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

ROGER MILLS wrote:
> 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?)
I think I may have heard the FOOT pronunciation of cuckoo -- probably on
a bird song recording (but definitely not American). It's ['kuku] for
me, although more often used in the phrase "cuckoo clock" since the
birds are not common sights anywhere I've lived.

I also differ on "solve", which is CLOTH/THOUGHT instead of LOT for me;
"borrow"  and "sorrow" are LOT/PALM instead of CLOTH (while "palm" and
other "-alm-" words are CLOTH/THOUGHT instead of PALM); all other words
in the CLOTH list with -r after the vowel are NORTH/FORCE (I have one
single word with CLOTH/THOUGHT followed by /r/: "sorry"). "Rationale" is
TRAP/BATH (both of the a's in the word). I have the merry/marry/Mary
merger in my dialect, so SQUARE is redundant, and "scenario" also goes
with that category. Many of the words in the CURE group border on
NORTH/FORCE (poor, gourmet) or NURSE (plural).

> 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.
Also two syllables for me (possibly to avoid confusion with "boy").

> 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)
For me, Koran is TRAP, but Qur'an is LOT/PALM. The second a in panorama
can go either way, but lava is always LOT/PALM.

> 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.
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. It explains
a lot of strange vowels in my pronunciation, like "pull" which is almost
a syllabic velarized /l/, "milk" and "vanilla" which border on /E/, and
of course the -alm words like "palm" and "calm". The vowels in "winter"
and "mountain" could be described as "n-colored" if we didn't already
have a term "nasalized".)

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