Re: USAGE: S. Australian (was: Re: Gz^rod|in)

Vasiliy Chernov:
> On Tue, 21 Mar 2000 09:29:42 +0900, Adrian Morgan <morg0072@...>
> wrote:
>
> >> - O. K., neither OH nor OA...
> >> Adrian, can you find some word rimimg with
> >> _gone_ in SAu?
> >>
> >> _On_? _Drawn_? _Gun_?
> >
> >That's the funny thing ... it's practically a
> >unique sound, I can't think of any other word
> >with the same one.
> >
> >All I can say is, think of it as a cross
> >between _Drawn_ and an elongated verson of _On_.
>
> - The same vowel might be expected in _shone_.
>
> And what vowel do you pronounce in words like _fond_,
> _bond_, _blond_, _beyond_?
I can confirm what Adrian is saying. I have in my accent a phoneme
/Q:/ which occurs ONLY IN THE SINGLE WORD _gone_. I can pronounce
_gone_ with [Q:], [Q] or [A:], so this can be analysed either as
/Q:/ having the three realizations [Q:], [Q] or [A:], or as _gone_
having alternate forms /gQ:n/, /gQn/, /gA:n/.

[For clarity's sake, "Q" = turned script A, "A" = script A. I.e. low
back round and nonround respectively.]

I get this peculiarity -- unknown in Britain in my experience --
from my mother (since I have no siblings and my father is a nonnative
speaker, I acquired my phoneme inventory and a lot of other phonology
from my mother), who spent the first 22 years of her life in Sydney,
Australia. (My mother actually has only [Q:] in _gone_, which makes
me suspect that my [Q] and [A:] in _gone_ are attempts to 'make sense'
of this eccentric phoneme.) I have never had the opportunity to consult
other Australians about this feature, but I'm rather excited to find it
thus confirmed by Adrian. Obviously it's a point of some theoretical
interest that it is possible for a phoneme to occur in only a single
word.

_Shone_ has /Q/, as do _fond_, _bond_ etc. Basileus's understanding
of the basic facts of Australian (and by extension Southeastern English)
phonology is spot on, except for this one fact about /Q:/, which I
have never seen remarked upon by any other linguist.

Actually, now that I come to write this message, I am reminded that
I have found in my English Dialects class a word ['m@l@d], 'drunk',
from speakers for whom [@] would not be a valid realization of any
known phoneme in a stressed syllable. (If /'mVl@d/ then the vowel should
be lower, and if /'mUl@d/ then it should be higher.) But I have not had the
chance to investigate this properly, partly because I don't have enough
students from the southeast, which is where the phenomenon appears
to occur.

--And.