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From: rte@anchor.ho.att.com (R.EDWARDS(HOY002)1305)
Subject: Re: Th - one or two phonemes in English?
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References: <rharmsen.132.000FF592@knoware.nl>
Date: Tue, 17 Jan 1995 03:42:21 GMT
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In article <rharmsen.132.000FF592@knoware.nl>,
Ruud Harmsen <rharmsen@knoware.nl> wrote:
>The (inter)dental sounds dh and th in English are distinguished by all
>speakers, but simple rules with few exceptions can accurately predict
>which sound is used in any given word. Because grammatical category and
>some etymology are needed for the rules, this may not be enough reason
>to conclude that there is only one combined th-dh phoneme in English.
>Yet there are very few minimally differing pairs.
>
>
>The rules for prediction of th/dh, with examples, are as follows:
>

Rules omitted for brevity.

All of this is true (well, all of it that I read).
The contrast came in through the back door, so to speak, with
loss of the verb endings, but with no loss of the earlier
intervocalic voicing.
Never-the-less the voicing is never ambiguous, and every native
speaker knows the correct voicing, and there are minimal pairs,
so... there are two phonemes, unless you want to redefine
phoneme.
