Re: Schwa and [V]: Learning the IPA

Mark J. Reed wrote:
<<
Are you saying that the
schwa has no separate phonemic status in English?
 >>

I don't know how anything I said could possibly have been
misconstrued as the above.

Continuing:
<<
Likewise, the /V/ symbol is commonly used to represent the vowel which
appears in stressed form in "cut" and in unstressed form in "hiccup".
 >>

And the use of the symbol is what I have a problem with.  That
the exact phonetic sound [V] exists in US English is what I myself
haven't seen any evidence of, and is what I'd like to see evidence
of (in some dialect of US English--I've never seen any data on
Southern English).  I can't say anything about the English outside
the US, since most of the discussion regarding such varieties I've
encountered has been largely anecdotal.

Ray Brown:
<<
It is evident that in many (all?) parts of the US the two phonemes
have fallen together,
 >>

This is not true.  For example, "putt" always has the same vowel,
but the first, third and fifth vowels in "predictability" can all vary,
in my speech (and, I'd wager, in many others'), between [@],
[I], [i-], turned a ([a\]?), and something that sounds pretty much
indistinguishable from the vowel in "putt".  I think the variability
is one of the (if not the) distinguishing characteristics of the
phoneme in my English.

Dan wrote:
<<
To cut a long story short - I'm afraid that neither /V/ nor [V] are a
myth,
but simply something that was transcribed from RP rather than the
more or
less regionally influenced varieties of English.
 >>

This I would have no trouble believing.

-David
*******************************************************************
"sunly eleSkarez ygralleryf ydZZixelje je ox2mejze."
"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."

-Jim Morrison

http://dedalvs.free.fr/

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