On Syllable Division in Phonemics

American, as reported by R. I. McDavid in an unpublished paper read before the Linguistic Society in 1938. But Group B has shifted the articulation of all vowels alike before the new /d/ from earlier /t/, and none of them, not even our two diphthongs, has been split. For this group, the DIFFERENCE mentioned in the PRINCIPLE OF DIFFERENTIATION has not been sufficiently great, and nothing of phonemic significance has happened to any syllabic. But now there is phonetic irregularity in the inflection, not only of knife, wife, and the noun house, but also in some three dozen common words, as indicated above: from write to writer there is both the phonemic alternation from /t/ to /d/, and the phonetic alternation from [OI] to [aI]. Is it possible that [aI] will begin to be used in write by merely phonetic analogy? If so, then the phonological difference between Canadian and other General American will be wiped out at this point. But I am inclined to think that a difference in articulatory contrast insufficient to call the principle of differentiation into operation, and so to lead to phonemic splitting, would a fortiori be insufficient to bring about this other consequence. I look for a phonetic contrast [VI, Au] N [aI, Iau] in Canadian to persist until the Canadians simply learn the General American usage as foreign dialects are generally learned. Meanwhile this phonetic contrast may or may not become a phonemic opposition, according to whether Group A or Group B sets the standard. There is no use guessing which will happen. It would not even help us if we should count noses today, for it may be that the smaller group is gaining recruits faster. I have gone as far as I dare towards predicting a linguistic change; perhaps I have gone too far for the present state of our science: perhaps this sort of prediction is not legitimate

Arithmetic · Division (mathematics) · Linguistics · Syllable · Mathematics · Philosophy · Phonetics and Phonology Research