"This situation is familiar to all of us, but in a different context. Superman and Clark Kent are also in complementary distribution. Clark Kent is around when ever life is going normally; Superman is around whenever there is danger."
--my textbook, explaining how two allophones of the same phoneme are like Clark Kent and Superman--they can't be in the same place at the same time. Brilliant.
Posted by linnea at June 15, 2006 12:40 AMSo what about a word like "either?" Since I could pronounce it as "eether" or "aiether" without changing the meaning and pretty much without regard to the pronunication of other words in the sentence.
Posted by: jb at June 15, 2006 1:09 PMBut....the pronunciation WILL affect what we all think of you and your education...
Posted by: funke at June 15, 2006 2:37 PMwell, not necessarily. I usually say, "eether." And I think that doesn't have so much to do with phonology, because you can't say, "well, it's meant to be 'aiether' because that vowel usually shows up at the beginnings of words before a "th" sound. You could . . . okay, this is getting complicated, but I believe you could say "aiether" is more common in Britain because they use that vowel sound more in that place and Americans use the other vowel more in that place. But I'm not sure if that has much to do with the allophones of the same phoneme thing. Aahh. now I'm confused.
Posted by: linnea at June 15, 2006 5:16 PMJust messin with ya. "Either" is a standard example of a free variation, ie. an allophonic variation independent of the phonetic environment where the phoneme occurs, as opposed to the environment-dependent complementary distribution that you wuz talkin about. as I understand it, you can use two allophones of the same phoneme in the same place at the same time (ie. it does not matter which one you use) when you are dealing with a free variation. I'll admit, though, that I'm probably totally off on this.
Posted by: jb at June 15, 2006 5:34 PMAlso, that's kinda a stock definition of a free variation. It could use some mad polishing.
Posted by: jb at June 15, 2006 5:42 PMjackass
Posted by: linnea at June 15, 2006 8:34 PM"eether" is correct, from what I understand. "aither" is an affectation.
Posted by: Evan Donovan at June 15, 2006 10:37 PMI am glad you put quotes around the word, Evan; otherwise you might have just been saying the same thing as jb.
Posted by: funke at June 16, 2006 12:12 PMNot that I really knew what jb was saying...
Posted by: funke at June 16, 2006 12:13 PMha, jb, you were a day ahead of me. here's what my textbook says (no, I don't care if anyone is interested): "A saying attributed to William Labov is, 'Free variation isn't so free.' That is, what a phonologist calls free variation is often actually not free, but is conditioned by social factors (hence, funke's accusation of under-education and Evan's of affectation). Phonologists are often not terribly interested in social factors, however, and so the term 'free variation' persists." (Baker, 2006)
Posted by: linnea at June 16, 2006 1:07 PMHmm. I've never heard of the term gree variation. I'm not sure if Evan and Funke are right about usage of eeither vs aiether since I would expect variations in the phoneme to repeat themselves in words such as eight and Eiffel (at least on a regional basis)if it were a structural variation (from the description, I suspect that a gree variation and a structural variation are pretty much the same thing).
Posted by: jb at June 16, 2006 2:28 PMdarnit, from now on I'm proofreading my comments. I changed it, though, I changed it to "free variation" right after I wrote it. Why is your computer still showing it as "gree variation?" I can't deal with this.
Posted by: linnea at June 16, 2006 2:36 PMNo, it's cleaned up now. Hmm...
Posted by: jb at June 16, 2006 2:41 PM