Re: The fourteen vowels of English?

Muke Tever wrote:

> On Fri, 10 Sep 2004 16:56:50 -0400, Trebor Jung <treborjung@...>
> wrote:
> > *heared /ir\/ [Is there such a word at all??]
>
> Not standardly.  But there is the *hered underlying words from Latin
> _haerere_ like "adhered" (stuck to) and "inhered" (was inherent) and
> "cohered" (stuck together/was coherent), which may be homophonous for you.
>
"Heared" for heard was definitely stigmatized in my grade-school years, not
only by the teachers but by the rest of us middle-class kids.

Interesting about the root -here.  For me, cohere, adhere both have [Ir\] in
that form, as well as in "coherent, adherent".  I think I've written
"inhere" in some academic paper or other, but never spoken it.  My first
reaction on seeing it here was to pronounce [In'hE\r], since that's the
vowel in my "inherent, inherit"
--------------------------------------
Might as well comment on Steve W's and Tom Wier's posts-- seems to me the
schwa-offglide of [&] in monosyllables before voiced stops/nasals surely
correlates with the length, probably occasioned by the tongue movement from
low in the mouth to a new (generally higher) position.

The offglide disappears in bisyllabic forms-- contrast [k&@b] 'cab',
['k&bn=] 'cabin', [b&@g] ['b&giN] bag, bagging.  Is this also true of
Southern dialects where the diphthong is more noticeable?

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