Re: USAGE: minimum number of vowels?

Tristan Mc Leay jazdy:

> In this context, AKA /i\/.
I only quoted the dic. In my understanding the higher phoneme is indeed
smth like /i\/ or /@\/.

> I've also seen it claimed that some dialects
> of Abkhaz only really need one phoneme, but such claims are in the
minority.

One of the books I read (can't find it on the shelf at the moment)
claims that detailed analysis of Australian langauge "Aranta" shows only
one vowel phoneme in the lang structure. But phoneticly there are many
vowels there, including nasalized ones.

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Thomas R. Wier jazdy:

> Actually, it might even be more enticing than just that.  There are
> some analyses out there that the schwa vowel phoneme exists only for
> morpheme juncture, and thus is itself predictable.  This leaves the
> language just one vowel phoneme, and thus none, since there is
> no phonological contrast of any kind to define the phoneme by.
Why none? The opposition still may exist as /vowel/ :: /no vowel/. Some
people think PIE worked this way.

> (I myself
> am not sure how much credence to give these analyses, at least in
> psycholinguistic terms.)
Yep yep. This sound very, very dubious...
As for psycholinguistics, I can prove wider vowels set perception by my
own experience: I always perceive Russian [i\] as a *different* vowel
than [i], thus thinking basicly about *six* Russian vowels: a, e, i, i\,
u and o. Though phonemic analysis insist that the real phonemic
difference is charged on a palatalized consonant, e.g. [bi\5] 'he was'
vs. [b;i5] 'he beat' are /bil/ vs. /b;il/, so they are only *five*!
Strange, I do not feel other vowel allophones e.g. [O_"] (almost [3\])
in [l;O_"n;] 'Lyonya' (G.pl., diminutive masc. name) so much different
from the main phone [O].

-- Yitzik

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