Re: A "minimalist" phonology...

This is the shape of the vowel "triangle" as I learned it years ago (and I
really MUST dig into storage and find that old xeroxed text!):
_____________
\                         |
  \                       |
   \                      |
    \                     |
     \ _________ |

Further, it is divided into a grid that follows the shape, so that cells in
the top row, e.g., are wider than those in the bottom row-- capturing the
intuition that the low vowels are closer together (more difficult to
differentiate).  The vertical/back axis shows that for back vowels, the
tongue moves from high to low in a more or less straight line, while for
front vowels, going lower also involves retraction of the tongue.
I forget how many vertical columns (front to back) there are-- certainly
more than 3; horizontal (high to low) probably 6 if not more.  So we have
roughly:

i/y  ?  i-  ?  M/u
  I   ?  ?  ?    U
    e/ö  ? 3 ?  o (and unrounded o)
      E ?@?  O
        æ ?V?  A
          ? ?a? ?
(script a & backward script and print a fit in somewhere in the bottom)

(Hmm, badly spaced.) And not sure about some of the symbols/details-- I know
I've omitted some of the rounded/unrounded varieties-- , but you get the
point I'm sure.

Further, each major cell was subdivided 3x3 (tic-tac-toe grid), with the
basic symbol in the center.  Diacritics allowed for raised/lowered,
fronted/backed varieties within each cell.  Thus, raised/fronted [I] came
very close to lowered/backed [i], but not quite.  Our teacher (June Shoup, I
think a student of Ladefoged's; she died young, sad to say) seemed able to
produce most of these subtleties, and some of the students & TA's could too,
at least within the confines of the classroom and practice sessions.
Altogether one of the most stimulating courses I ever took. (And I hope
memory is doing it justice!)


>On Mon, 23 Apr 2001 14:07:48 -0400, Steg Belsky <draqonfayir@...>
>wrote:
>
>>I've seen the vowel space diagrammed as something like:
>>take the letter D.
>>lay it on it's straight edge, so the curve is facing up.
>>Slice it in half and discard the left half.
>>stretch what's left horizontally so that it ends up around the length
>>that the whole letter used to take up.
>
>Interesting... but then what? How do the vowel axes map onto that?
>
>Is the final result something like this?
>
>------\
>|      \
>|      |
>-------|
>
>That's using crude ASCII characters, of course, so I can't quite catch the
>curve on the right-hand side.
>
>Óskar