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

On 06/02/07, Philip Newton <philip.newton@...> wrote:
> On 2/4/07, T. A. McLeay <relay@...> wrote:
> > I would stop
> > when you found what features were psychologically real, and in that
> > case /:/ is clearly an aspect of AusE
>
> Tell me more?
Various pairs are distinguished only on the basis of length:

hut   /hat/   vs heart  /ha:t/
head  /hed/   vs haired /he:d/
bid   /bId/   vs beard  /bI:d/ (or /bid bi:d/; there's no contrast)
still [stI5]  vs steal  [stI:5]
full  [fU5]   vs fool   [fU:5] (ditto)

The above are uncontroversial, although (full/fool and still/steal)
and bid/beard are regional/otherwise not universal. To which one could
also add:

ran  /r&n/   vs Rann   /r&:n/
(con /kOn/   vs gone   /gO:n)

Aside from the four words "bad, sad, glad, mad" with inexplicable
[&:], if you allow grammatical aspects of words to contribute to their
phonetic interpretation, then [&] never contrasts with [&:]---but
usually this isn't allowed so I prefer to think of it as a marginal
phoneme.

"Gone" is the only word pronounced with vowel [O:], but it is also
used in the nagging interjection "Oh" and is how American English /O/
and BrE /A:/ (or, as you prefer, /A/) is perceived (so Londoners are
said to say "dohnce"~"dawnce" for "dance", vs AusE /d&:ns/). I don't
know how to classify a sound that happens only in one word, but
perhaps the easiest way is to say that /:/ isn't just a feature of
certain vowels, but a distinct phoneme in its own right. I don't think
that's right: There's no /o/, /u\/ or /2/ to contrast with /o:/, /u\:/
and /2:/, for instance. (This particular word is not mentioned in
studies and marked in the dictionaries as  /gOn/ or /go:n/, but it's
clear to me how others pronounce it, and linguistically naive people
have brought it up independently in conversations, such as when
someone actually says [go:n]...)

Also, a graph of short vowels height-backness (left) and
length-backness (right) (this requires a fixed width font):
I             U         I           U

  e                       e   a
                           &       O
          O

    &
       a
This graph shows that whereas there's three or four categories of
vowel height amongst the short vowels, there's only two categories of
phonetic length. In languages which don't place any importance on
length, length usually correlates much closer with height because it
takes longer to bring the tongue from the top of the mouth
(consonants) to the bottom (low vowels).

Actually, the American English low vowels are too long to be AusE
short vowels and too short to be AusE long vowels, but they're
perceived as one or the other: Essentially, if the vowel in the
equivalent Australian word is long, then long; otherwise, short. So
"glass" is heard as [gl&:s] (AusE: /gla:s/), even tho AmE doesn't
contrast length and AusE doesn't really contrast length there. (This
para. is based on my personal intuition and interpretation of what
other people say & do, rather than any proper studies.)

--
Tristan.