Re: E and e (was: A break in the evils of English (or, Sturnan is beautiful))

On Wed, 2002-05-01 at 16:04, Raymond Brown wrote:

[snippage]

> But the phonemic theory (and _theory_ it is) is primarily concerned with
> contrasts and distribution of sounds.  To have a _phoneme_ /e/ which occurs
> only in one position, i.e. the diphthong /eI/ is very suspect.  Indeed, it
> must imply a contrast with /EI/ which, I'm sure you'll admit, is wrong.
Not necessarily with /EI/, but yes, I see your point. (It strikes me as
more likely to have a contrast with /e/, but that's aside from the
discussion.)

> Those English dialects that use [EI], do not use [eI].  As I understand the
> phonemic theory, one would say that [e:], [E:], [e@], [I@], [eI], [EI] (and
There are dialects that use [I@] for /ei/? I'll presume they're rhotic.

> This is confusing phonetic and phonemic notation.  A 'relaxed' version of a
> phoneme is still the same phoneme, unless it leads to loss of phonemic
> distinction as when unstressed vowels often become just [@] in English,
> except that unstressed /i/, /I/, /e/ and /E/ tend toward to a sound closer
> to [I] than to [@].
I'm not quite sure that I understand this. I do believe there was a
recent thread about tense/laxness which I didn't have the time to read,
I'll go back and have a look and see if it helps me understand.

> Maybe so.  But phonemically /i:/ ~ /I/ surely must suggest two components
> of contrast: hight of tongue & length, i.e. it implies four phonemes /i/ ~
> /i:/ ~ /I/ ~ /I:/, which is not correct.
No, it implies that both length and quality are distinguishing factors
in /i:/ ~ /I/. Which does not necessarily require there to be four
phonemes. The presence of /A/ and /A:/ doesn't mean there has to be a
/3\/ as well as /3\:/.

> While phonetically the difference
> may be [i:] ~ [I] (tho some English dialects tend to diphthongize the first
> as [ij] or [Ij]), phonemically we have, as I see it, to choose between /ij/
> ~ /i/, /i/ ~ /I/ or even, possibly, /i:/ ~ /i/.
Okay, maybe you have to look at it from my point of view. Which may be
entirely flawed, but still. [i:] is about as long as the [A:] in
'heart'. The vowel in 'heart' is distinguished from the vowel in 'hut'
by one thing: length. The similarity in length suggests to me that if
you're going to include the length in the vowel of [A:], you must also
include the length in the vowel of [i:], otherwise you're being evilly
biassed against [i:]. Or [ij] or whatever you want to call it.

(This argument here might bring my entire argument down if I'm wrong. If
I am, I'll admit it.) Okay, so we've established we want to do /i:/ or
/ij/ versus blurp. According to your above examples, We must now choose
/i/. But the first part of the diphthong /I@/, in such words as 'beer',
has the same quality as that of 'bit' (at least to my ear). There exists
an allophone of /I@/ in contexts like 'beer is': [I:]. Although because
it's an allophone, does that mean we can ignore it? But the point of it
means that people hear a longer [I] as something other than /i:/. Which
I understand is related to phonemes. I may be completely wrong here.

(In case anyone was wondering, I speak 'normal' Melburnian* Australian
English. It's neither broad nor cultivated. Some features are closer to
broad, others closer to cultivated.)

*Yes, it has no 'o'. It's pronounced /m{l"b3\:nij@n/.

> Of course, it may be that the phonemic theory is incorrect - but that's
> another story  ;)
What alternatives are there to phonemic theory? Phonemic theory seems
pretty well accepted; in my relatively limited research (i.e. what I can
do in my free time on the Net when it's of interest to me), I don't
believe I've ever seen one. (A Google didn't appear to turn up anything
relevant and readable. There was a PS file that might have had some
stuff but GS (and ps2pdf) die when trying to process it.)

(BTW: I haven't replied to Nik Taylor's post on the same topic as I
think this one covers my feelings and confusions adequately enough. If
I'm wrong, do tell. Always tell. I'm never trying to be stubborn, I'm
trying to help you help me.)

Tristan

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