Re: (Offlist) Re: ASCII IPA

>>>>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.
>
>As Adrian pointed out, aspiration is not relevant _phonemically_ in Engl,
>since it is entirely predictable.
One HAS TO define the difference between /p/-/b/
as one of voicing, aspiration and tenseness, since
all of them are used to distinguish those phonemes
in one or other context; and also depending on the
speaker (there exist English speakers who consider
that aspiration is the most relevant difference between
them, some of them even commonly using a devoiced version
of /b/, and others that think it is tenseness which makes
them differenciate both when syllable-final).

The use of fricative allophones for /b/, /d/ and /g/
is also entirely predictable in Spanish, but that doesn't
allow you to forget about it and say those are just
"voiced plosives", because most of the time the relevant
feature to distinguish between Spanish /p/-/b/ is precisely
that /b/ sounds fricative while /p/ sounds plosive (in fact,
we ourselves find it hard to distinguish them when only
voicing is involved: not seldom you'll see Spaniards saying
things like: "Palencia (con P de _pato_) es una ciudad de
España", so as to avoid its probable misunderstanding as
"Valencia es una ciudad de España". So, to be correct, you
have to call Spanish /b/, /d/ and /g/ "voiced
fricative-plosive phonemes".


>Trager-Smith (mostly US usage) uses homorganic semivowel offglides (y, w)
>for the front and back tense vowels, so /iy, ey, uw, ow/ vs lax /i e u o/.
>One could debate whether /iy, uw/ are actually realized with an offglide
>(/ey, ow/ certainly are), though I think it can be shown instrumentally--
>and I'm sure you've heard Americans mangling Spanish such that "mí" is
>pronounced as Engl. "me", "su" as Engl. "sue", and surely they do not sound
>identical. ¿No?
Essentially, English "me" and "sue" have TOO long vowels
for a Spanish ear. The length of Spanish vowels is somewhere
between English short and long ones.


>>/3:/ bIRd-- the status of this vowel is debatable, as P.Newton and I were
>discussing.  It could be analyzed phonemically as a stressed schwa.
Do you mean "bird" sounds the same as "bud"?
At least for non-rhotic dialects, if you consider it a
schwa, then consider it the schwa of the long/tense series,
opposed to the one of the short/lax one (/V/). In rhotic
dialects you may well see it as stressed schwa + r.


>>/A:/ bARt  I could be mistaken, but I suspect there are no RP words with
>this vowel that do not have an "r" in their written form.
"palm". In RP standard there's no longer any "l" there.


> US examples for
>/a/ [A] include cot, pot, lot, bother etc., which have /O/ in RP.
>>/O:/ bOARd  ditto, though /O/ may occur in "bawd. laud, cough"
"cough" they taught me to say as /kQf/


>>/I@/ pEER
>>/E@/ pEAR
>>/U@/ pOOR
>I don't know how non-rhotic phonemics handles these.  If you use just the
>schwa symbol, then there has to be a realization rule that "@ is pronounced
>@r if a vowel follows"--
>that works 99% of the time, but also leads to
>hypercorrections like "idear" and "Cuber" as our late Pres. JFK used to
say.

That's the rule for non-rhotic dialects, at least British,
when a previous r sound existed and was dropped. The r is
preserved when in liaison, in the same way French preserves
"muted" final consonants in such cases. Evidently, this is
not the case with "idea" and "Cuba", which, as you say, are
simply hypercorrections.


>As one who grew up with rhotic speech, I can tell you that such
>pronunciations were considered utterly ignorant by our teachers.
And, I guess, by everyone used to the orthography, too.

Cheers,
Javier

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