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

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@...>