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

On Dec 12, 2007 8:19 AM, Daniel Prohaska <daniel@...> wrote:

> In English English /I/ in <king> is tenser than /I/ in <kin>, but they
> clearly belong to the same phoneme. /i/ in <keen> is much longer and
> tenser
> (sometimes even diphthongised) than tense /I/ in <king>.
> The merger in some varieties of American English is owing to the fact that
> most American English varieties are isochronic, i.e. contrasts are
> determined by vowel quality alone, whereas English-English distinguishes
> quality and quantity (at least in some contexts).

It seems to me that this chronicity difference is, in turn, the result of
the rhoticity difference.  That is, Eastpondian (better, Tristan? :))
dialects use length to mark many of the same distinctions that we
Westpondians mark via rhoticity.  These examples may not be quite right, but
they convey the idea:

bud /bVd/ vs bird /bV:d/
eh /E/ vs air /E:/
flaw /flO/ vs floor /flO:/
--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

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