Minimal Pairs and the Glottal Stop.
Hello linguaphiles,
I was curious about further opinion on a question I had asked a professor who did talk about it for 20 minutes without ever answering.
Concerning German phonology, would you consider the glottal stop as a fully functional phoneme, aka would you consider the German "Haus" and "Aus" to be minimal pairs?
This started when our study group was preparing for an exam in German linguistics, someone had a question about minimal pairs, and I was able to answer it. I used the words "Maus" and "Haus" as an example for a minimal pair - and that got me thinking if "aus" would be considered to be a minimal pair to "Haus" as well. In our class, the glottal stop was treated as the "weird thing that the German language has, but don´t worry about, it´s probably not going to show up in the exam".
I was dissatisfied and then I went to the next authority - out tutor - and she couldn´t give me an answer, but personally tended towards it not being enough for a minimal pair.
Then, I went to the higher authority, the person teaching the class who holds a diploma. Yet again, I didn´t receive an answer, but she tended towards it being a "proper" phoneme.
In the end, I asked the professor in my lecture about German linguistics - who happens to be the boss of the German linguistic department - and he managed to talk for 20 minutes about phonemes, meaning, phonetics in general, what constitutes a minimal pair - BUT he never answered the question or didn´t even seem to have an opinion about the subject. He brushed it off as a thing that we didn´t need to worry about as it wouldn´t come up in the exam anyway. Still not a satisfactory answer, but I had 8 exams in that semester and had other things on my mind than keep asking the same question without getting an answer.
So, what do you think? Definite yes, definite no? Maybe?
I was curious about further opinion on a question I had asked a professor who did talk about it for 20 minutes without ever answering.
Concerning German phonology, would you consider the glottal stop as a fully functional phoneme, aka would you consider the German "Haus" and "Aus" to be minimal pairs?
This started when our study group was preparing for an exam in German linguistics, someone had a question about minimal pairs, and I was able to answer it. I used the words "Maus" and "Haus" as an example for a minimal pair - and that got me thinking if "aus" would be considered to be a minimal pair to "Haus" as well. In our class, the glottal stop was treated as the "weird thing that the German language has, but don´t worry about, it´s probably not going to show up in the exam".
I was dissatisfied and then I went to the next authority - out tutor - and she couldn´t give me an answer, but personally tended towards it not being enough for a minimal pair.
Then, I went to the higher authority, the person teaching the class who holds a diploma. Yet again, I didn´t receive an answer, but she tended towards it being a "proper" phoneme.
In the end, I asked the professor in my lecture about German linguistics - who happens to be the boss of the German linguistic department - and he managed to talk for 20 minutes about phonemes, meaning, phonetics in general, what constitutes a minimal pair - BUT he never answered the question or didn´t even seem to have an opinion about the subject. He brushed it off as a thing that we didn´t need to worry about as it wouldn´t come up in the exam anyway. Still not a satisfactory answer, but I had 8 exams in that semester and had other things on my mind than keep asking the same question without getting an answer.
So, what do you think? Definite yes, definite no? Maybe?