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Re: representing back unrounded vowels in X-Sampa

From:paul-bennett <paul-bennett@...>
Date:Tuesday, January 20, 2004, 20:12
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