Re: YAEPT: apparently bizarre 'A's (was Re: YEAPT: f/T (was Re: Other Vulgar Latins?))

The fact that half/hearth is a minimal pair for f/T in any 'lect just
goes to show how widely English varies.  It's hard to imagine two
monosyllables that both start with an H and have as their lone vowel
an A-sound that are more  different in my 'lect.  /h&f/ vs. /ha`r\T/.
This is why I enjoy these YAEPT's.

On 2/21/06, Paul Bennett <paul-bennett@...> wrote:
> On Tue, 21 Feb 2006 21:12:07 -0500, Tristan Alexander McLeay
> <conlang@...> wrote:
>
> > On 22/02/06, Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> wrote:
> >> On 2/21/06, Paul Bennett <paul-bennett@...> wrote:
> >> > On Tue, 21 Feb 2006 16:43:24 -0500, Keith Gaughan
> >> <kmgaughan@...>
> >> > wrote:
> >> >
> >> > >> half hearth
> >> > >
> >> > > I don't know any dialect of English where these two are a minimal
> >> pair,
> >> > > rhotic or non-rhotic.
> >> >
> >> > I have /hAf/ ~ /hAT/. In non-careful enough speech, I can have /A:f/
> >> for
> >> > both of them.
> >
> > I'm not sure what the distinction you're trying to draw between /A:/
> > and /A/ is, Paul. Could you elaborate, or is it just a typo/thinko?
>
> One's long, the other's short. Maybe not canonically long vs short, but my
> sloppy lect includes long(er) vowels and my casual lect pretty much
> doesn't, as far as I can tell, at least not contrastively. R-colouring in
> my normal speech seems to be qualitative but not quantitative. Partial
> lengthening in my sloppy speech seems to be due to loss of initial /h/ in
> front of "rhoticized" vowels, whereas vowel-initial words get /?/. It's
> plausible the lengthening is subphonemic/allophonic in response to the
> lack of /?/.
>
> Casual:
> |hat| /hat/ vs |hart| /hAt/ vs |art| /At/
>
> Sloppy:
> |hat| /at/ vs |hart| /A:t/ vs |art| /?At/
>
> Warning: I'm not a phonologist, indeed I'm entirely not formally-trained.
> I'm just doing the best I can on short notice.
>
> Second Warning: My accent was a bastard (in the technical sense) to begin
> with (Milton Keynes native of Harrow stock, with plenty of time in rural
> Buckinghamshire). Transplanting it to North Carolina has probably not
> helped.
>
>
>
> Paul
>

--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

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