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Re: allophones again, but English - not French

From:paul-bennett <paul-bennett@...>
Date:Thursday, December 11, 2003, 17:45
>On Thu, 11 Dec 2003 01:18:57 -0500 Roger Mills <romilly@...> wrote. >Robert Jung wrote:
> > >Are these two thingies allophones or separate phonemes: /a/ [a], /A/
[A]?
> Neither. They're just variant ways of pronouncing the same phoneme >depending on dialect area, or even on individuals' speech. Usually written >/a/. Depending on which website's IPA sound samples you listen to,
American
>English /a/ can be either [a], [6] or [A].
What? Maybe for most standard dialects of American English, but that's a very sweeping statement to make about all of English. What about my 'lect |ass| /as/ (donkey) and |arse| /As/ (buttocks et al)? Also |ant| and |aunt|, /ant/ and /Ant/. More will doubtless come to me, but there's two examples right off the bat. And, FWIW, by 'lect is Milton Keynes' British -- a mongrel dialect born in the dialectical melting pot that is a "new city" in the English south-east (or south-central depending on how you count it) -- further modified by rural south-Buckinghamshire and urban west-of-London speech. Add to that three years of living in rural North Carolina, USA, with an urban-NC native of Missouran extraction, and you'll probably agree with me that my 'lect is a true mongrel ;-) Paul