Re: English ambiguity?

Remco Knooihuizen wrote:
: Erik Max Francis:
:: somebody else wrote:

::: I'm rhotic (L2 speaker of English) so the first pair doesn't work
::: for me. But neither do the others, I'm afraid. I think I hear a
::: qualitative difference, and there's definitely a quantitative
::: difference. So how are these ambiguous?

:: They're not ambiguous, unless you hypothetically eliminated the
:: spelling difference, as I posted.  That was my question:  If you
:: eliminated the difference, _would_ there be ambiguities?  (The
:: answer is obviously yes.)

: Right. So if I were to rephrase your question "If we decide to
: purposely not let the spelling reflect certain existing differences
: in pronuncation, will we end up with homographs?", am I on the right
: track? The answer to that question is of course always "yes".

Except, of course, that lots of North American varieties (not including my
own, but i'm from near the border, so it'll probably be gone there in a
generation or two) have very happily already gotten rid of the cot-caught
distinction without too much trouble. One of the excellent things about
redundancy in language is that there are other ways to figure out what's
supposed to be in the signal if part of it is obscured.

-- 
David Bowie                                         http://pmpkn.net/lx
    Jeanne's Two Laws of Chocolate: If there is no chocolate in the
    house, there is too little; some must be purchased. If there is
    chocolate in the house, there is too much; it must be consumed.