Re: THEORY: free variation [was: Re: [OT] Re: Conlangea Dreaming]

On Wed, 11 Oct 2000, Marcus Smith wrote:

> dirk elzinga wrote:
>
> >On Wed, 11 Oct 2000, Yoon Ha Lee wrote:
> >
> > > <bewildered look>  What's free variation?
> >
> >Relevant example from Shoshoni:
>
> Why go all the way to Shoshoni? We have examples of it in English as well.
> For instance, "envelope" can be pronounced as [Env@lop] or [anv@lop]. Then
> there's the famous [tometo] vs. [tomato] song, extendable to [poteto] vs.
> [potato].
The problem with these examples is that these phones are contrastive
elsewhere: [bet] 'bait', [bEt] 'bet', [bat] 'bought'. The Shoshoni
examples are true allophonic free variation, with individual speakers
varying freely between the different vowel qualities.

Perhaps a better example from English would be the pronunciation of
word-final voiceless stops, which may be released, unreleased, or
(pre) glottalized: 'cat' [k_h&t] ~ [k_h&t'] ~ [k_h&?t] (or even
[k_h&?] with no alveolar closure at all).

Dirk

--
Dirk Elzinga
dirk.elzinga@m.cc.utah.edu