Raymond Brown wrote:
>At 5:33 pm +0000 28/4/02, Andreas Johansson wrote:
>[snip]
> >
> >Ok, that was joke, but despite my not taking linguistic lessons there
>seems
> >to be something strange going on here. I am of the impression that that
> >'lax' vowels differ from their 'tense' versions by being closer to
>[@]/[8] -
>
>Spot on!
Good too know!
[snip]
> > [E] as the lax version of [e] would indeed be a pretty weird
> >idiosyncracy.
>
>Yet it happens in German and English! We have to distinguish between
>narrow, i.e. phonemic transcription, and broad or (vaguely) phonemic
>transcription. The [E] of German & French is not the cardinal vowel; it is
>more retracted and lax. It is the lax or 'short' counterpart of German
>[e:] or standard English [eI] (often still [e:] in many Brit dialects).
Does seem like the IPA could do with a sign for this 'lax [E]' then. I guess
there's at least a diacritic for retracted?
Andreas
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