law says that certain PIE consonants shift in a
RW>certain way in Germanic.  But there are a large number of
RW>exceptions.  One exception is that unvoiced stops don't shift
RW>when the stop is the second part of a voiceless cluster (thus
RW>/sp/, /st/, and /sk/ remain unshifted).  However, even with this,
RW>there are still a large number of exceptions to Grimm's Law.
RW>Verner's Law says that when the PIE stress fell after the
RW>consonant then the consonant shifted in a different way.  So
RW>Verner's Law in effect *excludes* hundreds of Germanic words from
RW>the effects of Grimm's Law thereby producing a nice phonological
RW>generalization.

[RC]
>This is the most peculiar interpretation of Verner's Law I have
>ever seen. The fact is that Verner made it possible to *include*
>many words which had previously simply been sidelined as
>"exceptions".

[RW]
To include in what?  Certainly not Grimm's Law.  Verner's Law
justifies certain exceptions to Grimm's Law.  The consensus is
that Verner's Law operated after Grimm's Law (thus Grimm's Law
feeds Verner's Law by providing voiceless fricatives for it to
operate on).

[RC} But it provides them in *precisely* those cases which were previously
put aside as mere exceptions!

[RW]
 The words "in effect" above indicate that what I
said is not what actually happened, but rather that this is the
result that it produced.

So once again:  Grimm's Law says (inter alia) that PIE voiceless
stops become Germanic voiceless fricatives:

            PIE           Germ.

            *p             f
            *t             T
            *k             x

But considering the dental, PIE *t results in Germanic T, d, and
t.  Now T is the normal outcome of Grimm's Law; t is the result
of Grimm's Law not acting on the second member of a voiceless
cluster (Latin 'sto:', Goth. 'standan' "stand"; this sound is
"in actuality" excluded from the effect of Grimm's Law rather
than "in effect" excluded).  Until Verner discovered his law, d
was just an unexplained exception to Grimm's Law.  Verner's Law
is:

   [+fric., -voice] > [+voice, (±stop)] / [+voice, -accent] ___
   {+voice, #}
   (the notation (±stop) is included because this rule apparently
   also voiced PIE *s in this environment; for those who may not
   be able to read the 8-bit character, this is a "plus or minus"
   sign)

This rule explains the shift of PIE *t to Germanic d (Latin
'pater', Goth. 'fadar').  Although the actual rule has shifted
T to d (where T was the result of Grimm's Law), the effect is to
exclude this word from having to have the expected outcome
(*faTar) if only Grimm's Law had operated.  This is why I said
that *in effect* Verner's Law excludes this word from the effects
of Grimm's Law.  It doesn't actually exclude it from the
operation of Grimm's Law (otherwise the fricative wouldn't have
been there for Verner's Law to convert).

[RC] All your "in effect" seems to do is to take us back to the fact that
the end result ("effect") is the same whether we say (a) "Grimm's Law
applies, except in this list of words, where something else happens" or (b)
"Grimm's Law applies generally, followed by another sound change which
occurs under certain specifiable phonological conditions". The fact that (b)
is universally reckoned to be a scientific advance on (a) does not seem to
show up on your screen.

[Here we move toward Topic IV(The Original) -- English [T] and [D]]

>RW> This seems rather like asking what evidence I have for
>RW> Grimm's Law or Verner's Law other than hundreds of examples and
>RW> the fact that they provide a nice phonological generalization.

>RC>No, because you are not presenting this as a historical law. As
>RC>a historical explanation of why /th/ occurs in certain places and
>RC>/dh/ in others, it is not in dispute.

>RW>Historical law - historical explanation -- What's the difference
>RW>in your mind?

[RC]
>You misunderstood me. I was not proposing an antithesis.

[RW]
I'm sorry.  It rather sounded like you were.  But if there is no
antithesis, why is it a valid historical explanation but not a
valid historical law?

[RC] It's both. See below.

RW>What happened happened.  If the explanation can be
RW>stated as a rule and is not in dispute, what is the problem?

[RC}
>What I said was that the *historical* explanation of the
>distribution of [th] and [dh] in native English words was not in
>dispute. What we are arguing about is a *synchronic* account of
>[th] and [dh] in Modern English. This is why the comparison with
>Grimm/Verner was not appropriate.

[RW]
The point is that sound laws (changes) are historical events that
occur at a certain time in a certain language under certain
conditions.  Once the change goes to completion, that's it.  If a
word got missed by the change, it stays.  If new words that would
have undergone the change if they had been in the language when
it took place come into the language after the change, they
stay.  These words don't have to be loans; they could be new
coinings.  So if you know of any new coinings in English that
have intervocalic [T] (and aren't neologisms based on Greek or
Latin), I'd be happy to know.  Otherwise, if you find an English
word with intervocalic [T] there is about a 98% chance that it
is a loanword borrowed after the change.  And all loanwords that
came into the language after the change with intervocalic [T]
still have it.

[RC] I don't see how this is "the point" of anything that's gone before.

[RW]
So the further point is that sound laws (changes) that took place
long, long ago are still present (and significant) in the
language until some other change eliminates their effects.

[RC] No, the *effects* of long-ago sound changes may be observable in
languages for thousands of years, but whether the "sound laws (changes)" are
in any sense still in the language is what we are discussing.

[RW]
Therefore, you can't disqualify the sound patterns of the modern
language from being significant simply because they are based on
*historical* events that happened in the distant past.  The sound
law (change) that voiced intervocalic [T] in Old English is
qualitatively no different from Grimm's Law that operated in
Pre-Germanic to produce the [T] in the first place.

[RC] Of course. And I did nothing so sweeping as to "disqualify the sound
patterns of the modern language from being significant".

[RW]
So the *synchronic* pattern is the same as the historical
explanation.

[RC] I hope you don't mean this. The historical explanation is an
explanation *of* the synchronic pattern. If the two are the same thing, this
becomes unintelligible.

[RW] Native English words have intervocalic [D] (with a
few exceptions) and borrowed English words have intervocalic [T]
(if that's what they were borrowed with).

It seems to be very difficult for people to grasp the concept
that synchronic grammar and historical grammar have to have the
same result because they both describe the same entity (the
modern language as it is produced by its speakers).

[RC] I don't have any difficulty grasping it. What evidence do you have that
others do?

[RW]  The modern language is not produced by historical events, it is
produced by
its modern speakers.

[RC] Surely it is both, as is implicit in the historical explanations you've
been discussing, and indeed in what you go on to say:

[RW]  A knowledge of history is only useful to
help explain *why* modern speakers produce the language that they
do rather than some other or some previous version.  The modern
speakers tell us *what* they produce.  What modern speakers
produce and what historical explanations tell us to expect them
to produce must be the same thing, or else our historical
reconstruction must be wrong (because the native speakers of the
language can't be).  But neither the native speakers nor
historical explanations can tell us *how* they produce their
language.

[snip]

>RW> But ultimately, it is unimportant whether speakers can still
>RW> recognize foreign words after several centuries or not. The
>RW> pronunciation rules are marked in the lexicon.  The native
>RW> speaker learns these rules and follows them.  It is these rules
>RW> that produce the pattern, not the speaker's perception of the
>RW> words as native or non-native.

>RW> For other evidence that native speakers distinguish by rule
>RW> the [th] of loan words from the [dh] of native words I offer the
>RW> pattern created by the presence of intervocalic [th] and [dh] in
>RW> English words.

RC>This is not "other evidence". This *is* your evidence.

RW>Then my position is unassailable.

[RC]
>I think you should be worried about this. "Self-validating"
>might be another way of putting it.

[RW]
Are you now denying the existence of the pattern?  Or are you
still just saying that this pattern can't have any significance?
Because if the pattern is there, then this is not self-validation;
it is validation through evidence.

[RC] It is validation through evidence only of the existence of a certain
pattern in the distribution of [D] and [T] in a certain subset of English
words. As you've pointed out, there is a clear historical explanation for
this pattern. It is not validation for your particular account of how native
speakers produce this pattern.

>RW>As with Verner's Law, the fact that the rule by which the
>RW>exclusions are made is valid and leads to a valid generalization
>RW>is sufficient.

[RC]
>Not in the slightest like Verner's Law, as I've pointed out.
>Consider: For any pair of English phonemes (say /p/ and /b/) it
>is possible to extract a subset of the words in which they occur
>where the two are in "complementary distribution". (Say [p]
>initially and [b] medially, so we include pig, nibble and rubber,
>but exclude big, nipple and supper.) We then state that there is
>only one phoneme, but that the excluded words "follow a different
>rule". What principle would exclude such a ridiculous analysis?

[RW]
Surely the principle that the "different rule" would have to be
in direct conflict with (the opposite of) the first rule would
reveal that this analysis is self-contradictory.

[RC] Where does this principle come from?

[RW]t why make
your ridiculous analysis so complicated?  Why not just extract a
subset of English words that begin with /b/ and say that all
English words begin with /b/ and that all the excluded English
words "follow different rules"?  The fact that the different
rules must be in conflict with the original rule makes such an
analysis impossible because P and ~P ("a proposition and its
opposite" or "P and not-P") cannot both be true.  The principle
is known as contradiction or mutual exclusivity.

[RC] I really would suggest to you that you are much too quick (here and in
the other thread)to assume that your interlocutors are guilty of elementary
logical fallacies, rather than simply disagreeing with your views.

In the present instance, there is no logical contradiction, since the words
to which each rule applies would be marked in some way (the same way as your
[T] and [D] words must be marked as following "different rules").

Perhaps you wish to propose as a universal constraint that "rules which have
opposite effects may not, under any circumstances, co-exist in the same
grammar". You might be right, although I believe examples of just this have
been discussed in the (phonological) literature.

[RC]
But are you trying to say that you consider this to be in any way
parallel to saying that native English words have intervocalic
[D] and borrowed words have intervocalic [T]?  If so, then you
are clearly not even close to grasping what I have been talking
about.

[RC} You may be right. I'm beginning to realize that it would have been a
good idea to ask you much earlier to state clearly just what your "rules"
look like and how they are constrained to apply to certain words and not
others.

[snip]

RC>As I understand your position, you are claiming that there is a
RC>single phoneme, say /th/, with a realization rule that says
RC>(among other things) that /th/ is realized as [dh]
RC>intervocalically, except in certain exceptional words.

RW>Close.  I claim that there was once a single phoneme /th/ in
RW>English.  Then that this phoneme became voiced to [dh]
RW>intervocalically without creating any new contrasts (/th/ now
RW>has allophones [th, dh]).  Then that any words that came into the
RW>language with intervocalic [th] after this sound change operated
RW>retain [th] intervocalically (this is not necessarily restricted
RW>to loanwords; it could also include new coinings -- there just
RW>don't seem to be any with intervocalic [th]).  There is nothing
RW>particularly exceptional about words with intervocalic [th]
RW>except that the vast majority of them came into the language
RW>after the sound change.  There are a few native words with
RW>intervocalic [th] (for reasons that can be accounted for), but
RW>there are no loanwords that originally had intervocalic [th] that
RW>now have [dh].  This is exceptional, at least to the extent that
RW>there are no exceptions.

[snip]

RC>Meanwhile, how do we know that children and the less educated
RC>actually formulate the rule this way? If they did, one would
RC>expect that errors consisting of pronouncing [dh]
RC>intervocalically in words which should have [th] would be common.
RC>I don't recall any such tendency from my experience as a native
RC>speaker of English, but surely it's you that should be looking
RC>for such evidence.

RW>My point is that we don't know how any speaker actually
RW>formulates the rule.  What goes on on the left side of the arrows
RW>is a mystery.  All we know is that there is a pattern, the
RW>historical reason for the pattern, and that, synchronically,
RW>patterns must be accounted for by rules.  My further point is
RW>that it doesn't matter that we can't formulate the synchronic
RW>rule.  There must be one, or the pattern wouldn't be there.

[RC]
>Since you are sure there is a rule, and are even willing to state
>it, I don't see why you claim it is such a mystery.

[RW]
This is just your same philosophical question in a different
guise.  As I said earlier this is something that can be discussed
indefinitely (in both senses of the word), and I don't have time
to go into it here, nor do I consider it appropriate to this list
(it belongs on a list devoted to the philosophy of science).  A
good (philosophical) discussion on hypothesis confirmation will
be found in S. F. Barker, _Induction and Hypothesis_,
Contemporary Philosophy (Ithaca, 1957).  An extensive discussion
of Linguistic applications (including a bibliography of more
recent general studies) will be found in D. Wunderlich,
_Foundations of Linguistics_, Cambridge Studies in Linguistics
(Cambridge, 1979) [translation of the German version, _Grundlage
der Linguistik_, published in 1974].

But in brief, theories do not eliminate mysteries, they provide a
plausible explanation for them.  A theory is just an explanation
put forward to account for some observation or set of
observations (the evidence).  A theory can account for all the
observations (evidence) in a plausible manner and still be wrong.
Until direct observation and objective verification of cause and
effect are possible, a theory remains a theory.  Now there are
those, apparently including you, who believe that once we have a
theory to account for something, there is no longer any mystery.
But a theory is just a plausible story.  It is not evidence.
Plausible stories are what we use to bridge the gaps where there
is no evidence.  Innocent people have been executed on the basis
of plausible stories well told.  But once the plausible story
breaks down, the mystery reappears, implying that it never really
went away.  So plausible stories (theories) don't really
eliminate mysteries, they just give them something to hide behind
so that people who don't look beyond the explanations can't see
them.

<snip>

[RC]
>We may be working from fundamentally different conceptions of how
>languages are organized here. I repeat your schema from the
>discussion of historical grammar:

> speakers     +     rules      -->      Old English

>>From this it would appear that, for you, "rules" includes all
>the information commonly thought of as being part of the lexicon.

[RW]
No, rules are generally marked in the lexicon only if they are
not the productive rule.

[snip some paragraphs which show that your understanding of lexicon/rules
seems to be more or less the same as mine]

[RC] So where is the lexicon in the above formula?

[RC]
>Just above, you stated that "The pronunciation rules are marked
>in the lexicon", which makes me wonder whether you share an
>assumption that I had been taking as given, namely that there are
>two different types of information/knowledge relevant here:

>   (i) information about the phonological shape of particular
>lexical items -- for example, the fact that the English word for
>"fish" has an /f/ in initial position.

>   (ii) general information about the realization of particular
>segments and configurations (such as allophonic and
>morphophonemic rules).

>In my experience, most people would use the term "rules" of the
>latter type of information, but not the former.

[RW]
Yes, rules are generalized statements of repeated (and
repeatable) observations.  What you give in (i) above is a single
instantiation of a more general rule (graphically, initial <f> in
English represents /f/ or, as a phonotactical rule, /f/ is a
permissible initial segment in English).  Now this single
instantiation would not be sufficient to formulate the general
rule (there is even an aphorism about this: "one swallow does not
a summer make"; or, as my professor always said: "testis unus,
testis nullus").

Basically, information about the phonological shape of lexemes
needs to be given in the lexicon only if it is not transparent
from the orthography.

[RC]?? How did orthography get in here??

[snip five paragraphs in which I realize, with growing horror, that all
along you have been talking about rules to convert *spellings* to *sounds*.
Is this a new school of phonology I haven't caught up with? Or how does what
you are doing here relate to what is conventionally called "phonology"? More
to the point, how does it relate to the original point of departure, namely
the question of whether e/o ablaut was a synchronic rule in early stages of
IE, when spelling was unknown? Are you by any chance a deconstructionist
linguist of the Roy Harris school, who thinks that writing is older than
speech?]

RC>The pattern has been created by historical changes in the
RC>language. That is what creates the distribution of [dh] and [th]
RC>that is the input to each speaker's language-learning task. There
RC>is no general principle that speakers must recognize (consciously
RC>or unconsciously) any such pattern, or make use of it in their
RC>rule-governed language behaviour.

RW>No, the modern language is not created by the historical events
RW>that brought it about.

[RC]
>There is obviously a distinction in your mind between "create"
>and "bring about" which I am not picking up. Otherwise you have
>contradicted yourself. Or is it the tense distinction between "is
>created" (by speakers,now) and "brought it about" (in the past).
>In either case, I am happy to re-state my claim above as:

>The historical changes *brought about* the present distribution
>of [dh] and [th].

[RW]
My point about "create" is that history doesn't create things.
History is just a record of what happened -- a record of people
and events.  People and events create things (sometimes people
create events as well), but the record of people and events
doesn't create things.

[RC] "History" is also, in a perfectly ordinary sense, a set of events.
Since I didn't say that "history" created the pattern, but rather "the
historical changes", I would have thought that my meaning was clear enough.

[RW]
 The modern language (in the form of
modern speech and modern writing) is "created" by its modern
speakers.  And at any point in time the "modern" language is the
one currently in use.  So this "historical" change was "created"
by the speakers of the language at that time, not by history.
The fact that it is still present in the language of modern
speakers just shows that it has been successfully passed on from
generation to generation.  If it hadn't, it wouldn't still be in
the language.

[RC] Again, you are not distinguishing between changes and their results.

[RW]
The fact that these are historical changes just means that they
happened in the past.  But that doesn't necessarily mean anything
to the modern speakers of the language because for the most part
they don't know anything about the history of the language they
speak.  And this doesn't make any difference because the pattern
is present in the language *synchronically*.  You claim that
there is no dispute about this and have even suggested that my
demonstration of the existence of this pattern in the modern
language was unnecessary.  But now you seem to be claiming that
the fact that these are "historical" changes means that this
pattern has no significance for the modern language.  It may not
be significant in the "why" sense, but it must be in the "what"
sense.

[RC] No, not "must be". That's what we're arguing about.

[RW]  But this doesn't matter because, by and large, speakers
don't know the "why" of their language, only the "what."

RW>The modern language is created by what
RW>goes on on the left side of the arrows in the diagram above.
RW>This is the assumption of generative grammar.  And it is a basic
RW>premise of generative grammar that patterns must be accounted for
RW>by rules.  If you have evidence, rather than just an intuition,
RW>that linguistic patterns are not created by rules, then please
RW>share it.  It will revolutionize synchronic grammar.

[RC]
>No, I don't think it will. My view is one you have probably heard
>before: That there are two distinct phonemes /th/ and /dh/, which
>occur in various words in various positions. A subset of the
>English vocabulary shows a pattern of complementary distribution
>between these phonemes. The pattern is there in the vocabularies
>of English speakers because it is there in the corpus of
>presently spoken English on which they have based their
>internalized knowledge of English. And it is in the corpus as a
>consequence of changes which took place long ago in the history
>of the language.

[RW]
Well, I can't say that I've heard the idea that changes that took
place long ago in the history of a language have no significance
for the modern language before.

[RC]I wouldn't want to defend either that woolly proposition or its
contrary. Neither of them is a paraphrase of what I just said. Please read
it again.

[RW]
 If the results of changes are
still part of the language, it doesn't matter when they happened.
Speakers of the modern language don't know and don't care when
they happened.  They just learn them as part of the language.

[RC] And what we are discussing is: In exactly what sense are they "part of
the language"?

>Your analysis (again, correct me if I'm wrong) postulates a
>single phoneme /th/ with two different "pronunciation rules".
>Some words follow a rule that says intervocalic /th/ is
>pronounced [th], and others a rule that says it is pronounced
>[dh]. Which words follow which rule presumably has to be marked
>on individual lexical items.

[RW]
Well, the first thing to correct is that "my analysis" does not
say that there is only a single phoneme /T/.  I have no basis
for saying this.  My analysis is only about the validity of the
evidence that is used to "prove" that there are two phonemes /T/
and /D/.  The fact that I consider this evidence inconclusive is
not proof that there is only one phoneme, nor does "my analysis"
require that there be only one phoneme.

[snip repetition of basic facts]

This then, is the basis for my analysis.  As I said, I think that
there is nothing here that can be questioned.  If anyone sees
something that is not an empirically verifiable observation based
on data, please let me know.

Now my analysis says that you can't be certain that a contrast is
caused by different phonemes when there may be some other basis
for establishing the contrast.  My analysis says that you can
prove phonemicity using minimal pairs only through arbitrary
contrasts, contrasts where the presence of one phoneme or the
other doesn't tell you anything about the words involved except
that they are different words.  Thus if the presence of one sound
always tells you that the word is a pronoun or a deictic and the
presence of the other always tells you that the word is not a
pronoun or a deictic, then the contrast of these two sounds is
not necessarily the basis for the contrast between the words and
this contrast should not be considered evidence of the
phonemicity of the two sounds.  Please note, however, that this
is not the same as proving or even claiming that the two sounds
are not phonemes.

Similarly, if the presence of one sound tells you that the word
is a substantive and the presence of the other tells you that the
word is a verb, then the contrast predicts meaning (or function)
class.  This is not a phonemic contrast but a morphophonemic
alternation. While morphophonemic alternations do not preclude
the sounds involved from being phonemes as well, using
morphophonemic alternations to prove phonemicity is not
acceptable in my analysis.

When we come to the difference between intervocalic [T] and [D],
the division of the words into classes is admittedly on less firm
ground.  While I don't have many qualms about using grammatical
information that is based on meaning as a means of distinguishing
words (because as Stefan Georg pointed out, words that can't
appear in the same context don't have to be otherwise
distinguished), using lexico-historical information is going
outside of the grammatical structure of the language.  Using such
distinctions does not involve meaning in any specific way.  But
I still say that when a certain sound is required in one clearly
defined set of words and another sound is required in another
clearly defined set of words then contrasts between those sounds
when they appear as required in members of those sets should not
be allowed as evidence of phonemic contrast.

[RC] But the classes are "clearly defined" only in the light of the sort of
historical information that even you are dubious about!

[RW]
 Again, however,
this is not the same as saying that the two sounds can't be
phonemes.

[RC] Is your position, then, that you're not sure whether they are distinct
phonemes or not?
And supposing you decided they were not, you still have not explained how
your rules would work.

[Side trip to New Zealand]

[RW]
But on the subject of phonological nativization of loan words, I
have a few questions about New Zealand English (NZE) that I
expect that you can answer.  I presume that NZE has a number of
Maori loan words, and that many of these loans have been in the
language for a couple of centuries (but none before 1740).  Now
based on what you have said about Greek and Latin loans
(neologisms) in English, I would expect that New Zealanders
consider loans from Maori to be just good English words, and that
they would see nothing unusual about Maori segments in contexts
in which they would not appear in English.  I realize that
initial /ng/ in words of Maori origin is not a realistic parallel
to intervocalic [T] in words of Greek or Latin origin because the
prohibition against initial /ng/ in English is a phonotactic one
while there is no such prohibition against intervocalic [T].  But
here are my questions:  Do native speakers of NZE recognize Maori
loanwords as Maori words or do they just consider them English?
If they do recognize them, on what basis do they do it?  Do
native speakers of NZE Anglicize the pronunciation of initial
/ng/ in any way or do they pronounce it as it would be in Maori?
Would native speakers of NZE be able to coin new words with
initial /ng/?  Have they actually done so?

[RC]
Maori loanwords in NZ English are largely concentrated in the familiar
colonial domains of flora, fauna and some aspects of Maori culture. When
written in English, they use Maori spelling conventions. Those two types of
clue would be enough for most literate people to recognize most of them.
However, there are a few that early acquired an English-looking spelling and
probably are unrecognized by most people, like "biddy-bid" for a
burr-bearing plant (Maori /piripiri/).

Borrowings with initial <ng> are not numerous -- Orsman's very comprehensive
dictionary of NZ English lists only 10, only a couple of them common, though
place names would account for more. In general the initial consonant is
nativized to /n/. Orsman gives this pronunciation for the two most common:
<ngaio> (a tree) and <Ngati> (prefix to tribal names); for the remainder he
doesn't specify an English pronunciation, but just notes that the Maori has
an initial velar nasal. I've never heard of any new words coined with
initial /ng/.

All of this is complicated by the fact that many people actually know Maori
-- some as native speakers, and many more who have studied it. There has
also been a move in the last couple of decades to de-nativize the
pronunciation of words of Maori origin in English, making them phonetically
more like Maori. Many people nowadays use an apical tap [r] in the word
"Maori" (at least), rather than an English-type [R]. For the town of
<Whangarei>, you can hear older local people of European descent saying
something like [woNg at Ri:], while the news reader on TV will pronounce it
something like [fa:Na:rei].

All of which means that these words have been through a period of
nativization into English, but that their foreignness has never been
entirely lost sight of, and they may be becoming more foreign as we
speak.:-)

[Back to the Original Topic]

[RC]
>In the broad sense implicit in your schema, both analyses
>produce the [th]/[dh] pattern by "rules". (In the narrower sense,
>however, your analysis has "rules" that mine doesn't.)

>Now that we have two analyses to compare, perhaps you can
>explain why you think yours is superior.

[RW]
Well, as far as I am concerned, both analyses have the same
linguistic rules.  Your analysis just ignores some of them.

[RC] What you mean is that they *ought* to be part of my analysis. They are
not.

[RW] It excludes them by saying that they happened too long ago to have
any effect on the modern language,

[RC] Wrong. I have never said this.

or it excludes them by saying
that modern speakers can't possibly be aware of the rules that
linguistic analysis uncovers,

[RC] For someone who takes others to task for supposed imprecision with
modals, you have a rather loose way with them yourself. Again, I have never
said that they "can't possibly" be aware of these rules. I do believe,
however, that they "may not" be aware of such rules/patterns, and I do not
assume that they "must" be aware of them.

[RW}
or it excludes them by saying that
some rules about how words are pronounced can't have any bearing
on phonology.

[RC] Three out of three. I never said that, whatever it may mean.

[RW]
But again, my analysis is not about the distribution of [T]/[D]
in English, it is about what is acceptable evidence for the
distribution (and collaterally about such distributions in
general).

[RC] I'm pleased to hear that -- otherwise we have wasted a huge amount of
the IE List's space.

[RW]
 So if my analysis has rules that yours doesn't, one of
them is that evidence that is offered as unequivocal proof of
some condition should not have any other possible explanation.

[RC] What begins here is, of course, not a discussion of differences in the
"rule" content of our analyses, but of philosophical/methodological virtues
which you apparently believe your analysis possesses and mine does not. I
decided to snip it rather than respond at every turn to the insults implicit
in it. I am getting tired.

When I first got involved in this discussion, you had asserted that
complementary distribution of [T] and [D] was a characteristic of "English",
full stop. When I adduced some counterexamples, you professed to find it
bizarre that I should think loanwords relevant to the matter. Now it appears
that you think these words are very much part of English, and you're not
even willing to say that your single-phoneme analysis is definitely correct.
Fine. I'm willing to leave it there.

Ross Clark