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Re: Romanization of Reduced Vowels

From:BP.Jonsson <bpj@...>
Date:Friday, December 11, 1998, 19:21
At 01:49 10.12.1998 +0100, Kristian Jensen wrote:


>But there is only _one_ underlying minor vowel in Boreanesian - the >/@/. The other realizations of this vowel ([I],[U], and zero) are >allophones of the same vowel. That's why I have decided to symbolize >this with the same letter all throughout. Yet, it still wouldn't >cause any ambiguity to represent these allophones by different >letters to better reflect the pronounciation. Its just that Raymond >adviced using one letter. What's better, phonemic or phonetic >transcription? > >Regards, >-Kristian- 8-)
I don't know if it's force of habit ;), but I agree with Ray! Maybe the best symbol would be an apostrophe, unless the lang also has a glottal stop ('as 'everyone knows the 'apostrophe 'is sacred to the glottal stop! ;-) FWIW some phonologists argue that the French _h aspir/e_ and _e muet_ represent the same phoneme with a single feature [glottal], which is optionally realized as glottal stop or pause before vowels and as [@] before a consonant or a pause, but usually is not realized at all except in extra-careful speech. A lang with [h] and [@] as non-syllabic and syllabic allophones of a single phoneme seems a funny idea, BTW. Indonesian normally writes /e/ and /@/ with the same letter {e}, in spite of the fact that they are different phonemes, but in dictionaries and foreign learners' textbooks /e/ is differentiated as {/e}. Maybe you could follow a similar road, with /a/ differentiated from [@] only in those cases where ambiguity may arise. /BP ---------------------------------------------------- <bpj@...> Solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant! (Tacitus)