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Re: Schwa and [V]: Learning the IPA

From:Tristan Alexander McLeay <conlang@...>
Date:Friday, June 16, 2006, 1:12
On 16/06/06, R A Brown <ray@...> wrote:
> Tristan Alexander McLeay wrote: > > On 16/06/06, R A Brown <ray@...> wrote: > > > >> Larry Sulky wrote: > >> > On 6/15/06, R A Brown <ray@...> wrote: > [snip] > >> > But I still think I disagree. If someone tells me that they'll [kVt] > >> > something, I figure they'll use a knife to do it. But if they say > >> > they'll [k@t] something, I have no idea what they're talking about. > >> > >> Well, yes because you have [@] as a variant of /I/ in 'hobbit' - and > >> possibly as an allophone of other unstressed vowels. I would understand > >> [k@t] as 'curt' :) > > > > Really, even when short? > > Yes - length is not phonemic in this neck of the woods.
I was of the impression that length and quality were concomitantly phonemic (I think that means what I want it to mean) ... but would you take [I:] as long as /i:/, or [i] as short as /I/ to be nothing more than, respectively /I/ and /i:/?
> > I would take it as an odd/dialectal > > pronunciation for "kit" or, > > Yeah - I was, I guess, thinking in more or less RP terms. This is the > trouble with taking words isolation. In real life they don't come in > isolation. IIRC the South African pronunciation of _kit_ is something > like [k@t].
The pronunciation in New Zealand too.
> > perhaps "cut". (But using [3:] or [@:] or > > something similar for /3:/, versus [2:]~[8:]~[@\:] strikes me as > > obviously British.) > > I think the Scots would be a little surprised to think there such a > thing as common British pronunciation :)
I didn't say there was ... I just avoided being any more specific than I could be. I could've said "English", but then those poor rhotic west Midlanders(?) would've been unfairly included, and what of the dialects which use [E:] (merged with /E@/), or [8:] or something? I don't really know where every accent comes from so I was just broad. [M:] in AusE etc.
> To me, [M] is almost indistinguishable from the > > completely different sound, /l=/! (I didn't believe it when I first > > heard it---I was sure there must've been some mispronunciation---but > > it's so!) > > Not the /l=/ I'm used to which is more like [o] or [7].
[o:] is the vowel I have in "caught", "board" etc.: It's clearly not that. And when I pronounce this vowel, I can feel more tongue very near the velum as you'd expect for a high back vowel. And if you just change the liprounding, you get [u]. So I think it's pretty much so! And likewise with [M\] (velar glide), which in coda position I find hard to distinguish from coda /l/. But if I intentionally "drop my l's" to sound Cockney or something, I do use [o] or the like---I never realised me and other Melburnians/Australians must do it on such a frequent basis already!
> > Are you sure this woman wasn't just being lazy, making some > > sort of an antipodal grunt that was intended to be interpreted as > > "who?"? > > It's possible, as she didn't bother with aspirate either. But I'm fairly > certain somewhere in the archives some guy claimed to have heard [M] > used somewhere in Oz. But it's a big country, and I don't know now which > part she hailed from.
True, but generally regarded as homogenous in pronunciation. -- Tristan.

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Paul Bennett <paul-bennett@...>