Minimal pairs Luodian Poqiu 1. Phone and phoneme inventory
234 2.12.3. Minimal pairs
•
[ Mv] occurs three times and [Mt] + VC does not occur. The labialization on these three items
is quite distinct. Although [ Mv] could be posited as [Mt] underlyingly, it is considered
phonemic for this lect.
•
[a:], [ ], and [a] are all phonemic. See
minimal pair sets.
•
[ H] occurs only four times: three times in the environment C__C and once in the environment
C__C, as in 92 ‘claw’ [ YH2 shm0] the first morpheme normally being yho7 in other
lects. [
H] is an allophonic variation of [i], since [i] also occurs in the first environment several times.
•
The one occurrence of [ D:] is not significantly long, and length is not considered phonemic in
this lect. [e] occurs on five items, all in the environment C__C, and [
D] also occurs several times in this environment. As with [
H] and [i], the tense phone [e] is not considered phonemic, but a variation of [
D].
•
[ T] occurs on seven items, all in the environment C__C, and is not considered phonemic.
[u] also occurs several times in this environment. The situation with [ T][u] is the same as with
the other laxtense pairs of vowels.
•
[ B] occurs on four items, two being of the form C__C and two of the form C__, where the open
syllable word originally had a final [k] in the coda. [o] occurs in the C__C environment five times. Though [
B] only occurs four times, and no true minimal pairs can be found, it sounds rather low in the vowel space as compared to [o], and
will be considered phonemic.
•
[ =] occurs a number of times and [X] occurs several times. With one exception 331 ‘husband’
[ k=3 jXh0], [X] occurs in one of two environments: C__=C and C__=.
[ =] occurs in the environment C__ several times, but except for two items, all are frequently
used morphemes such as classifiers. For the most part, [ X] and [=] are in complementary
distribution. However, items such as 331, 445, and 500 indicate that there is still a phonemic distinction between the two phones. Therefore, [
X] and [=] are both considered phonemic for this lect. See
minimal pair .