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

Mark J. Reed wrote:


  I'm just looking
> for a good list of English phonemes, regardless of how they're actually
> realized in 'lect X.
Here's the system used in "classical" US phonemics of the 30s-50s.  It
reflected "Standard Average American", more or less mid-western speech. I've
added the usual symbol after your X-SAMPA (hope the formatting survives!)
with the more common arrangement below.
> Here's the M-W guide:
>
> M-W                                     X-SAMPA.."US"
> \&\ as a and u in abut              /V/ or /@/     schwa
> \a\ as a in ash                         /{/                 ae-lig.
> \A\ as a in ace                         /e/                ey
> \ä\ as o in mop                         /A/              a
> \au\ as ou in out                       /aU/             aw
> \ch\ as ch in chin                      /t_S/            c^
> \e\ as e in bet                         /E/                 e
> \E\ as ea in easy                       /i/                iy
> \g\ as g in go                          /g/                 g
> \i\ as i in hit                         /I/                     i
> \I\ as i in ice                         /aj/                 ay
> \j\ as j in job                         /d_Z/             j^
> \[ng]\ as ng in sing                    /N/             eng
> \O\ as o in go                          /o/               ow
> \o\ as aw in law                        /O/        see below
> \oi\ as oy in boy                       /oj/             oy
> \th\ as th in thin                      /T/               theta
> \<ul>th</ul>\ as th in the              /D/         edh
> \ü\ as oo in loot                       /u/              uw
> \u\ as oo in foot                       /U/               u
> \y\ as y in yet                         /j/                 y
> \zh\ as si in vision                    /Z/               z^
The "^" of course are haceks/carons.
>
> It also includes these symbols:
>
>         \<sup>&</sup>\ as e in kitten
>         \&r\as ur/er in further
These were written two ways:  as @n, @r (preferred I think because it was
easier to type)  or else as "syllabics" with subscript dot n. r.  Same for m
and l
>
The following were, as you say, unambiguous. Minor changes as noted....
> \b\     /b/
> \d\     /d/
> \f\     /f/
> \h\     /h/
> \k\     /k/
> \l\     /l/
> \m\     /m/
> \n\     /n/
> \p\     /p/
> \r\     /r\/
> \s\     /s/
> \sh\    /S/----s^
> \t\     /t/
> \v\     /v/
> \w\     /w/
> \hw\    /W/---usually /hw/; some used the IPA upside-down w.
> \z\     /z/
>
> So by my count that's 39 phonemes.
Right.  Some included a 40th-- the odd triphthong /yuw/ as in "beauty"
/byuwtiy/; others classed the Cy- as a cluster (of anomalous occurence, only
before /uw/ in native Engl. words-- one wanted to exclude Cw/Cy from the
possible clusters since they only occured in loans, and not many at that.)

If you can find a 50s-60s edition of H.A.Gleason's introductory textbook, it
gives a good run-down.  Ditto for C. F.. Hockett's "Course in Modern
Linguistics" (slightly different approach than Gleason's, wouldn't you
know...!)

The usual way of setting forth the English sound system (or any language's)
was:
p    t    c^   k
b    d   j^   g
f     T    s^
v    D    z^
m   n          N
w   l,r   y
hw
      s                h
      z

The vowels were usually arranged:
High: iy               uw
         i                 u
Mid: ey     @      ow
        e                (see below)
Low:æ       a

Diphthongs:  ay  aw  oy  (yuw)
Some people listed the tense vowels as diphthongs, so that the vowel list
consisted only if lax i e æ @ a u.

I really don't recall how /O/ was represented-- technically it should be
/o/, the lax counterpart of mid-/ow/.  But that looks odd to me, and I think
they used the IPA reversed-c symbol.  Odd too, because /O/ behaves as a
tense vowel (can occur in CV monosyllables).  Also, it's possible /a/ was
arranged in the back-vowel column.  Some people used both @ and V (inverted
v) just for clarity in unstressed/stressed positions, even though it was
understood they were "the same", phonemically.

There were other ways of describing the vowels, mainly British systems,
which called the tense vowels "long" and used a colon-- i: i  e: e u: u etc.
Or else simply used the IPA symbols, comparable to the SAMPA-- i I e E
Some also stayed with IPA j instead of /y/; I guess we Americans found that
too European or something Sufficiently confused?  More than you wanted to
know?
:-)))))))))))

Replies