luke wrote:I'd be inclined to think that minimal pair training that doesn't include production is incomplete.
Cainntear wrote:So do I, because I believe that the most effective way to build an accurate phoneme map is through producing the correct phonemes. How can a teacher judge the correctness of a student's phoneme map except by their production of phonemes, after all...?
luke wrote:I agree. Getting minimal pairs right is like being able to play note transitions smoothly and accurately on a musical instrument.
As a teacher Cainntear is obviously interested in knowing how well his students are doing, and then they of cause have to show their skills in practice - only then can the teacher judge whether they have organized their phonemes in the prescribed fashion. And the students of course have to learn to speak before that can demonstrate their skills and get the approving nod from the teacher. But that's how things are seen from a control point of view and doesn't in itself show how the students got there.
It's actually the old discussion about input and output once again, just at the phonological level. And my input to that discussion is that exact unbiased listening witout reference to the phoneme discussion has been underestimated. Minimal pairs is just the part of listening that concerns the borderlines between phonemes (that's how phonemes are defined, actually), but it's in my view just as important to be able to hear the differences between the allophones within a phoneme (how for instance a vowel phoneme differs with or without an r after it), and that must build on acribic listening to actual sounds - including sounds emitted by different native speakers.
As for the parallel between minimal pairs and note transitions in music - I simply don't understand that comparison . I spent several hours yesterday trying to revive my slumbering piano playing skills on my newly tuned piano, and there the phonemes were nicely separated - one key per note. I have also played violin and cello for many years, and there you have to hit one canonical spot for any given note - but at least there is a one dimensional continuum of notes on a given string, and there is one correct place to put your finger for each note (actually things are more complicated because of the notion of temperature, but let's leave the diabolus in musica aside for now). You may slide from one note to the next, but that movement will still be between different notes, each defined by one canonical finger position.
If I had to point to anything that gave me problems similar to those with the phoneme borders it would be tempo - what IS allegro? What IS adagio? On my metronome each name is associated with an interval (beats per minute), but in practice the speeds overlap. One conductor may play moderato faster than the allegretto of another, and a composer may write presto but the performer does it at a speed that would be called prestissimo on my metronome. But I still can't see how that can help me to learn languages EXCEPT that you have to learn to listen to the actual sounds in both cases - rather than just being content with the abstract units into which the actual sounds are organized. Only piano players are (partly) exempt from that requirement.. (afterthought: and writers that use a keyboard)