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

From:Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>
Date:Monday, February 5, 2007, 20:12
On 2/5/07, Daniel Prohaska <danielprohaska@...> wrote:
> > For me, as a speaker of north-western English English, phonemic quantity > distinctions are very much part of the system. I'm very much aware of > them. > Here are a few contrasts I spontaneously came up with.
Sure. But the choice of phonemic symbols is still arbitrary; so even though the distinction is length rather than rhoticitiy, you could still just as easily say that "part" is /part/ and the phonetic realization of /ar/ is [a:] in that context (vs contexts where it really is [ar] or [a:r] due to epenthesis/liaison). Such a representation is biased toward rhotic dialects, -but no less valid for that bias. You chose to render the vowel in "bays" as /e:/, but if there's no short /e/ to contrast it with, the /:/ is optional. One could also choose to include the offglide (/eI/, /ej/, et sim) or not. As long as everyone agrees that we're talking about the vocalic phoneme in the word "bays", the particular symbol choice is unimportant. /Q/ "cot" ~ /Q:/ "caught" That's an interesting one. (Assuming those are really [Q] and [Q:] in your 'lect, anyway. :)) It would not have occurred to me that the difference between those two would be realized as length. Does that count as a "partial CAUGHT-COT merger", since the qualities are the same? -- Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>