Re: Constructive Criticism Appreciated: Vowels

On Tuesday, July 13, 2004, at 05:58 , Philip Newton wrote:

> On Mon, 12 Jul 2004 18:40:27 -0700, william drewery <will65610@...>
>  wrote:
>>
>>  1). Is there a difference between opennes and height
>>      with vowles?
>
> It is my understanding that these refer to the same thing; "high" =
> "close", and "low" = "open". Two sets of terminologies for the same
> thing. Hence "low open vowel" is redundant.
Yep - spot on. The problem with the old 'open' ~ 'close(d)' terminologies
is that the same words were/are used to refer to the closure between the
tongue and the roof of the mouth and _also_ to classify syllables
according to whether they end in a vowel ('open syllable') or with a
consonant ('closed syllable'). This can be confusing. Therefore, it is, I
believe, more common now to use the terms 'high', 'mid' and 'low' (as well
as 'front', 'central' and 'back') when talking about vowels, and to refer
to syllables as either blocked or unblocked (or 'free').

>>  2). I'm dubious about this universal. Correct me if
>> I'm wrong, but in Arabic isn't the low open vowel
>> simply a flattened allophone of the front open-mid
>> vowel?
The other way round, I think.

> You mean [a] is an allophone of [E]?
>
> I thought [E] was an allophone of /i/,
[e] perhaps - [E] is surely too low. Certainly [&:] occurs for Classical
[a:] in some dialects.

> itself, in some dialects of
> Arabic, with the three-vowel system being something like /a/ /i/ /u/
> -- nicely on the corners of a triangle (open - close front unrounded -
> close back rounded).
That's right. Classical Arabic has only these three (both long and short).
But the spoken dialects vary considerably. At the extremes they're not
readily mutually comprehensive, I understand. Certainly we had a Moroccan
technician with us a few years back and found Iraqi students almost
incomprehensible.

Whatever the actual pronunciation of /a/ in the spoken dialects, they are
all surely low vowels, at least when contrasted with /i/ and /u/. Arabic
isn't an exception to the 'universal':

Ray
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