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

Daniel Prohaska 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.
>
>
> /a/ "pat"      ~        /a:/ "part"
>
> /E/ "bed"     ~        /E:/ "bared", "bares" ~     /e:/ "bays"
>
> /I/ "bid"       ~        /I:/ "beard"           ~        /i:/ "bead"
>
> /Q/ "cot"     ~        /Q:/ "caught"        ~        /o:/ "coat"
If all these had been written between square brackets, I would have no
quarrel with it.

But it seems to me to run counter to the phonemic theory to set up a
phonemic inventory for the English of north-west England and thus
separate ones for, presumably, north-east England, the west Midlands,
the east Midlands, south west England ans south East England. that is,
at least _six_ different phonemic inventories for varieties of English
in just _England_ - we'd have to add others for the English of
south-east Wales, of the Welsh valleys, of south Wales etc, and I don't
know how many for Scotland and Ireland. Then we'll have more still for
the US (How many different one there?), for Canada, New Zealand,
Australia, the Indian sub-continent, the various different anglophone
countries of Africa and the Caribbean.

No - that is simply *not* what I have understood the phonemic theory to
be about. As Mark wrote:
-------------------------------
Mark J. Reed wrote:
[snip]
 > 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).

Yes, indeed - in fact IME many non-linguistically minded southerners
think they do pronounce the _r_ when they say [p_hA:t]! They will
explain that without the _r_ it's [p_h&t], but that [&] + [r\] makes
[A:] - naive, I know, but that has been my experience talking with
non-linguists   :)

 >Such a representation is biased toward rhotic
 > dialects, -but no less valid for that bias.

Indeed it is not, and I would argue that on pan-Anglophone
considerations /part/ is better _phonemic_ representation. To have to
posit different phonemic representations such as */pA:t/, */pA`t/,
*/pa`t/, */part/ etc is certainly not using Ockham's razor - IMO it's
letting the beard grow wild & unkempt.

 > You chose to render the vowel in "bays" as /e:/, but if there's no short
 > /e/
 > to contrast it with, the /:/ is optional.

In fact phonemically it's redundant.

 > One could also choose to include the offglide (/eI/, /ej/, et sim) or
not.

And in Britain we also have varieties like [e@] and [I@] for the same
phoneme   ;)


 > As long as everyone agrees that
 > we're talking about the vocalic phoneme in the word "bays", the
particular
 > symbol choice is unimportant.

Applying Ockham's razor, /e/ would seem the best.

 > /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.

Nor I, but I have no reason to suppose that Daniel is not giving true
phonetic rendering  of his 'lect.

Down here in the south-east they are [Q] and [O:]

 >Does that count as a
 > "partial CAUGHT-COT merger", since the qualities are the same?

Presumably it does.

But I'm not sure if this particularly aspect of the thread is going to
get us anywhere. It seems to me that Daniel and I do not have the same
view of what a phoneme actually is (it's an abstract construct anyway).

--
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}

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