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

On Dec 11, 2007 7:38 AM, Reilly Schlaier <schlaier@...> wrote:

> i was wondering  if anyone knew of ways vowels are affected by the
> consonants around them

Lots of ways, many of them imperceptible to the native speaker (at least
until they start paying closer attention. :))  In English, vowels are
nasalized before nasals, lengthened before voiced consonants, tensed before
palatals...

Like when, instead of saying king [kIN] I say [kiN] (thats tensing i think,
> right?)

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.






--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

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