Re: Paul Bennett's linguistic history (was Re: Schwa and [V]: Learning the IPA)

Ooh whoops, I didn't notice this thread. Wish Google Mail would do
*proper* mail threading...

On 16/06/06, Paul Bennett <paul-bennett@...> wrote:
> -----Original Message-----
> >From: Tristan Alexander McLeay <conlang@...>
> >
> >On 16/06/06, Paul Bennett <paul-bennett@...> wrote:
> >>
> >> I have always held (well, not always, but it is my most recent position,
> >> and relatively long-lived as such things go) that length is not phonemic
> >> in my lect.
> >
> >You'll have to remind me of where you come from/what dialect you speak
> >(Earthlink's an American ISP, yes?).
>
> Originally from the UK, with six years of North Carolina (USA) on top of that.
Ah

> I'm sort of adopting some of the NC features. I have started
> using /4/ subconsciously (originally just when I specifically
> tried to), and /Aj/ is becoming /a/ (along with some /I/
> becoming /I@_^/). I still have to force myself to front /A/ to
> /&/, and to produce postvocalic /r\/, but I can see it
> becoming more automatic, and I'm sure there are other
> more subtle changes going on that I'm not aware of.
Hm.. I expect you mean to put most of these in square brackets :)

Why do you conciously try to adopt the local accent? Makes it easier
for others to understand you, or ...?

BTW: For Americans, is the flapped/tapped [4] as the allophone for /t/
or /d/ the same as a Spanish /4/, or are they different? I make
homophones of "writer" and "rider", but it strikes me as being
essentially [d], and doesn't really sound much like Spanish /4/. Is
this a difference between the phenomenon in Australia vs America, or
is it just two different sounds tend to be described in the same way?
(Perhaps the difference between the tap and the flap?)

> > BTW,
> >what's the /`/ meant to represent? It's usually a diacritic for
> >retroflexion/rhoticity, but you've got it after the colon in /E:/
> >making it look like some sort of separate segment?
>
> Well, that's just it, you see. I sort of think it makes more sense to think of it as
>  a "reduced R" segment than a "additional rhotic" suprasegment. I'm not entirely
>  sure though. It's not a great problem in my life, but it's a puzzle.
*Cofusion*. If it's a reduced R segment, then surely /E(:)r/ is a
better notation, noting that the segment is reduced compared to /r/ in
onsets. I first interpreted /E:`/ as perhaps meaning /EE`/. Which i
suppose you might say it does, but then why not just write that?

--
Tristan

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