Re: Schwa and [V]: Learning the IPA

On 6/15/06, R A Brown <ray@...> wrote:
> Larry Sulky wrote:
> > I think I must have totally missed everybody's points.  I didn't
> > realise that the existence of [V], [U], or [@] in at least some
> > American English dialects was in question.
>
> I do not recall anyone questioning the existence of [U] in any American
> dialect. The only reason [U] has occurred in this current version of the
> [V] ~ [@] thread is that in England [sic], the phoneme generally
> transcribed as /V/ is realized in the south as [V] and in the north as
> [U]. As far as I know only the southern [V] pronunciation was ever
> transported abroad to the Americas and other places where Brits settled.
>
> > I'm from the American west
> > coast, with influences from the American midwest and Toronto, Ontario.
> >
> > I pronounce "but" and the "a" in "about" as [V].
>
> Do you? This side of the Pond the sounds just ain't the same. The _u_ in
> _but_ is [V] down in southern England & in Wales, and generally [U] in
> northern England (I think Scots also generally have [V]). But the _a_ in
> _about_ is an unrounded _central_ mid vowel.
>
Well, I keep thinking I do. For example, the vowel distinction between
"put" (with [U]) and "putt" (with [V]) is clear and phonemic to me and
to, I believe, the vast majority of Americans and Canadians.

> It is such statements made by north Americans in past threads that have
> certainly given the impression that the two *phonemes* /@/ and /V/ have
> fallen together in many parts of North America; indeed, your statement
> above only confirms this.
Ooooookay. I really misunderstood. I thought we were talking about [@]
and [V] rather than /@/ and /V/.

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.
For me the difference between [@] and [V] is usually phonemic. (I
would probably recognise /b@t/ in unstressed position as "but", but
not if stressed. And if someone pronounced the unstressed vowel in
"hobbit" as [V], I would recognise it, but consider the pronunciation
odd.)

Now, I can't think of any minimal pairs for these two vowels. Would
that make the distinction non-phonemic, even though I recognise [kVt]
and [nVb] as words but not [k@t] and [n@b]?

---SNIP---
>
> But I was not aware that anyone was talking about *phones*.
My mistake. Sorry for the confusion.

>
> The question was whether or not /@/ and /V/ are separate phonemes. It
> has become apparent to me following similar threads over many years on
> this list (look in the archives) that in some varieties of north
> American English, at least, the two _phonemes_ have fallen together,
> Indeed, your mail surely confirms this.
I just don't see how it does. Sure, there are probably some dialects
where it has, but they are surely in a small minority, and my
impression at the outset of the thread was that it was being claimed
that these phonemes had coalesced for _most_ North American English
dialects.

It may be that these phonemes have coalesced or redistributed
themselves in some words. But if the national news reporters started
saying [k@t] and [n@t] and [l@ki] for "cut" and "nut" and "lucky", or
[pipVl] for "people", they would sound weird at best, and, at least
for the one-syllable words, incomprehensible to most.

---SNIP---
>
> Quite so. What I understood from these threads over the years is that
> generally Merkans:
> (a) have the same sound for the 'a' of 'about' and the 'u' of 'but'.
Yes. And it's a different sound than the one for the "e" in "terrain"
(which is [@], not [E]).

> (b) the sound is some sort of central, unrounded vowel.
It is. It's pretty close to the Lausanne sample that I referenced. Not
so close to the London sample. Which of those is "true" IPA?

>
> If I am mistaken, then presumably the information I have read is incorrect.
>
>  > My realization that my /V/ is not IPA [@], either, is what started
>  > this thread. :)
>
> Ah. One of the problems IMO is that the IPA [@] is itself not clearly
> defined!
>
> Traditionally, the 'a' an about and the 'e' in French 'le' have both
> been given the phoneme /@/. But the French sound is rounded, whereas the
> English sound is not.
Using the French sound there would sound quite odd.

> If one examines the 2005 version of the IPA vowel
> chart, the shwa symbol is given for:
> _both_ (a) the unrounded, close-mid central vowel (CXS [@\]);
> _and_ (b) for any central vowel, whether rounded or not, between
> close-mid and open-mid (presumably CSX [@] denotes the same imprecisely
> defined vowel).
Neither [V] nor [@] is rounded for me. The former is open-mid, the
latter is closed-mid, and is pronounced _slightly_ more forward. Also,
neither has even a hint of roll-off into a rhotic, except for some New
England and New York metro accents, which the rest of us make fun of.

In unstressed syllables, the difference is probably not phonemic. In
stressed syllables, [V] sometimes can replace [@], but not the other
way around. You can't say [k@t] for [kVt] and expect to be understood,
except perhaps in Appalachia.

>
> This seems to me somewhat unsatisfactory.
Agreed. And I apologise again for the confusion I've caused.

---larry

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