Re: Phoneme Analysis Question

----- Original Message -----
From: "Muke Tever" <hotblack@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Sunday, October 17, 2004 8:38 AM
Subject: Re: Phoneme Analysis Question


> On Sun, 17 Oct 2004 11:46:09 +0600, Joseph Fatula <joefatula@...> wrote:
> > I'm working on describing the phonemic inventory of a language, and I've got
> > a (probably stupid) question:
> >
> >    If two phonemes have the same phonetic realization in a particular
> > environment, how do you determine which a word has if it has that
> > environment?
>
> In general I think this is where archiphonemes come in, where neutralization of contrast between
phonemes occurs.
>
> > Consider "fair, bear, chair, hare, very".  In my idiolect at least, short E
> > and long A are two separate phonemes, but before R they have the same
> > phonetic realization.  I realize this isn't the case for many of you, but
> > it's just an example.
>
> For this problem though, even though I seem to have the same vowels as you, I wouldn't consider
any of those words to have a long A.

For me some of those words have the diphtong /E@/ (or perhaps /e@/).
And I notice that Quickscript (a successor of the Shavian alphabet) uses the letters /eI/ + /r/ to
write /E@r/, making |they're| and |there| identical.

JF