Re: Romanization of Reduced Vowels

Raymond Brown wrote:

>At 5:46 pm +0100 8/12/98, Kristian Jensen wrote:
-----<snip>-----
>>Well then, what about in words such as /s.li:/ where /s/ and /l/
>>is seperated by an [I]?
>>
>>And in words like /k.m.rup/ 'to complete' where /k/ and /m/ is
>>separated by [U], and /m/ and /r/ is separated by zero?
>>Actually, the "-m-" in /k.m.rup/ is an infix to /k.rup/ 'all',
>>where /k/ and /r/ is separated by zero.
>
>Without a full description of Mon-Khmer phonotactics, I can't
>say.  It seemed from the first examples you gave that the
>coloring of the epenthetic vowel was conditioned by the sounds
>around it.  This may still be the case but the conditioning
>factors are maybe more involved than I thought.  If the coloring
>of these vowels is conditioned then the coloring will not have
>phonemic status.
>
>>Perhaps the [I] in /s.li:/ is conditioned by the [i:] and the
>>[U] in /k.m.rup/ conditioned by the [m] and/or the [u]? In any
>>case, in very slow and precise speech, these reduced vowels are
>>fully articulated (either [@] [I] or [U])and not reduced to
>>zero.
>
>Right, so the vowels are probably not epenthetic but rather more
>like the English reduced vowels which are often omitted in
>'allegro speech', e.g. temporary /'tEMprI/, practically
>/'pr&ktIklI/, international /Int@(r)'n&Snl/ etc.  If so, then IMO
>one ought to write a vowel.  If they are all conditioned variants
>of /@/ then one symbol would probably suffice. But if all three
>can occur in the same environment then they probably do have
>separate phonemic status.  One might use {a}, {i} and {u} if it
>were possible in the spelling to distinguish between 'reduced'
>[@] [I] and [U] or maybe put a breve or some other appropriate
>diacritic above them.
>
All right... I think I'm beginning to understand this now. Thanks to
you. I believe that all these vowel sounds are all conditioned
variants of /@/. So you'd suggest using one symbol. But the question
is, what symbol? It seems really contrived to me to write for
instance a word that sounds like [mw@j] and [mj@n] as "maway" and
"mayan" respectively.

Regards,
-Kristian- 8-)