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

On Tue, 2002-04-30 at 05:07, Raymond Brown wrote:
> In English there is contoversy over whether we have:
> /ij/ ~ /i/
> /ej/ ~ /e/
> _or_
> /i/ ~ /I/
> /e/ ~ /E/
>
> But versions that give /eI/ ~ /E/ are, to my mind, perverse and confounding
> phonemic transcription with phonetic notation [eI] ~ [E] in which, [E]
> means "a sound close to, but slightly retracted from, cardinal vowel [E]".
Why? Aren't phonemic representations related to how the people hear the
sound? In which case, using /ei/ ~ /E/ is perfectly normal and to be
expected: the two vowels are completely unrelated except for a few
historical orthographical oddities. I don't get this lax/tense version
of the other sound argument, it just sounds like linguists have just
pulled something out of their collective arses (why is French pardoned
here?). A relaxed (which is what 'lax' suggests to me) version of /ei/
yields either /ei/ or /@/. A strengthened version of /E/ yields... well,
/"E/. A shortened version of /ei/ makes for a very short /ei/; a
lengthened /E/ results in /E:/ (as in 'mayor') I can't see and never
have seen the phonemic relationship between the sounds. (Bare in mind,
of course, that my /ei/ is probably more [{i]-like than [ei] like, but I
don't think that really effects this.)

(The difference between /i:/ and /I/ is less so: /i:/ in an unstressed
syllable sounds a lot more /I/-like than /ei/ does /E/-like.)

I must say, I especially hate anything that doesn't show the length
difference between /i:/ and /I/. Redundancy is a good thing, especially
when writing a dictionary. (Goes out and curses the Macquarie...)

Tristan

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