Re: OT: Definitely Not YAEPT: English phoneme inventory?

On Thu, 17 Jul 2003 12:27:57 +0100, Ian Spackman
<ianspackman@...> wrote:

>>Perhaps /Vi/ (and /Vu/?) in dialects with Canadian
>>rising.
>
>
>No, they aren't separate phonemes (well, assuming one believes in ordered
>rules): they're allophones of /ai/, /au/ before voiceless consonants.
Also before /r/ at the end of a syllable (which ends up as [r\=]) and in a
couple of anomalous words like "tiger" and "spider". I have a minimal pair
between "lyre" ["l6Ir\=] and "liar" ["laIr\=], although these could be
analyzed as /'lair/ vs. /'lai@r/. Still, that doesn't account for "tiger".
But I don't think it needs its own phoneme. I also have [aU] in "south"
where [6u] would be expected, but only in this one word as far as I can
tell.