Re: Schwa and [V]: Learning the IPA

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 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].

> 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     :)

[snip]
>>
>> Don't  know the answer to the second question, but the answer to the
>> first is Australia. I remember when an Oz lady came to the door once; I
>> don't recall what i said, but I do remember her reply; [M:]?
>>
>> I didn't understand immediately and took it for some antipodal grunt -
>> but when she repeat the sound it began to realize it was "Who?"    :)
>
>
> Ahh.. really? That is not what I've heard personally or seen in any
> literature I've read on the topic! Australians, for the most part, use
> [u\:]: It can get further front than central too, but not so far as
> [y] I don't think.
Heard in parts Scotland & in Northern Ire;and.

  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].

> 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.

> I've heard of [M] being used in Californian Engilsh, though.
I'm sure it does occur in parts of the anglophone world. It seems to me
there's been a tendency to unround the back vowels. The /V/ was once
[U], and it still is to this day in much of northern England; the
diphthong [ow] has become [@w] down here in southern England (the
northerners still say [o:]) and the Merkans have unrounded our [Q] to
[A]   :)

> ...
>
>> I[t] does seem to leave [ə] rather vaguely defined IMO.
>
>
> Yes, but ... that's precisely the point. /@/ and [@] are vaguely
> defined, mid-central vowels. They typically take their precise color
> from surrounding consonants and vowels!
Which is all very well in a phonemic analysis, but does make [@] rather
elusive when trying to define phones.
======================================

Mark J. Reed wrote:
 > On 6/15/06, R A Brown <ray@...> wrote:
[snip]
 >
 > 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 think that's probably so.

 > 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.

Over here reduced /E/ and /I/ are normally short [I]; a pronunciation
with [@] would sound odd.

 > The only vowels I can think of which never occur unstressed
 > in my 'lect are /A/ (my CLOTH/LOT/THOUGHT vowel, that is),

The second vowel in 'jigsaw' has the same sound as in 'thought' for me,
namely [O].

 >which is
 > always reduced to /V/ or /@/ when unstressed, and /E/, which has
 > merged with /I/ when unstressed.

I agree with the second. Bit one does now here [Q] retained in
'Lancelot', 'Camelot' etc.

 >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

Much the same here except that the second vowel in 'buzzsaw' is [O] for
us, and not [Q]; also while my northern compatriots have simple vowels
for /e/ and /o/, we southerns diphthongize the things  :)

But I agree it is evident that saying all non-stressed vowels reduce to
[&] is just plain wrong.

[snip]
 >
 >> 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.

Yep.

[snip]
 >>
 >> 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...) :-)

So he was.  Mea culpa.
=================================
Mark J. Reed wrote:
 > On 6/15/06, Roger Mills <rfmilly@...> wrote:
 >
 >> ¿Quién sabe?
 >
 > Quimo, claro.  Quimo sabe todo. :)

"Quimo sabe" - that bring back happy memories   :)
==================================

John Vertical wrote:
 > Herman Miller wrote:
 >
 >> It really depends on which IPA site you use for reference. This one
 >>
 >> http://wso.williams.edu/~jdowse/ipa.html
 >>
 >> has a very far-back-sounding [V], which doesn't sound anything at all
 >> like typical American /V/'s that I'm familiar with. Their [3] and [6]
 >> don't sound quite right either for /V/, but closer. I'd say that the
 >> /V/ in my speech is between [3] and [6], not very close to [V].
 >
 >
 > This is the site I find the most accurate. That [V] *is* rather
 > exagerratedly far back,

? I don't really understand. Is not the IPA [V] the unrounded version of
the low-mid _back_ vowel? I don't understand how a back vowel can be
exaggeratedly back.

But I agree that this site is the most accurate of the three, and that....
[snip]
 >
 >> http://www.ling.hf.ntnu.no/ipa/full/ipachart_vowels_fbmp3.html
 >>
 >> That site has a [V] which to my ears doesn't sound as far back as it
 >> ought to, and sounds more like English /V/ than the [V]'s on the other

It doesn't sound like the English /V/ I've been used to. Sounds more
like 'ah' to me. It's surely wrong.

 >
 >
 > There's some here that sound just plain wrong - especially [&] and
 > [o]... I wouldn't really trust this one.

I agree on both points.
===================================

Roger Mills wrote:
[snip]
 > **closer attention to the occasional native French I hear does
convince me
 > that French /a/ is indeed that "Boston a" in many, though not all,
 > environments. If I'm not mistaken, French used to distinguish the
fronted
 > [a] ("short"?) from a more back [A]-ish sound ("long"?), but it's
moribund
 > if not dead in modern speech.

You are not mistaken. When I learnt French way back in the 1950s the
distinction was indeed made - but [A:] has AFAIK largely, if not
entirely disappeared from modern speech.

--
Ray
==================================
ray@carolandray.plus.com
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
"A mind which thinks at its own expense will always
interfere with language."         J.G. Hamann, 1760

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