Re: CHAT: Blandness (was: Uusisuom's influences)

Nik Taylor wrote:

>Oskar Gudlaugsson wrote:
>> >SAMPA [Q] is open back rounded --- don't you mean [A] there?
>>
>> Mm, no; 'pot', 'lot', 'rather' all have [Q], AFAIK. [A] is rare or non-
>> existent in English dialects (right?).
>
>In SAMPA, [Q] is back open rounded, [A] is back open unrounded.  [A] is
>the vowel I use in "father", "pot", "lot" (but not "rather" which uses
>[&])>
I think we are getting into dialectal, perhaps even idiolectal, differences
here.  My speech basically agrees with Nik's, but Europeans-- who I think
more often learn a more British variety-- would likely agree with Oskar.

>> Hmm, a central /V/ would be [3], which is already existent in English, in
>> words like {fur} [f3:]; so some dialects have already merged those two
>> sounds? What dialects are we talking about?
>
>Well, [V] isn't an accurate transcription, [@] would be more accurate.
>
>Also, in my dialect, [r=] (syllabic retroflex rhotic) is used for "fur".
For American Engl. at least, [V], [@] and [3] (or r-ful [3^]-- backwards
epsilon with a hook), and even barred-i (as in the ending of "roses", if you
have it), while obviously different phonetically, are _phonologically_  the
same.  The conditions under which each occurs can be specified.  I suspect,
mutatis mutandis, the same holds true for RP.

>> But what's this thing, anyway, with front-rounded vowels and back-
>> unroundeds being so exceptionally "rare"?
>
>Exceptionally isn't quite the right word.  However, they are *marked*,
>meaning that you very rarely have front-rounded without the unrounded
>equivalent also existing (in fact, I personally know of no exceptions),
>or back-unrounded without the back-rounded version also existing.
Yes, AFAIK too.  Front vowels are _intrinsically unmarked_ for roundedness;
so (in this theory) are Back vowels; then by convention, uRnd > -Rnd/
+Fr,__,
uRnd > +Rnd/ +Back, __, and so on.  In a derivation, these would be
relatively late or low-level rules, to specifiy the exact phonetics of the
segments.  The fact that for Japanese uRnd > -Rnd/ +Back, __ is an accident
of Jap. phonetics; the point is, there is no contrast between round/unround
back V in Japanese (though there is in Turkish, which is therefore a more
highly marked system, since roundedness must be specified in the
_underlying_ representation). (Sidebar:  if Jap. is indeed an Altaic
language, perhaps there's some historical reason for its unr. back
vowels......?  IIRC, Miller presents some Old Jap. forms that seem to be
remnants of earlier vowel harmony.)

Oskar is probably right to question the statistics (or whatever) on which
marking conventions are based.  There may well be an Anglo- or Euro-centric
bias; and we certainly do not have data from every language on earth.  But
there seems to be enough data, from enough languages both familiar and
exotic, to support the idea that rounded Front V/ unrounded Back V  in a
phonological system are "highly marked" even if they may not be relatively
rare.  There is not, for example, any language whose V system contains
_only_ Front Round vs. Back Unround vowels-- and most linguists would
consider such a system impossible (on this Earth-- if Okrand had wanted to
make Klingon really exotic, he should have devised such a system for it!)
Hockett's old _Manual of Phonology_ lists phonological (not phonetic!!)
systems of languages from all corners of the world.
>
>Of course, Japanese is an exception, having close, back, unrounded but
>no close, back, rounded vowel.  >> I mean, all German languages, except for
English, have front rounded
>> vowels; English has b-unr ones (whether you like it or not :p).

The Germanic front round V (and their loss in English) are relatively recent
developments, as we know.

>One low back unrounded, which all the phonetics books I've read
>specified non-low when talking about the rareness of back unrounded, and
>possibly one other.
>
>> Romanian has b-unr (right?).
>
>My understanding of Romanian is that it only has back rounded, but it
>does have some *central* unrounded vowels, specifically a-breve,
>i-breve, and i-circumflex.

Both Low and Central vowels are intrinsically [unround].

BTW the site mentioned by Taliesin--
    http://ds.dial.pipex.com/town/lane/xvv88/Home/phon.htm
is well worth a look.

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