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From: rte@elmo.lz.att.com (Ralph T. Edwards)
Subject: Re: Acquisition of phonemes thfough foreign influences
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References: <43q7i7$93b@ixnews2.ix.netcom.com> <rte-2509951127070001@mac-118.lz.att.com> <446odb$28j@netsrv2.spss.com> <rte-2609950957510001@mac-118.lz.att.com> <44f9ri$285@netsrv2.spss.com>
Date: Fri, 29 Sep 1995 16:09:59 GMT
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In article <44f9ri$285@netsrv2.spss.com>, markrose@spss.com (Mark
Rosenfelder) wrote:

> In article <rte-2609950957510001@mac-118.lz.att.com>,
> Ralph T. Edwards <rte@elmo.lz.att.com> wrote:
> >In article <446odb$28j@netsrv2.spss.com>, markrose@spss.com (Mark
> >Rosenfelder) wrote:

 the [Z] in words like 'measure'
> >> got reinterpreted as phonemic /Z/.
> >
> >Why reinterpreted?  Once the shift has occurred, it's already a phoneme.
> 
> I have trouble making any sense of this except as a denial of the difference
> between phones and phonemes.

Work a little harder.  If /Z/ was an allophone of /z/ then there would
have to be some context to disambiguate it. What do you propose?  Surely
not spelling.

>  English once presumably had no [Z] at all.
> The sound change [zj] -> [Z] occurs.  In what way is it "already a phoneme"?

Because it is kept separate without any context and is capable of
distinguishing words.

> How does this case differ from any other allophonic difference, such as
> the clear and dark l's or the aspirated and unaspirated p's in English?
> Are those "already phonemes" too?

No, because they are context dependent, surely you can see the difference.

> 
> >disclosure-discloser.  On this native base new borrwings may occur.
> >I'm not a believer in the theory that we carry around some sort of underlying
> >structure that recapitulates the phonological history of the language.
> >That is I think measure is stored as /mEZR/ not /mEzjR/ with sound shift
> >applied.
> 
> I agree; but in that case the present phonemic representation of 'measure' 
> isn't a good guide to its history or to that of the invididual phonemes,
is it?  

What's your point?  At some point all context to disambiguate /z/ from /Z/
was lost, even if not immediately.  At that point it's a phoneme.
> 
> If 'disclosure-discloser' was intended as a minimal pair,

They aren't for you?  How do you pronounce them?

> that doesn't
> prove your case; you still have to show that at the time /Z/ became
> phonemic, the final vowels of these words did not contrast.  A number
> of English dialects maintain a great many more distinctions before final r
> than present-day General American English; a distinction might have been
> made between /dIsklo:zjur/ (= [dIsklouZur]) and /dIsklo:z@r/, for instance.

Such a distinction surely was once made, and may still be made in some
varieties of English. (Scottish maybe?)  So what?  If you can show that
there are no /zu/s or /zn/s in unstressed syllables, then it's not a
phoneme (for that variety). If you can't, you should concede, even without
minimal pairs.  (In my opinion).

-- 
R.T.Edwards rte@elmo.att.com 908 576-3031
