Re: Status of Italian rising

Dirk Elzinga wrote:

>Likewise, the common distinction made between rising and falling diphthongs may be at
>odds with the spectrographic data. One way we do know that there is such a
>distinction in English is to look at how they pattern. With respect to stress
>assignment and syllable structure, falling diphthongs pattern with tense
>vowels while rising diphthongs pattern with lax vowels.
>
>
Temporarily delurking here...

Um... could you explain that a bit more? I thought dipthongs *were*
tense vowels in English? I tried doing a search on the Internet about
rising and falling diphthongs just now but I've only come out more
confused... half the stuff I read says something about rising and
falling diphthongs being umm... 'based' on either the first or second
element, which would, to the best of my knowledge, make all English
dipthongs of the one sort, yet others said a rising dipthongs started
low and went high, but a falling diphthong started high and went low (so
/ai/ 'I' would be rising but /I@/ 'ear' would be falling. Though /I@/ to
me doesn't sound very diphthongal in the same way that /ai/ is; it seems
more like two vowels sharing one syllable (or one long vowel depending
on its realisation)).

Did I make sense?

Also, to reply to Josh Brandt-Young:

>(would "Maya," as in the
>Mesoamerican civilization, be /maja/ or /maia/? It seems to me that, once
>again, the choice would have to be fairly random)
>
To me it would be /mai.ja/ (or /maj.ja/ I guess, but that at least
appears to want gerundised consonants). Likewise, /nai.ji;v/ 'naive'. I
always thought that was normal. But then again, your average speaker
from round here doesn't notice the R in 'data is' /d#t@rIz/ (where # is
the realisation of choice of that particular vowel... no consensus).
It's probably for the same reason.

Tristan

Replies