Latin, the Enlightenment, and science
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From: Brian M. Scott on 29 Dec 2009 15:25 On Tue, 29 Dec 2009 19:06:14 +0100, Athel Cornish-Bowden <acornish(a)ibsm.cnrs-mrs.fr> wrote in <news:7puuomFv0lU1(a)mid.individual.net> in sci.math,sci.physics,sci.lang,alt.usage.english,alt.philosophy: [...] > "either" and "ether" are not a minimal pair for many > (most?) native speakers; [...] They're not for me, but in the U.S. I'm in the minority. Brian
From: Nathan Sanders on 29 Dec 2009 15:49 In article <7pv4jhFk1U1(a)mid.individual.net>, Athel Cornish-Bowden <acornish(a)ibsm.cnrs-mrs.fr> wrote: > On 2009-12-29 19:28:36 +0100, Ruud Harmsen <rh(a)rudhar.eu> said: > > > [ ... ] > > > > > loath loathe > > OK > > > wreath wreathe > > "wreathed" is OK, but how often does the uninflected form occur: almost never. > > > sheath sheathe > > Likewise. I don't think I've ever heard "wreathed" in uninflected form. > > > > > mouth (noun) mouth (verb) > > OK > > > thou (short for 1000) thou (pronoun) > > The first is engineers' slang; the latter is archaic (other than in church) > > > teeth teethe > > As I mentioned earlier (in the bit you chopped), I think "teething" is > very rare in uninflected form. > > So we're left with "loth" (as I spell it, but I realize not everyone > does) and "loathe", together with "mouth" and "mouth". > > If anyone doubted whether the difference between f and v was phonemic > one could think of endless examples to show that it was, including some > very common words like "life" and "live" (adjective). So there does > seem to be something special about the two th sounds. Is there any > mechanism that could explain why minimal pairs are so rare? /D/ and /T/ are the second and third rarest consonant phonemes in English respectively (about 0.1% and 0.3% by type frequency), and since words can be rather long in English, the probability of a minimal pair existing between /T/ and /D/ is very small. The fourth and fifth rarest consonants are /j/ and /h/ (both more than twice as common as /T/, about 0.7% and 0.75%), and at that point, finding minimal pairs starts to become a lot easier (year/hear, yell/hell, etc.). Even finding minimal pairs or triplets between /j,h/ and either of /T/ or /D/ is relatively easy (yay/hay/they, yen/hen/then, yo/tho, high/thigh, yank/Hank/thank, etc.). The rarest consonant is /Z/ (0.07%), and minimal pairs between /Z/ and /T/ or /D/ are difficult to find, if not impossible (I can't think of any off the top of my head, because the number of words with /Z/ is so small to begin with). There are plenty of near-minimal pairs for /T/ and /D/ (some depending on dialect): earthy/worthy, author/bother, thin/then (a true minimal pair for US Southerners), thin/this, thank/than, etc. Nathan
From: Adam Funk on 29 Dec 2009 15:50 On 2009-12-29, Brian M. Scott wrote: > On Tue, 29 Dec 2009 20:45:53 +0100, Athel Cornish-Bowden ><acornish(a)ibsm.cnrs-mrs.fr> wrote in ><news:7pv4jhFk1U1(a)mid.individual.net> in > sci.math,sci.physics,sci.lang,alt.usage.english,alt.philosophy: > >> On 2009-12-29 19:28:36 +0100, Ruud Harmsen <rh(a)rudhar.eu> said: > > [...] > >>> sheath sheathe > >> Likewise. I don't think I've ever heard "wreathed" in >> uninflected form. > > I've *used* <sheathe> (which I suspect is what you meant). > So have a lot of re-enactors. Interesting. I would probably read both "he sheathed his sword" and "flowers wreathed his head" aloud with /T/ rather than /D/, i.e., with the same consonant as in the nouns "sheath" and "wreath" ... wrong? (I admit that (like some of my friends) I have acquired words from reading and guessed the wrong pronunciation at first.) -- I worry that 10 or 15 years from now, [my daughter] will come to me and say 'Daddy, where were you when they took freedom of the press away from the Internet?' [Mike Godwin, EFF http://www.eff.org/ ]
From: Adam Funk on 29 Dec 2009 15:57 On 2009-12-29, Marvin the Martian wrote: > On Sun, 27 Dec 2009 15:21:58 -0800, sjdevnull(a)yahoo.com wrote: > >> On Dec 27, 2:16 pm, Marvin the Martian <mar...(a)ontomars.org> wrote: >>> The rebuttal to Chomsky's assertion that thinking is language dependent >>> is simple: Observe how a chimpanzee has an ability to reason that is >>> not too far behind the average human; problem solving and primitive >>> tool use. Since chimps have no language, how is it that they think? >>> Ergo, not >all< thinking is language dependent. >> >> I believe that "since chimps have no language" is at least one place >> that your argument falls apart, though I'm inclined to agree that the >> original assertion is incorrect. > > What languages are common among chimps? Chimpanzese? What was _Me Cheeta_ translated from? -- Civilization is a race between catastrophe and education. [H G Wells]
From: Harlan Messinger on 29 Dec 2009 16:03
Athel Cornish-Bowden wrote: > On 2009-12-29 04:31:23 +0100, Harlan Messinger > <hmessinger.removethis(a)comcast.net> said: > >> Brian M. Scott wrote: >>> On Mon, 28 Dec 2009 18:05:09 -0800 (PST), DKleinecke >>> <dkleinecke(a)gmail.com> wrote in >>> <news:e1f26d37-f0bf-4a6d-9aa3-9f3ee47a6f08(a)o28g2000yqh.googlegroups.com> >>> in >>> sci.math,sci.physics,sci.lang,alt.usage.english,alt.philosophy: >>> >>>> On Dec 27, 10:53 pm, "benli...(a)ihug.co.nz" <benli...(a)ihug.co.nz> >>>> wrote: >>> >>> [...] >>> >>>>> ... I am more than ever at a loss to understand how any >>>>> linguist can maintain with a straight face that dh/th >>>>> are in "complementary distribution". >>> >>>> It offends them that there are no minial pairs. >>> >>> Tthere are, and they know it: <thigh> ~ <thy>, and for many >>> people <either> ~ <ether>. They dispose of these on other >>> grounds. >> >> Sooth-soothe, teeth-teethe. Thayer-there (in Texas)? > > Is it not odd, however, that although both sounds are common in the > language, not even a single one of these minimal pairs is beyond > argument: "thy" and "sooth" are rare to the point of non-existence in > modern English (other than in religious use, in the case of "thy"); It's an interesting coincidence but I don't think it detracts from their use as examples, given that (a) their rareness is happenstance--would the argument really be different if English had kept "thee" and "thou"? and (b) despite their rareness, there is no murkiness about how we pronounce them when we do use them. We don't feel like we're contravening some normal speech pattern when we don't pronounce them like "thigh" and "soothe". We don't think about it at all. > "either" and "ether" are not a minimal pair for many (most?) native > speakers; although "teething" is certainly a common word in everyday use > I'm not sure that "teethe" is. You can say, for example, "children start > to teethe at about one-year old" (or whatever age it is: my youngest > child is 26, so It was a while ago), but you'd be much more likely to > hear "children start teething at about one-year old". I don't see that the possibility that the word's present progressive form might be more frequently used than its naked form is a basis for objection. > I don't for a > moment doubt that the distinction is phonemic, but it would be nice to > have just one minimal pair of everyday words that wasn't open to any > sort of objection. |