Re: The Language Code (take 4)

Dirk:
> Attention:
>
> This is *not* the beginning of an English Pronunciation Thread. If you
> insist on turning it into one, I cannot be held responsibile
I echo this.

> On Saturday, June 14, 2003, at 07:40  AM, And Rosta wrote:
> > To get English down to 9 vowels requires a degree of ruthless parsimony
> > that would be highly controversial. At a purely descriptive level
> > (i.e. in the Code's spirit of providing a flavour of the language
> > rather than an analysis of it), I would say English has 19-22 vowels
> > (for my accent; 19 definites + 3 marginals). Student textbooks and
> > modern British dictionaries would use 20. That figure of c.20 better
> > reflects the typological eccentricity of the English vowel system
> > & the fact that it is responsible for most dialectal variation
>
> 20 vowels?! Are they all distinctive?
Yes, except that /@/ and (if you count it) /i/ are restricted to
unstressed environments. It's no wonder that the vowels have been
in permanent flux for centuries.

> I agree that 9 vowels is too few
> (I don't remember where that came from), but I can only get 13,
> including diphthongs (14 if I include [O], which I don't have
> natively). Of course, my dialect is rhotic, and I don't treat coda-r as
> forming a diphthong with a preceding vowel nucleus
[...]
> > [to preempt someone asking what the vowels are, here they are:
> > I e & V Q U i: u: A: O: aI OI eI aU @U I@ e@ 3:
> > the 3 marginals: U@ i &:
>
> For the sake of comparison, I have:
>
> [I E & V A U i u aI OI eI aU oU]
>
> Of course, the nucleus of words like 'bird' present a problem; if [r=]
> is admitted as a vowel to accomodate these words (rather than a deeper
> analysis of vowel + [r]), then there is no good reason not to include
> [Ir, Er, Ar, Or] as diphthongs, and the number of distinctive vowels
> goes up to 18 for me as well
Fair enough. I would go with your smaller inventory for your dialect.
We could then say that the vowel inventory ranges from c.13 to c.24,
depending on dialect.

--And.

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