Re: Phonological equivalent of "The quick brown fox..."

Hi!

R A Brown writes:
> Daniel Prohaska wrote:
> > No, there's no contrast with /A:/ because */A/ doesn't exist.
>
> If there's no contrast then [:] cannot surely be _phonemic_.
>
> > /Q/ does, though.
>
> I am aware of that - I've been speaking southern British English for
> more than 60 years! But I fail to see how that is relevant to whether
> we have /A/ ~ /A:/ or not.
>
> > But vocalic length itself is distinguished in EE, e.g. between /E/
> > and /E:/ in /bEd/ <bed> vs. /bE:d/ <bared>
>
> I think not - there's certainly a _qualitative_ difference in the way
> I say it (and I speak a normal non-rhotic SE England variety). In any
> case, to give [:] phonemic status because of this pair only seems weak
> to me.
>...
But does it matter?  I mean, the phonemic symbols used are simply
that: symbols -- if some vowel is long phonetically, why not use a /:/
in the symbol to denote the corresponding vowel phoneme?  This does
not mean that length itself is phonemic, does it?  If there is [A:]
and [Q], but neither [Q:] nor [A], why not still use /A:/ and /Q/ for
these vowel phonemes?

**Henrik

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