Re: some more Irish vowels

12 Dec 2006 20:33:40 -0800: "Peter T. Daniels"
<grammatim@xxxxxxxxxxx>: in sci.lang:

I do not use the symbols common among British linguists, whether most
or few. (I did recently come across a copy of Bloomfield 1935, which
substitutes RP transcriptions for the GenAm transcriptions in 1933, but
haven't had the leisure to compare them.) In Smith-Trager, SQUARE is
/eh/ and FACE is /ey/.

Mixing up the symbols again, eh, Peter! The discussion was about the
phonetics of Mary, remember? Pot calling kettle black.

(where /E@/ denotes a single phoneme, the SQUARE vowel)?

The legend quoted directly above claims they are "pronunciations."
Pronunciations are not given in phonemic notation.

Right, so why do you?

Quote: ""In the New York City area SQUARE words usually have /E@/, a
distinct phoneme. But GenAm has no such phoneme. For the GenAm
minority who distinguish <Mary> from both <merry> and <marry>, <Mary>
must be must be regarded phonologically as as /meIri/, with the FACE
vowel, whatever its realization (usually [e] or [e@] )."

Is this right? If not, is it wrong/incomplete/just plain sloppy?

It's not right, because the native speakers in question don't consider
SQUARE and FACE to have the same vowel.

About 16 million of the 22 million native speakers of Dutch do not
consider <meer> and <mee> to have the same vowel, yet they are
unmistakably one and the same phoneme.

Same situation as English mare and make, historically. (Although the
Dutch meer vowel is closer to that of English mere than of English
mare.)

What native speakers think are different sounds is NOT a good guide to
phoneme analysis. In theory, yes, maybe, but in practice, it ain't so
easy. Told you that before.

--
Ruud Harmsen - http://rudhar.com
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: some more Irish vowels
    ... substitutes RP transcriptions for the GenAm transcriptions in 1933, ... But GenAm has no such phoneme. ... Dutch meer vowel is closer to that of English mere than of English ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: some more Irish vowels
    ... substitutes RP transcriptions for the GenAm transcriptions in 1933, ... John asked me for my PHONEMIC transcription of those vowels. ... But GenAm has no such phoneme. ...
    (sci.lang)
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