Delete comment from: John Wells’s phonetic blog
Thanks for the explanation. I had always wondered why you didn't choose a minimal set like HID/HEAD/HAD etc. with a few suppletives for vowels for which you couldn't do that, so that the distinction was clearest. I had never thought that one might want to use such words in speech rather than in writing... OTOH, I understand why coronal obstruents, but why voiceless ones? That way you get allophonic stuff such as pre-fortis clipping and Canadian raising you wouldn't get with voiced ones. Also, whereas there can be serious discussion about whether e.g. Canadian raising has become phonemic (I think not, but I agree that the grounds to claim otherwise are not completely bogus), there can be no disagreement about allophony caused by voiced alveolar sonorants, because of the tautosyllabic morphemes /z/ and /d/. I mean, a guy pronounces "day" with a diphtong and "daze" with a monophtong, and you want to know whether it's an open vs closed syllable thing or a phonemic contrast? Just ask him how he pronounces "days".
(How did Hiberno-English come to be called that way? Wasn't Irish English good enough? I mean, no-one would call Welsh English "Cambro-English" and American English "Columbo-English" or something, would they?)
Feb 4, 2010, 12:00:44 PM
Posted to lexical sets