Re: Schwa and [V]: Learning the IPA
| From: | Paul Roser <pkroser@...> |
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| Date: | Friday, June 16, 2006, 14:26 |
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On Thu, 15 Jun 2006 16:44:30 -0400, Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> wrote:
>> John Vertical wrote:
>>
>> ? 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.
>
>Yeah. The so-called "cardinal" vowels - around the perimeter of the
>IPA chart - are, *by definition*, at articulatory extremes. If your
>/V/ (or /u/ or /o/ or /Q/, or their oppositely-rounded numbers) isn't
>pronounced with your tongue as far back in your mouth as you can get
>it while still able to pronounce a vowel, then it ain't IPA [V].
Right - *official* IPA has [V] as the low-mid back unround vowel, the
counterpart to [O] (reversed c), *however* Wells and just about every other
text I've ever seen on English phonetics and phonology uses this symbol for
the stressed vowel in /but, cut, above/ etc. So there's a definite
disconnect between how the IPA interprets the symbol cross-linguistically
and how English specialists interpret it. Which makes me wonder if Catford
or Ladefoged ever used a different symbol in narrower transcriptions - I'll
have to check when I get home.
Bfowol
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