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Re: Phoneme winnowing continues

From:Ian Spackman <ianspackman@...>
Date:Thursday, June 5, 2003, 20:35
> > > OK, just to confuse the issue, I have phonemic vowel length. :) > > > > Dam the river! /d&m/ > > Damn the river! /d&:m/ > >Those are both [d&m] for me.
I don't know how widespread it is. My immediate family seems to share it, although we disagree as to which words have long and short vowels in some cases. I myself first noticed it when I was 6: The common cormorant or shag lays its eggs in a paper bag does not rhyme for me (the a of bag is long). Anyway I think the means for me that it makes a neater analysis to say that English has contrastive length but not contrastive tenseness (though I haven't checked this carefully). Ian

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Tristan McLeay <kesuari@...>