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

Roger Mills wrote:
> Henrik Theiling wrote:
[snip]
>>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?
Yes, it does - otherwise, it would not be shown in a _phonemic_
transcription.

[snip]
>
> Ockham's razor is one reason. Plus one of the axioms of phonemics: if a
> feature is entirely predictable, it is not phonemic
Indeed not. Ockham's razor is particularly pertinent to phonemics, methinks.

> and need not be
> represented. That's why e.g. aspiration is not indicated in Engl. phonemics,
> nor vowel length before voiced sounds, etc.
Exactly!!

[snip]
>
> Most dialects of US/Canadian (and I think UK) English can be represented
> with the same phonemic system, and departures from "the standard" can be
> handled with various adjustment rules (e.g. loss of post-voc. /r/, different
> realizations of the vowels/diphthongs /ow/ or /ay/, etc.). It can get messy,
> but it works :-)))
I believe it does. The 'departures from the standard' (and the
'standard' has more of the nature of a Platonic 'idéa' in this case) are
nearly all predictable and, as Roger writes, can be handled with various
adjustment rules.

> It's possible that there could be dialects of English (or any language) that
> diverge significantly from what could be called "the standard", in which
> case they might require a different phonemicization.
Some Scots lowland dialects might fit into that category.

> Australian Engl. _may_ be such a case, though I'm not totally convinced....
I would expect Australian, New Zealand & South African English to have
the same 'Platonic' phonemic pattern as US, Canadian & British.

> If the divergences
> increase past a certain point (difficult to define), then we're dealing with
> a related "language" not a "dialect".
Indeed, some people do count Lallands (the Scots Lowlands
dialects/language) as a separate language   :)

=============================
T. A. McLeay wrote:
[snip]
 >
 > If the differences aren't great enough to consider English English and
 > American English as "different", then there's no way you could
 > consider Australian English "different" alone. AusE is still little
 > more than an isolated variant of S. E. British English. There's
 > various phonetic differences, which have various implications for how
 > sounds are interpreted, but a short i is a short i is a short i...

I agree 100% - they are IMO all clearly variants of the same language
(even tho the US, Britain & Oz each has its own army and its own navy :-)

--
Ray
==================================
ray@carolandray.plus.com
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
Nid rhy hen neb i ddysgu.
There's none too old to learn.
[WELSH PROVERB}

Reply