Re: THEORY: phonemes and Optimality Theory tutorial

On Sun, 12 Nov 2000, Nik Taylor wrote:

> Marcus Smith wrote:
> > The consultant I used for my phonetics work pronounced _hon_
> > 'book' as [ho~], [hoN], [hom], and [hon]
>
> Interesting.  A description I've read of that seemed to suggest that it
> could be either [hoN] or [hoo~].
[hoo~] is what I meant instead of [ho~].

  But then again, most descriptions are
> pretty vague.
Descriptions of Japanese, I'm finding, are also inaccurate for younger
speakers. The language seems to be changing very rapidly. Things that my
Prof. told me were perfectly natural, my friends/consultants in their
20's told me were horrible. I even used a sentence the prof wrote on the
board, and they told me it was ungrammatical. The Prof was a native
speaker in her 70's, so I assume this is a generational difference.

> How's it pronounced between vowels, as in _kan'en_?
I never looked at that. None of the samples I recorded or transcribed had
a moraic nasal between vowels. If I was interested in phonetics and
phonology, I'd round up some speakers and stick them in the sound booth.
But I'm currently having enough problems figuring out these darn Pima
auxiliaries without worry about Japanese pronunciation.

Marcus