Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: question on vowel tensing, fronting, backing, ect.

From:Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
Date:Tuesday, December 11, 2007, 16:31
On Dec 11, 2007 3:27 PM, Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> wrote:
> Right. In that case you have a difference that's usually phonemic (/i/ vs > /I/), so you can hear it easily. But in this environment (_[N]) those two > phonemes have merged. You can argue about whether "king" is phonemically > /kIN/ or /kiN/ for people who have that merger, but it's a difference that > makes no difference.
Similarly, I think, for environments such as the last vowel in "city", which is intermediate between my "typical" /i/ and my typical /I/, and I'm not sure which phoneme to assign it to -- not that it matters, though, since as you say, it's a difference that makes no difference. (I learn towards /I/ on the basis that [I] is how that vowel is pronounced by "posh" people.) Cheers, -- Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>

Replies

Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>
Daniel Prohaska <daniel@...>