Talk:Phoneme

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"It is virtually impossible to find a minimal pair to distinguish English /ʃ/ from /ʒ/"*

Peter Ladefoged, in his book A Course in Phonetics, cites Aleutian vs allusion as one of very few such pairs in English, and then only for some speakers.

So, it is, after all, possible to find such a pair. --Theurgist (talk) 16:37, 20 August 2018 (UTC)

@Theurgist: "Virtually impossible" means very close to impossible, so it doesn't contradict there being a minimal pair. But as it is apparently likely to be misinterpreted, maybe it would be best to reword it. — Eru·tuon 17:20, 20 August 2018 (UTC)

Maybe "measure" vs. "mesher" (something that meshes)... AnonMoos (talk) 14:33, 30 August 2018 (UTC)

Also an interesting example lunch and lunge, which differ only by [tʃ]/[dʒ]--demis^talk 09:37, 10 April 2019 (UTC)

The site minimal pairs has: cheese/G's, chin/Jane, cheap/jeep, chunk/junk, choke/joke, chive/jive, cello/jello. −Woodstone (talk) 10:25, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Maybe then ashery 1 and azury 2? Rare words but not as rare as mesher for example, yet aren't proper nouns like Aleutian. Unfortunately, variation in pronunciation exists but seems to be of a lesser degree compared to Aleutian also. So far these two are best candidates I think--138.246.2.199 (talk) 13:34, 13 April 2019 (UTC)

Another example I thought of is zhoosh [ʒʊʃ] and shush [ʃʊʃ]--demis^talk 16:38, 16 April 2019 (UTC)

"liege" /li:ʒ/ and "leash" /li:ʃ/? I suppose some people might pronounce "liege" as /li:dʒ/, but I've only ever heard it spoken the way I transcribed. If proper nouns are preferable to variable pronunciation, maybe "confusion" and "Confucian." The only example I can think of that isn't an affricate, doesn't vary in pronunciation (in any way I can tell), and doesn't use a proper noun would be the letters <ʒ> and <ʃ> themselves (i.e. /eʒ/ and /eʃ/), in which case we might as well just use mesher! (Which is still fine with me.) Etymographer (talk) 21:39, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

I think this is very good example for the ʃ-ʒ minimal pair in English! I also came across recently 'jus' /ʒu:/ and 'shoe' /ʃu:/ - quite common words in modern day England --demis^talk 11:13, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

If you pronounce the determiner this in its reduced form, [ðəs], then this allusion forms a minimal pair with the solution. --Theurgist (talk) 14:10, 12 June 2022 (UTC)

There's a 1970s book "Pronunciation Contrasts in English" by Don L.F. Nilsen and Aileen Pace Nilsen, which is basically entirely devoted to English minimal pairs. However, this book completely omits [ʒ] (except when part of a [dʒ] unit)... AnonMoos (talk) 18:49, 19 April 2019 (UTC)

2023

Because there seem to be at least a handful of true minimal pairs, I changed the phrasing and emphasised that they will likely involve less common words. I have also added an explanation of why near minimal pairs are still valid proof of phonemehood. Barefoot Banana (talk) 17:24, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

[k] and [kʰ] being the same phoneme

In § Assignment of speech sounds to phonemes, it is shown that an [skɪl] and [skʰɪl] would both be recognized as "skill" and therefore [k] and [kʰ] are the same phoneme. But wouldn't English speakers take [kʰɪl] to mean "kill" and [kɪl] to mean "gill"? I'm wondering if an example using a word-initial [k] could be used. (Please ignore this post if this is something that's obvious to native English speakers.) – Þjarkur (talk) 20:48, 27 May 2019 (UTC)

This gets into a more complex aspect of the structuralist phoneme which is complementary distribution. We have the minimal pairs /kad/ -> [kʰad], /gad/->[kad]; /tak/->[tak], /tag/->[tag]. From these we can show that [k] and [g] are in different phonemes and [kʰ] and [k] are in different phonemes. From more general knowledge of English, we can show that [kʰ] never appears in the same environment as [k] meaning that we can argue [kʰ] is part of the same phoneme as [k], and since [k] is less restricted ([kʰ] only appears word initially) we'll call that phoneme /k/. Since /kad/-> [kʰad], how do we get [kad]? Well, for [k] to appear word initially it must not be part of /k/ in that instance. So [k] word initially is part of some other phoneme. Given perceptual evidence from English speakers, they tend to assume it's a /g/, so we can say that /g/->[k] word initially. So [k] and [g] are in the phoneme /g/ and [kʰ] and [k] are in the phoneme /k/. Like I said this is a complex explanation, and perhaps a simpler one using English fricatives (which don't have this pattern) would be better. Wugapodes [t^hɑk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɹɪbz] 17:03, 28 May 2019 (UTC)

This analysis matches well with the difficulties English speakers have perceiving plosive aspiration (and voicing) in Thai, where both phonemes [k] and [kʰ] occur word-initially. Many English instructional texts transcribe [k] as ⟨g⟩ and [kʰ] as ⟨k⟩. This leads the learners to pronounce ⟨g⟩ as [g], which seems accurate to them, but sounds very awkward to Thai native speakers (there is no phone [g] in Thai]). The situation is different for [p, pʰ, b] and [t, tʰ, d], where the same texts use transcriptions ⟨bp, p, b⟩ and ⟨dt, t, d⟩. In these parallels, the [g] is an outlier, where a systematic approach would have written ⟨gk⟩, which I have never seen used. The Thai government system of transcription stays closer to IPA by using ⟨k, kh, -⟩, ⟨p, ph, b⟩ and ⟨t, th, d⟩. −Woodstone (talk) 05:59, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

The section Assignment of speech sounds to phonemes ignores the analysis /sɡɪl/, which is far more logical (I wouldn't go as far as treating aspiration as underlying, as we'd have to transcribe 'let's kill' as /lɛtʰs kʰɪl/ - the ⟨t⟩ in 'let's' can be glottalized or glottaly reinforced, unlike the ⟨d⟩ in 'leads' /lɛtz/ or, in conventional transcription, /lɛdz/. It seems to make almost as little sense as treating the /s–z/ pair as an underlying contrast between /sʰ/ and /s/). Sol505000 (talk) 06:31, 29 April 2021 (UTC)

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