Re: Claims [was: Re: Drifting phonemes [was: Re: The AmE 'o' sound]]

From: Peter T. Daniels (grammatim_at_worldnet.att.net)
Date: 11/12/04 

Date: Fri, 12 Nov 2004 17:36:10 GMT

Bob Cunningham wrote:
>
> On Fri, 12 Nov 2004 15:12:15 GMT, "Peter T. Daniels"
> <grammatim@worldnet.att.net> said:
>
> > I would like anyone other than Mr. Cunningham to try to
> > explain his claims to the sci.lang readership.
>
> It might be amusing to see what Daniels thinks those claims
> are. With his wild imagination and disregard of reality, he
> probably wouldn't be able to state them correctly.

These are the contradictory claims:

> > On the one hand, he states that [a] and [&] inhabit different phonemes.
> >
> > On the other hand, he states he can't tell them apart.

> If he wants claims explained, he should be explicit about
> what he thinks I've claimed. The next step would be to see
> if I've really claimed them. Only then would it be
> appropriate to ask someone else to try to explain them.

Reprinted from two or three messages up in the thread.

> For example, does anyone -- besides Daniels -- want to
> discuss any of the following statements?

Greg's attempt at explanation was cogent and coherent but probably
didn't relate to anything Cunningham has said.

> A phoneme is a feature of an individual idiolect.

True.

> Two sounds that are contrastive in my neighbor's
> speech might not be contrastive in mine.

Possible, but unlikely. Neigbors typically belong to the same
speech-community.

> A traditional nonrhotic Boston accent I've heard
> purportedly distinguishes between "cart" and "cat".
> To me they sound the same. For the Bostonian the
> contrastive "cart" and "cat" show the existence
> of two phonemes. Therefore the Bostonian has two
> phonemes, one of which contains the "a" of "cart",
> the other the "a" of "cat". I can have no phoneme
> that includes the low, front, unrounded,
> monophthongal [a] because I don't have that sound
> in my speech.

I have never encountered a Bostonian (or any other) accent that fails to
distinguish those words, so I don't know what he's talking about.

> Some people from Indiana I used to know could have
> shown that [A] and [O] are in different phonemes
> by using the contrast between their "hock" and
> "hawk". I can't do that, because I pronounce the
> two words identically. However, I can show the
> contrast between [A] and [O] in "part" and "port".
> (So far as I know, the sound [O] doesn't exist in
> my speech except when followed by [r].)

This is the well-known "cot/caught" merger, which by now prevails almost
everywhere west of the Mississippi. It is not found in New York or, more
relevantly, Chicago or Madison. NB Cunningham is here using [A] for what
would usually be transcribed as [a], viz., the "father" vowel. In
American English, "hock" and "cot" have the same vowel as "father."
Comparison of "farther" would be relevant for the second part of the
paragraph; "father" and "farther" both contain /a/.

I do not know whether those who merge "cot" and "caught" typically do
not do so before /r/. (It would be surprising indeed if [r] occurs in
any American dialect/accent.)

> In using IPA symbols to describe how a word is
> pronounced, square brackets should be used.
> Slashes should be used when the writer has
> properties of phonemes in mind.

With the caveat that I don't know what "properties of phonemes" means,
this is correct. It has also been clear from Cunningham's contributions
over the years that he has not grasped the concept of "phoneme." 

-- 
Peter T. Daniels                       grammatim@att.net
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