Re: (Offlist) Re: ASCII IPA

On 19 Aug 02, at 17:32, Javier BF wrote:

> >>But I prefer to write /i:/ rather than /iy/, assuming the length
> >>is phonemic [which it isn't in English
>
> It IS. The difference between /i:/-/I/ is at the
> same time one of length and one of tenseness, in
> the same way as the difference between /p/-/b/ is
> a double opposition of voicing and aspiration.
Note that I said phone_m_ic, not phone_t_ic. Yes, [i:] is phonetically
longer than [I], but since there is (at least in my lect) no difference
in whether a word has [i] or [i:], the length difference is not
phonemic. That is, whether a word has [i] or [i:] cannot change the
meaning, so they're both the same phoneme, /i/ -- while the difference
between [i:] and [I] *can* change the meaning (beat vs bit), so those
are two separate phonemes.

> >Another British usage has the actual IPA symbols-- /bid/ vs. /bId/ (the
> >latter with "small cap. i"), or /red/ 'raid' vs. /rEd/ (IPA epsilon) 'red'
>
> The vowel in "raid" is not a monophthong tense e
That's not what he claimed.

> (that's the vowel in "burn"), but one of the three I-final diphthongs.
True; it's a diphthong. But he wasn't using ASCII IPA, but rather
Trager-Smith phomemisation(?). There, /e/ stands for the diphthong,
which patterns as one of the vowel phonemes of English, even though
phonetically it consists of two vowel sounds (or a glide?).

I'm not particularly familiar with TS, but it does use different
conventions because it focuses on what are phone_m_ic differences. (It
also uses /j/ for what ASCII IPA spells /dZ/, because it's one phoneme
in English, supposedly patterning like stops and not like affricates
such as /ts/. I think it also has /c/ for ASCII IPA /tS/.) That's
because, well, it's a phonemic transcription, suitable only for
English, rather than a phonetic transcription theoretically suitable
for any language -- as ASCII IPA is, since it represents the IPA (the
International Phone_t_ic Alphabet -- though even it is a little
phonemic since it doesn't represent every *possible* sound, only those
which make a difference; after all, there are infinitely many possible
sounds due to the sliding scale).

Again, beware of phonemes-vs-phones, and phonemic-vs-phonetic!

Cheers,
Philip
--
Philip Newton <Philip.Newton@...>