Re: Possible Record for Slow on the Uptake

Butch Malahide wrote:
On Nov 3, 4:40 pm, "Mike Schilling" <mscottschill...@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Mike Schilling wrote:
Joe Pfeiffer wrote:
thro...@xxxxxxxxx (Wayne Throop) writes:

Quadibloc <jsav...@xxxxxxxxx>
Most English speakers do not notice the distinction between
voiced and unvoiced "th", so both are a single phoneme in that
language, even though the distinction is significant in some
other languages.

The teachers when/where I want to elementary and high school
were not aware of this, and taught whole classesfull of students
that there are two distinct sounds that are spelled "th".
Well... three if you count my name.

All these students are out there running around spreading this
misinformation. Why, these people go around supposing that the
"th" sounds in "the thumb" "those three" are distinct.
Enough to make one weep, it is.

Turns out they are different phones as they sound different, but
the same phoneme since if you substitute them they sound funny
but
have the same meaning.

There are acutally minimal pairs for the two:

(Hit "send" too soon)

Example "thigh" and "thy".

Or "teeth" and "teethe".

However--speaking as an ignorant hick who never studied
linguistics--I
have trouble seeing the significance of those pairs.

It's the standard way of showing that two phones are different
phonemes: finding (at least) one pair of words that differ only by
substituting one for the other. Hence "minimal pair". (Linguists
being what they are, "minimal pair" is also used to describe a
flat-chested woman.)

I don't think you
can make that thigh/thy or teeth/teethe substitution work to change
the meaning of a *sentence* or any kind of meaningful utterance; as
far as I can see, it only works at the *word* level. Now linguistics
is supposed to be the study of speech, not writing; but it is not
clear to this ignoramus how you would define "words" in spoken
language. No doubt they have some way of doing it, and it's covered
in
that linguistics course I didn't take. At any rate, the status of
"thy" as a word would be rather dubious if English were not a
written
language; there would be no way of telling if the "thy" in "thy
will"
is a separate word or just a prefix.

If "thy" were a prefix, by analogy so would be "my", "his", "John's",
"the dog's", "my oldest sister's", etc. Clearly, as the modifiers
get longer, this breaks down.


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