Re: YAEPT alert! [Re: Not phonetic but ___???]

On Thu, Apr 15, 2004 at 01:42:55PM -0400, jcowan@REUTERSHEALTH.COM wrote:
> > Ah.  What about the [l] in PALM?  Is that also part of the distinction?
>
> No.  Do you actually articulate any [l] there?
In careful speech, yes.  Otherwise, there seems to be a sort of
l-coloring (palatalization?) of the vowel, analogous to r-coloring.  For
me, "all", "alm", "call", "calm", "pall", and "palm" have this same
sound, which only appears as a realization of <al>.  My best guess is
that the vowel component is [A] - actually, somewhere between [A] and
[Q], since my lips tend to move into a partially-rounded position for
it, but it sounds more like completely unrounded [A] than
completely rounded [Q].

> in particular, "all" and friends are part of the
> THOUGHT set, which I suspect you actually collapse with PALM (I don't, but
> most Americans do).
Not the same vowel for me.  The CLOTH/LOT/THOUGHT set has what I believe
to be [6], but might be [a].  Whatever it is, if I put it in front of an
[l], the result sounds to me like the Spanish contraction <al> - or
perhaps a Deep Southern US pronunciation of "I'll" - but not
like my pronunciation of "all", or indeed like anything contained in my
'lect of English.

> As the number of vowels and diphthongs, it's not so huge.
Point.

-Mark

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