Re: Constructive Criticism Appreciated: Vowels

--- Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> wrote:
> 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
>
Thank you all. I've been confused about this for some
time. I think a lot of it was due to the way some
people right languages like Cherokee with e i o and my
Lewis V. Tomas "Elementary Turkish" says Trukish "a"
is pronouced as in English "sun" and "e" as in English
"fed", which are both fairly close vowels in my
dialect. Thus I supposed that Turkish lacked phonemic
low vowels.
 BTW, are there any good grammars on any of the local
vernaculurs of Arabic? I can only find info on te
Classical language. Thanks,
                          Travis



		
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail is new and improved - Check it out!
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail

Reply