Re: Hear Me! Hear Me!

Tristan McLeay wrote, quoting myself:

> > I have no idea what [8] is, but you may well be right in that the "o"
> > in "spoke" could well be [8u-].
>
> It's represented by the o-with-bar, a rounded version of backwards e,
> rounded mid-high vowel. Centre, in line with [e] and [o].
<fx: inserts [8] into memory bank>

> > > > For me, there is a rule that the "o" in "spoke":
> > > > - cannot precede an /l/ in the same syllable,
> > > > - but *can* precede an /l/ that is the start of the *next* syllable.
> > >
> > > I simply have one rule: [8u] cannot proceed /l/ in either the next or
> > > the same syllable.
> >
> > In other words you only have the first half of my rule.
>
> Phonetically, yes. Phonemically, no. The vowel is still perceived as the
> same one. I don't know if that's what you mean.
I'm talking phonetically.

> > > What vowel is [O] being used to represent here? The sound of the word
> > > 'court' or 'cot' or 'coat' or 'coal'?
> >
> > "cot" = [kOt] and the vowel is also present in "coal".
> > This is the transciption I am led to understand is correct.
>
> Well, the Macquarie dictionary and most of the rest of what I've read
> uses /Q/ (i.e. backwards script a). I use /Q/ for this on the grounds
> that I understand /O:/ is the vowel in 'court' and the word 'gone' has a
> long version of the vowel in 'cot' (but rhymes with neither 'born'
> /bO:n/ nor the /tQn/-pronunciation of 'tonne'), so I can't very well use
> the same vowel, i.e. /O:/, for it as I do in 'court'.
I understand that [Q] is to [O] as [A] is to [a], where both [Q] and
[A] are vowels that don't exist in Australian English. I've never
learned how to transcribe the vowel in 'court'. I could easily be
wrong.

> > > For me, both 'soul' and 'solo' have the same first vowel phonetically;
> >
> > Whereas for me they don't, and both variants are common. Presumably
> > for you, "holy" and "wholly" sound identical? For me they are [h8u-li]
> > and [hOuli] respectively.
>
> Yes, they are, [hQuli] ~ /h8uli/ for both of them. 'Holly' is pronounced
> /hQli/, though.
I agree with you on "holly".

Hmm, until such time as someone confirms it one way or another, I
think I'll adopt your convention for [Q] vs [O] for the remainder of
the thread, just so we're both using the same convention. So my "holy"
is [h8u-li] and my "wholly" is [hQuli].

[oo in school]
> For me, it's exactly identical to the vowel in 'put' but longer; I
> have no idea of the exact quality of this vowel.
For me it's "higher" in the terminology you used previously, i.e. the
jaws are a little more closed. If you transcribe "wool" as [wul] then
I might transcribe "school" as, I suppose, [skw=:l].

Are you sure they're absolutely identical for you? I'm trying it that
way and it sounds wrong, like some kind of foreign accent. Often the
qualities of two vowels are hard to distinguish if one is always long
and the other is always short, because length is the primary cue.

Adrian.

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