Date:  Mon, 29 Nov 1993 23:09:18 EST

From:  Larry Horn <LHORN[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]YALEVM.CIS.YALE.EDU>

Subject: Re: th/dh



Besides the few we've been discussing, I forgot to mention the pattern of

adjectives and nouns with final -th that alternate with verbs with final -dh

(spelled -the):

  mouth vs. mouthe

  loath vs. loathe

  wreath vs. wreathe

There are probably other pairs that participate in this pattern, in some cases

subject to dialectal and idiolectal variation, considering how marginal some

of these lexical items are. (Other potential pairs are of course wrecked by

the vowel shift: bath/bathe, breath/breathe,...)

  In any case, the situation with th/dh pairs is a lot more robust that what

we find with sh/zh (voiceless/voiced palatal fricatives). The best I've ever

come up with here is Confucian/confusion, while other would-be pairs involve

either proper names invoked for the occasion (Asher/azure), marginal instances

of productive word-formation (mesher/measure), or near-minimal pairs that

don't quite get there (pressure/pleasure, thresher/treasure). Can anybody do

better?

                    Larry Horn