Re: Contrastive distribution

Bob Cunningham <exw6sxq@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

On Fri, 05 May 2006 15:11:42 -0700, Evan Kirshenbaum
<kirshenbaum@xxxxxxxxxx> said:

Perhaps I was unclear. By "They make a contrast between /S/ and
/sk/", what I meant is precisely that they have minimal pairs like
"ship" and "skip". Once that has been established, saying that
they pronounce the word /SEdjul/ means that they use (and think of
themselves as using and hear other speakers of their dialect as
using) the phoneme that they use in "ship", not the phoneme cluster
they use in "skip". Writing (to an audience that had the word as
/skEdjul/) that they pronounce "schedule" as [SEdjul] carries a
strong implication that the writer means that this [S] is their
reflex for /sk/ in this context and that they hear others' [S] here
as /sk/.

I'm sorry, but your clarification didn't clarify anything for me.
I'm sure you know what you're talking about; I just don't know what
point you're making or what issue you have in mind. Could you state
in a few words just what the point is you set out to demonstrate?

I'm not sure how to make it much clearer. Both British English and
American English speakers have a phonemic distinction between /S/ and
/sk/. The pronunciation of the word "schedule" is different at the
phonemic level. If Alice is British and Bob is American, they will
think of themselves as using different phonemes and each will hear the
other as using a phoneme they don't use in that word. It will sound
like a different word rather than the same word in a different accent.

I'm wondering incidentally why you would say "they pronounce the
word /SEdjul/". Since you're explicitly saying how they pronounce
the word, shouldn't you use square brackets instead of slashes?

No. You use square brackets when what you're focusing on is "this is
how the word is realized". You use slashes when you're focusing on
"this is how speakers and hearers think of the word". /SEdjul/ for
"schedule" isn't part of a speaker's accent, it's a part of their
dialect, a consciously different pronunciation of the word.

--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
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http://www.kirshenbaum.net/


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Relevant Pages

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