Re: more English orthography

Marcus Smith wrote:
> But [@] is an allophone of all the lax vowels, so I don't see what this is
> supposed to prove.  Also, in my dialect there are times when unstressed [V]
> resists changing to [@].  My first phonology professor said that wasn't
> unusual.
Well, that may be true in your dialect, but I did specify "in my
dialect", [@] and [V] are in complimentary distribution, and they are
phonetically similar, that's the definition of allophone I learned.
Yes, all lax vowels can become /@/, but isn't that simply phonemic
neutralization, as in the German phenomenon of voiced consonants
devoicing word-finally?

> Interesting.  I've never heard of this before.
Yeah, I only recently discovered it in my speech.

> Of course.  But this would be guidance from orthography
But weren't we talking about English orthography?

> That basic point still stands, that I don't see how we could find an
> underlying
> pronunciation for the schwa in "comma."  It may be best to consider it a
> phoneme.  I just don't know how to test that.
Of course schwa is a phoneme, I don't think anyone's said it wasn't.  I
merely stated that IN MY DIALECT, [@] and [V] are allophones, [V] used
in stressed syllables, [@] in unstressed.

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