Re: / / vs [ ]

On 5 Jan 02, at 3:10, Elliott Lash wrote:

> Philip Newton <Philip.Newton@...> writes:
>
> > On 5 Jan 02, at 1:25, Sven Sommerfeld wrote:
> >
> > > the phoneme /d/ may have the allophones [d] and [t] as
> > > in German "Hund" that is /hUnd/ but [hUnt].
> >
> > I disagree there... for me, "Hund" rhymes exactly with "bunt", so I'd
> > write both of those as /hUnt/ and /bUnt/. If they sound the same, then
> > they're one phoneme. Don't be mislead by the spelling! Or even by the
> > fact that a final /t/ can turn into a medial /d/ when an ending is
> > added.
>
> But that's EXACTLY the point! Phonemes are UNDERLYING forms whereas
> phones are SURFACE representations.
>
> so that VOICED OBSTRUENTS -> UNVOICED /__#
>
> This is a phonetic rule. However, once an ending is added the
> UNDERLYING voiced obstruent is nolonger at the word boundary, so
> that the rule does not operate, yeilding such allophonic variation
> as:
>
> [hunt] ~ [hund@]
>
> Proving that [d] and [t] are allophones of the phoneme /d/ (but only
> in this possition). German of course does have a phoneme /t/, but
> this is totally separate.
Hm... it makes a little sense to me, but I must say I'm still a little
confused.

Take the examples <Haus> --> <Häuser>. How would you write that in
phonemic notation? /haws/ --> /hawsa/? We have here an [aw] that
changed to [Oj] and a [s] that goes to [z]. Should either of those
changes be represented in phonemic notation? If so, why? If not, why
not? I would be inclined to write /haws/ --> /hOjza/, but perhaps it
should be /hawz/ --> /hawzEr/ since <s> is usually [z] but turns into
[s] in syllable-final position, so could (should?) be considered an
allophone?

Cheers,
Philip
--
Philip Newton <Philip.Newton@...>

Replies