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

Mark J. Reed wrote:
> On Dec 15, 2007 12:49 AM, Herman Miller <hmiller@...> wrote:
>
>> I don't know if it makes sense to use the NEAR set at all with American
>> English -- half of the words are just KIT + r (or FLEECE + r, take your
>> pick), and most of the rest are FLEECE + COMMA, or in a couple of cases
>> "l-colored" FLEECE. (I like that idea of "l-colored" vowels
>
>
> Glad you like it.  I think "lateralized" makes a good  technical term for
> it.  But I disagree about not having NEAR in GAE - the R does change the
> vowel, and if you take away NEAR, you might as well take away START, etc.
> too.
I believe there are words like "mirror" and "spirit" which have KIT + r
in some English dialects; these words as I say them have the same sound
as the ones in the NEAR list that have /r/ after the vowel. You're right
that this vowel is phonetically different from the vowel in "kit",
though. I guess another way of looking at this is that these words have
split off from the KIT set in the same way that the "alm" words moved
from PALM to CLOTH/THOUGHT. Then merry/marry/Mary would all have the
SQUARE vowel, etc.

But the thing about NEAR that doesn't fit is that it also includes the
"ee-a" sequence, as in "idea" or "museum". That really ought to be a
separate lexical set -- the loss of final /r/ in some dialects caused
these sets to merge. (I have at least one minimal pair: rhea vs. rear.)

Back to "lateralized" -- I'm not sure there's anything lateral about
"l-colored" vowels. If anything, they might be velarized -- /l/ at the
end of syllables in English tends to be velarized, which could spread to
the preceding vowel. My vowel in "pull" is pretty much a syllabic /l/,
though -- definitely not [U]. It might be [7] or [7_G].

Would a language that doesn't velarize /l/ at the end of syllables still
have "l-colored" vowels? You could have "dentalized" or "alveolarized"
vowels I guess.