Re: Lax counterpart of [&]?

At 12:32 PM 9/11/03 +0100, Pete wrote:
>A few days ago I posted a the Magikimnaz case system. I've realised since
>that there was an error in this, as I'd given the SAMPA symbols for tense
>vowels, when they should have been lax. In Khangaþyagon, tense and lax
>vowels are in free variation. This evolved into allophony in Magikimnaz,
>where vowels are tense in stressed syllables and lax in unstressed
>syllables (eg. ["ma:gIkIm'n&z]). However, some of the case endings contain
>[&], and I don't know of any lax counterpart for this. Does anybody know of
>one, and what is it?
Pete,

I don't know the answer to your question, but you might know the answer to
mine.  I also have a languge with a tense/lax variation in the exact same
environments (i.e. tense in stressed syllables, lax in unstressed).  The
language has a simple 5 vowel system (partly because I wanted to be able to
keep the orthography strictly Roman.)  I obviously know the lax
counterparts of [i], [e], [o], and [u], but what is the lax counterpart of
either [a] or [A]?  (I haven't yet decided whether I'm using [a] or [A], as
a matter of fact, I am none too clear on what the diference in sound is
between those two vowels.  Can anyone point me in the right direction?  I'm
hoping that I've used the right symbol.  I'm trying to talk about the
difference in sound between a low front unrounded vowel and a low back
unrounded vowel.)

BTW, I looked through the various vowel charts at the back of the _Phonetic
Symbol Guide_, and I could't find anything that looked like it could
possibly be a lax low front rounded vowel.  (That is what you're looking
for, isn't it?)  However, it really does seem to me that it must be
possible to produce a lax [-ATR] version of the vowel simply by moving the
tongue root back to an un-advanced position while holding the rest of the
articulators in the same position as for [&].  (I'm certain that [&] must
be [+ATR] since it's listed as Cardinal Vowel #12 on my charts, and the
Cardinal Vowels are very tense.)  Just because there is no symbol for a
sound doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.  Not long ago I was whimpering
because there exists AFAIK no phonetic symbol for the postvocalic allophone
of /d/ in Danish.  One of the Danish list members very helpfully supplied
the information that the sound in question was a voiced alveolar
approximate.  I can promise you that the sound exists and is pronounced
daily by millions of speakers, but I can't figure out at all what symbol I
should use to transcribe it, unless it's the laminal diacritic, (since I
personally have succeeded in pronouncing this sounds credibly with a
laminal articulation, but that transcription still doesn't cover the
approximate nature of the sound.)  So you may simply be dealing with a
previously undescribed entity that currently has no transcriptional symbol.

Isidora

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