Re: (YAEPT?) Pattern exemplifying as many vowel phonemes as possible?

On Dec 12, 2007 9:30 AM, Philip Newton <philip.newton@...> wrote:

> What pattern [...] can be used to exemplify as many vowel phonemes as
> possible, to demonstrate the contrastiveness?
>
> The best I've come up with so far is /b_t/ [...]
>
> The only phonemes from the standard lexical sets that don't make words
> - including "common" (FSVO) proper nouns - are [...] CHOICE [...]: no
> [...] *boit

What, no Boyts out your way?  Fairly common surname around here, though not
as much so as the voiced version (Boyd).

what about /k_n/?  Kin, ken, can, con, kern, keen, cane, Khan, cone, coon,
kyne, coin, cairn, corn, Coors .. any improvement over b_t?.  There's no
STRUT or MOUTH ("to cunn", obviously the infinitive form of the gerund
"cunning"!  And "cown", which strove with "kyne" and "cows" as a third
plural form! )  So close with "crown" and "gown"... still no FOOT... no NEAR
(although if someone told me that "kiern" were a word in the English of
northern Britain/Ireland I would believe them...)

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

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