Re: IPA vowels

Teoh wrote:

>I'm having quite a bit of trouble figuring out which IPA sounds correspond
>with each of the 9 vowels in my conlang... :-( hope somebody can help me
>with this since I'll need to give some form of IPA transcription for the
>phonological relay! :-)
>
>The main problem is that IPA deals with rounded/unrounded and 4 degrees of
>aperture; but vowels in my conlang deal with rounded/unrounded/"stretched"
>and only 3 degrees of aperture. Also, front/back-ness tends to be
>considered equivalent to the stretchedness by native speakers, leading to
>a lot of allophones.
>
>The 9 vowels are arranged in a 3-by-3 tabular format, according to the
>roundedness/stretchedness and the degree of aperture: (the following
>symbols are *not* IPA transcriptions, they are the orthography)
>
>        rounded         unrounded       stretched
>close   u               w               y
>mid     o               3               i
>open    0               a               e
>        (back)          (central)       (front)
>
>I don't know how to describe "stretched" except that it's a kind of
>*horizontal* degree of aperture.
>
-----<snip>-----
>Anyway, I'd appreciate it if some here who are familiar with the IPA
>sounds can help me figure out the "best" IPA transcriptions of these
>vowels.
In recent literature on phonology, there is a new category of vowel
features involving the lips called "compression". Could it be that
your so called "unrounded" vowels are what could be called "compress-
lipped" (if such a term exists), and that your so called "stretched
vowels" are plain unrounded? For me, at least, the difference between
plain and stretched lip vowels are so minimal that I can't really
perceive them as distinctively useful in a human language. But if
your language isn't spoken by humans, then maybe IPA doesn't apply
now, does it? ;)

Anyways, if the difference really involves lip compression, then I
would transcribe your central vowels in the IPA with symbols for
rounded vowels but modified by a "less-rounding" diacritic, while
your back vowels would be represented by unmodified unrounded vowel
symbols. Its just unfortunate that the IPA does not have a specific
way to mark lip compression in addition to lip rounding, and the only
way I have seen authors on phonology represent lip-compression is
by using a "less-rounding" diacritic below a rounded vowel symbol.

The main problem I have found with the feature of compressed lips is
that its difficult to apply on open vowels. But perhaps your language
has somehow managed to do this in a more abstract level -- pretty
gnarly if you ask me.

BTW, if you're interested to know what a compressed lip sounds like,
all you have to do is listen to a Japanese <u>. This vowel is commonly
described as unrounded, which is true, but an incomplete description of
it. Japanese <u> has compressed lips, which is why Japanese /h/ becomes
[f]~[P] before /u/.

-kristian- 8)