Re: General phonetics // was "Newbie"

_Adrian_ wrote:

> Roger Mills wrote:
> > (Tristan:)
> Adrian, actually. We may be in the same country but that's no reason to
> confuse us :-)
Sorry, I'm not quite back in the rhythm of things after 3 wks. away...and am
easily confused anyway...:-((((

(snip non-controversial portion)
>
> > > >    (vowels are typically shortened in English
> > > >    when followed by an unvoiced consnant).
> > >
> 'Shortened' is definitely more appropriate than 'lengthened', I'd say,
> for the following reason. 'Shorter' is probably better still, though.
> Consider the length of '&' in various words. Here's a sample:
>
>   pad (short)
>   bad (long)
Sorry, I don't hear any length difference here, and why should there be? the
environment is the same (preceding a final voiced stop, and the initials
aren't relevant).  It is possible that British/Austr. speech has less length
here than US-- perhaps why we often characterize it as "clipped" (and they
say _we_ drawl...).  If "pad" is short, isn't there a danger of confusing it
with "pat"?

>   pat (short)
>   bat (short)
>
> The length before a voiced consonant is irregular (thus 'pad' is short
> whilst 'bad' is long) while the length before an unvoiced consonant is
> regular (e.g. 'pat' and 'bat' are both short). This shows that the
> regularity is imposed by the unvoiced consonant, whereas the voiced
> consonant does not impose a regularity.
Well....that argument is possible, and it may be a "six of one..." case.
But as you probably know, it isn't the Received Wisdom-- at least not on
this side of the pond (perhaps because US phonemicists don't ordinarily have
to deal with true length contrasts like your "hut:heart". Some Southern US
may be the exception, but there it would be hot vs heart [hAt]:[hA:t] and
I'm not sure of that).

Ceci n'est pas YAEPT.