Re: OT: YAEPT: English low vowels (was briefly: Re: Y/N variants (< OT: English a...

Mark Reed wrote:
>I was looking for the term for the "ah" sound, and went by this page:
>
>http://www.ic.arizona.edu/~anth383/lexicalsets.html
>
Interesting, useful and illuminating! With minor exceptions (to be expected
I guess), it matches my lect.

Disagree on: pulse-- FOOT not STRUT
cuckoo-- GOOSE not FOOT (this IMO is a genuine error-- the international
word is [kuku] with variable stress, no?)
buoy-- GOOSE not CHOICE -- ['bu(w)i] for me, perhaps a spelling pronunc.; we
didn't see many buoys out in S.Dakota :-))-- I do recall puns involving
bellboy vs. bell buoy, however.
Koran [k_hO'r\&n], rationale [r\&S@'n&l], panorama [p_h&n@'r\&m@]-- TRAP not
PALM; and "lava" can vary between the two ['l&v@ ~'lAv@]; OK on [k_hO'r\An]
if I'm being careful and up-to-date, or speaking Indonesian [kUr'?An] (the
dict. gives both "Kor'an" and "Kur'an", as well as "koran" 'newspaper' tho
that wasn't the usual word in my experience)

I disagree with the inclusion of idea, Korea, museum, real, ideal,  in the
/Ir/ NEAR set, these are sequences of {stressed V + unstr. V} IMO;
furthermore they're mostly ['i(j)@], except "idea" which can also be
[aj'dI@], and "museum" [mju'zI@m] often (casual sp.) [mju'zIm] -- yes, I
know "idea, Korea" can take on a final -r, but that dialect is somewhat
stigmatized in US.

Question about the /I/ KIT set: what about the final -y in pretty, busy--
that's closer to /i/, but not mentioned in /i/ FLEECE set.  As I recall, US
Phonemics, which used /i/ for /I/ and /iy/ for /i/, had a problem with final
y too-- I don't recall e.g. "busy" as /biziy/, but memory could be fading on
that point; I think /iy/ was used only in stressed position. In any case,
the stressed/unstr. vowels of ['bIzi] and ['prIti] aren't phonetically "the
same" _for me_.

My guess is that US /i/ could have been described as having "allophone [I]
in all positions except in unstressed final position where it has allophone
short-[i] " so "busy" could have been phonemicized /bizi] -- but it was one
of those neither-this-nor-that problems, like the quality of vowels before
/r/ or /N/.

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