USAGE: THEORY/USAGE: RE: [CONLANG] A discourse on Phonemics (was: Re: E and e (was: A break

Roger:
> John Cowan wrote:
> >
> >No, Tristan is perfectly correct:  "heart" and "hut" are [ha:t] and [hat].
> >Australian English has no low back vowels at all, and the length of [a]
> >is phonemicized.  (This on Nick Nicholas's authority.)
> >
> Accepted.  That would appear true for Aust., in isolation. The question
> would then be, is the length _always_ a subsitute for a lost /r/ in the env.
> V__C,  where it could indeed be lost irretrievably. If so, that would
> suggest /r/ or at least "something" is still there underlyingly.  Or has
> Aust. phonemicized length in other, non-r, environments? That would be
> interesting.
Length per se is not phonemicized in any Eng accent I can think of
offhand. It just happens that as the realizations of short and long
vowel phonemes go about their motions, realizations contrasting in
length but not quality sometimes arise. I can think of no decent
reason for thinking that historical nononset /r/ is present
underlyingly in nonrhotic accents.

As for the (immaterial, I think) question "has > Aust. phonemicized
length in other, non-r, environments?", try _foot:fought_.

--And.

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