Re: Marginale phonemes in Finnish

Fri, 25 May 2007 10:36:44 -0400: Nathan Sanders
<nsanders@xxxxxxxxxxxx>: in sci.lang:

OTOH, it is possible to know hardly any Greek or Hebrew (e.g. I
couldn't say even half a sentence in either language and understand
zero) and yet recognize it when a word seems "Greekish/Hebrewish", in
other words, isn't originally Germanic English.

Some words, but not all. I'm highly doubt the average English speaker
would know that "nether" and "fathom" are native but "ether" is not.

OK.

And if expert etymologists aren't sure where "bother" comes from, how
could we expect an ordinary laymen to know?

Well, it clearly isn't from Greek.

The rules you suggest for determining when to pronounce [T] and [D]
cannot be a correct description of what speakers actually do, because
it requires access to knowledge speakers don't generally have. This
is precisely the same problem that SPE runs into: too much diachrony
crammed into the synchronic phonology.

OK.

I see no way at all for an English speaker to derive the contrast
between "booth" and "smooth", "brothel" and "brother", "earthy" and
"worthy", or the names "Ethel" and "Heather". These must simply be
memorized, and forced memorization is the hallmark of a phonemic
contrast.

OK.

Why does it often convince when you explain it, and so much less in
the case of some others?
--
Ruud Harmsen
http://rudhar.com
.

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