[From: Bruce Nevin (Mon 93104 15:44:57 EDT)]
( Bill Powers (931003.0030 MDT) ) --
I'm slowly working through mail from the weekend.
You have argued that "contrast" is a dormitive principle. But it is not.
It is a basic observation, fundamental to the study of language.
You say `"difference" and "contrast" mean essentially the same thing.'
But they do not. To be sure, wherever utterances are perceived as
contrasting there are observable, measurable differences between them;
but there are also differences (observable, measurable) between
utterances that do not contrast. The perception of difference and the
perception of contrast are not the same.
The explanation offered for this experienced phonemic difference
is that there is a phonemic contrast between bin and pin, while
there is none between spin and sbin. This is a dormitive
explanation, because "difference" and "contrast" mean essentially
the same thing. The explanation could just as easily be given
this way: there is a perceived contrast between pin and bin but
not between spin and sbin because in the former case there is a
phonemic difference, while in the second there is not. The second
way of putting it sounds, on the surface, just as explanatory as
the first.
When you say "there is a phonemic difference" you do indeed confound the
two terms "contrast" and "difference", but that is merely a
terminological confusion that you are introducing. "Difference" is
phonetic, and may be determined by physical measurements without anyone
present knowing the language being spoken, and indeed without the sounds
being measured and found different even pertaining to any language at
all. One belch is different from another. "Contrast" is phonemic. It
can be determined *ONLY* by applying the Test with a speaker of a
particular language. Things that contrast must differ, but things that
differ need not contrast.
Contrast is a technical term. As with "control," if you use it
inappropriately in one of its non-technical senses (e.g. as equivalent to
"different), you can produce verbal constructions that would seem to
reduce to nonsense arguments that depend upon its technical meaning.
That is all you have done here.
The truth of the matter is that people perceive a contrast or
difference [sic] between pin and bin, but not between spin and sbin,
and nobody knows why, not even a linguist.
You give up too easily. Is this just a property of the words spin, bin,
and pin? Is there any pair of syllables in English pronunciation of
words, which differ only in that one has p following s and the other has
b following s?
Generalize farther, and include the pairs t-d, ch-j, k-g. For s the
larynx is open (voiceless), as it is for p,t,ch,k (and as it is not for
b,d,j,g). Perhaps there is an explanation due to the physiology and
acoustics (physics) of speech production?
If so, one would expect it to apply to all languages. Ah, but it does
not. Such a contrast is found in many languages--that is, speakers of
various languages other than English do indeed contrast syllables
beginning with s and a consonant as described above. To speak and
recognize certain Achumawi words, for example, one has to control a
perception of contrast between sd and st in the onsets of syllables.
But at root you are perfectly correct. No one knows why spV and sbV do not
contrast in English (where V is any vowel) while pV and bV do, and no one
knows why pV contrasts with bV in Achumawi regardless of whether or not s
precedes. These are historically contingent developments in a social
product. The antecedents of present forms and the mechanisms are alike
obscure to us.
But we do not need to know how particular differences came to be
contrastive in a given language and others did not in order to proceed.
Contrast is the fundamental, elementary datum for any science of
language. It can be determined only by the Test. And when it has been
determined for one speaker of a language, it has been determined for
other speakers who perceive that one and one another as speaking the same
language. The differences between their ways of pronouncing what they
perceive as repetitions of the same words are non-contrastive
differences.
Bruce
bn@bbn.com