Re: New Try from a New Guy
| From: | Josh Roth <fuscian@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Sunday, December 15, 2002, 4:51 |
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In a message dated 12/14/02 6:08:28 PM, mktvr@COMCAST.NET writes:
>From: "Joseph Fatula" <fatula3@...>
>> > > 1. Is it reasonable to have the diphthongs [aI], [OI], and [aU]
>even
>> > > though I do not have the individual sounds of [a], [O] or [U]?
>> >
>> > Yes. American English has the diphthongs [aI], [aU], [eI], [oU]
>> > but not [a], [e], [o] by themselves.
>>
>> All of a sudden I feel as though I've misunderstood SAMPA...
>>
>> Is the first vowel sound in American English "father" [a]? The way that
>> sounds normal to me doesn't seem to have any diphthongization at all.
>
>General American has [A] in "father". But I'm not sure of [aI] and [aU],
>here
>it's more like [AI] and [{U] ...
That’s just what I was going to say, except that the second element seems
higher to me in each, so they'd be something like [Ai] and [{u]. I think some
Southern English uses [a] in the first diphthong, and some also drop the [i],
so you can have a distinction like 'cot' [kAt] and 'kite' [kat]. And here in
New York at least, /Ai/ has an allophone [Vi] that occurs before unvoiced
consonants. Further up north, like in Canada (and Minnesota maybe, and other
places maybe), /{u/ seems to have an allophone [Vu] or [@u] before unvoiced
consonants.
I don't fully agree with the representations [eI] and [oU] either. I'd would
say that they vary between [Ei] and [ei] for the one, and [Vu] and [ou] for
the other, with the second, more closed allophone of each occuring before a
consonant, and the first occuring occur at the end of a word and before other
vowels. For example, 'weigh' [wEi] and 'weighed' [weid]. Or maybe the second
is is [weId] after all, or something in between, I don't know....
As for the original question, it is reasonable to have sounds in diphthongs
that you don’t have separately, but just be sure that those are really the
sounds you want.
Josh Roth
http://members.aol.com/fuscian/home.html
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