Re: The fourteen vowels of English?

Mark-- I've argued this with Tristan in Orstrylia many a time, to no
avail...:-(

=========================================
> Joe said:
> > Mark P. Line wrote:
> >
> >>Paul Bennett said:
> >>
> >>
> >>>I remember reading somewhere that English has 14 vowels (presumably
> >>>including diphthongs), but that every dialect collapses at least two of
> >>>them together.
> >>>
> >>>Well, I decided to measure my own lect, and got some surprising
> >>>results.
> >>> I
> >>>have at least 17 vowels that I can think of, all of which can appear
> >>>between /h/ and /d/...
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
> >>You might consider the possibility that some of your examples contain an
> >> /r/.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> > Not in my English.  All of those have no /r/ at all.
>
> That depends on a specific phonological description of your English, not
> on the phonetic description of the words in question.
>
> Rather than having no /r/ and winding up with umpteen vowels and numerous
> relations with other forms that *do* have /r/ that you need to explain
> ('bored', 'boring'), you can have /r/'s in appropriate places and predict
> the phonetic realization of the words as conditioned by the context of
> those /r/'s.
>
>
> -- Mark
>