Re: USAGE: front vowel tensing [was: English notation]

B.P.Jonsson wrote:


>At 13:00 2001-06-29 -0400, Roger Mills wrote:
>
>>Even in US phonemics, there were competing ways of representing the
offglide
>>or neutralization of vowels before /r/-- /fihr/ 'fear' springs to mind.
(If
>>your dialect was truly r-less, you could simply write /fih/, contrasting
>>with /fij/ 'fee'
>
>I take it you like this notation.  So do I -- it meyks fohr a naysehr
>rowman/fownemik speling riyfohrm than thowz horid "Ve" daygrafz ov "Nue
>Speling" --, but I thought I was the only one.>
Well, it had its uses, but given that you still had to explain the
peculiarities of Engl. vowels before /r/, it was unnecessary, which I
suppose is why it never caught on.
Personally, I rejoiced when Generative Phonology came along.  Made so much
more sense (for a while, anyway).