Re: representing back unrounded vowels in X-Sampa

On Sat, 17 Jan 2004 19:26:26  0100 Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...>
wrote.
>At 12:55 17.1.2004, Joe wrote:
>
>>[M] and [V], IIRC.  The latter is the sound in RP 'put'[pVt].
>>
>>
>>More exactly it used to be.  The modern sound is [6], but
>>traditional transcription lags behind.
>>
>>Well, actually, I made a mistake there.  The modern sound is [U], but in
>>'putt' it's [pVt], and it you can't say it's changed, because English
>>doesn't have a universal phonology.(YAEPT alert!).
>
>I meant *putt*.  _Putt_ is [p6t] just as surely as _put_ is
>[pUt].
From its position on the vowel chart, I had always understood /6/ to be a
sound between /a/ and /A/ (except more lax), whereas /V/ is a sound between
/A/ and /7/. Given also the description of /6/ as the pronunciation of
German |r| after unstressed vowels, it seems strange to my ears that anyone
would state that /6/ occurs phonemically anywhere in RP. OTOH, I don't doubt
that some lect somewhere has it, although it seems a more natural fit for
/A/ ( / _ /r\/ ) in otherwise /A/ -> /a/ lects.

My lect, FWIW, has |putt| /pVt/ and |put| /pUt/.

For whatever else it's worth (and I did miss the beginning of the thread), I
have always understood X-Sampa (and by analogy, CXS) to have |M|, |7|, |V|,
and |A| for the four unrounded back vowels. As far as I'm concerned, they're
as good as any other suggestion, and avoid unsightly "-unrounded" or
"-backed" diacritics to boot.




Paul