Re: [tied] Re: Retroflexes in Sanskrit

> Phonemicity (inasmuch as any sort of reality can be ascribed to it) is a
> mental phenomenon, and the evidence for phonemic status is always
> indirect, since native speakers have no conscious access to their
> "analytic engine". A phoneme is a member an abstract system, contrasting
> with any other member at least potentially, but not necessarily. The
> minimal-pair test may fail occasionally, as in the case of English /h/,
> /Z/ = "zh" and /N/ = "ng":

Forgive me for asking but is there a requirement in the minimal pair
tests that both pair words be "in the language"? For example for
/N/ and /Z/, any english speaker will tell you that 'gang' /gaN/ is a
different word from 'gazh' /gaZ/ even though gazh isn't a word in
English. Any english speaker would also say that for instance 'gang'
with say an uvular N instead of velar, would simply be a funky
pronounciation of gang, regardless of the existence of a word gang
with uvular N in English.

best wishes

Harald