Re: Schwa and [V]: Learning the IPA

On 6/15/06, R A Brown <ray@...> wrote:
> Not sure that I would immediately recognize 'hobbit' with [V] for second
> vowel. for me the word is ['hQbIt]
Same here.  Well, OK, it's ['hAbIt], since my I have the same vowel as
"father" in all three of CLOTH/LOT/THOUGHT, but I agree that the
second syllable has an unstressed short I.  In fact, putting whatever
my /@/ is there makes it sound British to me. :)

> Well, if you pronounce both the 'a' in 'about' and the 'u' in 'butt' the
> same way, then surely you have a single phoneme - while those of us that
> do not pronounce them the same, have /@/ and /V/ - unless one regards
> our [@] as a weaken allophone of /&/ in that word!
Having the same phoneme in <about> and <butt> does not imply that /@/
and /V/ have everywhere merged.  Perhaps <about> is /V'bAut/ or
whatever but other words are nevertheless /@/.

> Thinks: What really is the phonemic status of [@] in any English dialect?
As I mentioned a few msgs back, the phonemic status of /@/ seems to be
variable depending on whom you ask about it.

I find it convenient to regard all *reduced* vowels as allophones of
the same phoneme; there seems to be a tendency, however, to lump all
*unstressed* vowels together, and that's simply not accurate, at least
not in my 'lect.   So far we've mentioned <hobbit> and <hiccup> as
examples with unstressed but unreduced vowels, but there are several
others.  The only vowels I can think of which never occur unstressed
in my 'lect are /A/ (my CLOTH/LOT/THOUGHT vowel, that is), which is
always reduced to /V/ or /@/ when unstressed, and /E/, which has
merged with /I/ when unstressed.  Here are examples of the other
non-rhotics - though many of these words are compounds and therefore
the "unstressedness" may be debatable.

/&/   brickbat
/V/   hiccup
/e/    ashtray
/i/     happy    (HAPPY=FLEECE for me)
/U/    beechwood
/o/    arrow
/u/    bedroom ("room" is in GOOSE, not FOOT, for me)
/I/     hobbit
/au/  countdown
/Q/   buzzsaw ("-aw" words are in PALM for me, btw)
/ai/   buckeye
/oi/   alloy

> No, no - this confusing phones & phonemes. but in any case, if you do
> look in the archives at similar threads I think you will find some
> Merkans have claimed that [k_h@t] & [n@t] is exactly what they do say. I
> can only go on what I read on these lists.
> Precisely. Some furriners at least seem to confuse Great Britain & England.
Well, some Americans seem to confuse America with the United States,
so I think you're still better off. :)

> OOPs - I wasn't awake this morning   :-(
>
> You're right - CXS [@\] is IPA [ɘ]. Dagnabit, [ɘ] and  [ə] look too darn
> similar before I've had my intake of caffeine   ;)
I think they look far too similar no matter how much caffeine you've
consumed.  Likewise [ɵ] and [θ] and many other pairs of IPA symbols,
though font choice makes a difference.

>  >> From this pair of observances I will assume that my /@/=/V/ vowel is
>  > not, in fact, [6], as I earlier guessed.  I think it's time to do some
>  > more investigatin'.
>
> Not necessarily - I was thinking of [6] in these words in the context of
> someone speaking RP - I do not think I would find it strange in the
> context of an American accent.
Yes, but Roger *did* find it strange, and since he's American, I tend
to put some weight on that (his being the other half of the pair of
observances I mentioned...) :-)

--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>