Re: some more Irish vowels


Ruud Harmsen wrote:
15 Dec 2006 12:42:45 -0800: "Peter T. Daniels"
<grammatim@xxxxxxxxxxx>: in sci.lang:


Ruud Harmsen wrote:
15 Dec 2006 06:37:05 -0800: "Peter T. Daniels"
<grammatim@xxxxxxxxxxx>: in sci.lang:

merry is highest
marry is lowest

Quite agree. A little higher than [E], and a little lower, that is,
[æ] (in the IPA sense, not "usage" sense).

No, Ruud. merry is [E]

Then why must Dutch speakers be taught not to use their /E/, which is
[E] or slightly higher, because for English <set> it is too low?

I have no idea why a Dutch writer, forty years ago, gave the following
instructions. It may be perfectly sound contrastive analysis; it may be
based on misconceptions about English (or about Dutch, for that
matter); it may be aimed at teaching an understandable rather than a
perfect accent; who knows?

I quote from "Drop your foreign accent, 1967, by G. Nolst Trentité,
page 14:
===
II. (e)
Deze klank heeft een heel eigen karakter en lijkt noch op de - e- van
Ned. - bed - of Eng. - bat - noch op de - i - van Ned. - dit -. Hij is
daar net tussenin. Vergelijking met de genoemde andere klinker is
onmisbaar.
===

My translation:
===
II. (e)
This sound has a unique character, and resembles neither the <e> of
Dutch <bed> or English <bat>, nor the <i> of Dutch <dit>. It is just
in between. Comparison with the other vowels referred to is
indispenisible.
===

Note that Dutch <bed> (which has cardinal [E]) and English <bat> are
more or less equated here. I think that is only correct in Australia,
London and in a now rather old-fashioned style of RP. The bat vowel is
now usually much lower in England.

Dutch <dit> has a short [I] or [e].
(I never really know the difference, and in
http://wso.williams.edu/~jdowse/ipa.html I only hear a pitch
difference, but the same vowel. My tin ear?).

Those wishing to check the Dutch vowels can listen to my personal
pronunciation of said Dutch vowels at
http://rudhar.com/lingtics/intrdutc/dutch.htm . There are several
examples of both vowels, already in the first and second table.

marry is [&] ([ae])
Mary is intermediate --

So it must be roughly [E].

No, Ruud. [E] is uncontroversially the vowel of merry.

Please listen to http://wso.williams.edu/~jdowse/ipa.html (by Jonathan
Dowse, a student of Nathan Sanders, who regularly posts here), and
check if his [E] is appropriate for English words merry, set, bet,
read (past and particle) etc. etc. I think it's way to low. And [e] is
much too high. So the correct position is a little higher than [E],
which is also where Daniel Jones 1956 placed it.

Perhaps Nathan can tell us whether Jonathan is a Boston(-area) native,
which would throw _all_ his vowels way off of GenAm (and of NYC, too)..

BTW, you do not happen to be one of those American speakers who use a
quite modern new variety of the sex vowel, which (if I hear it
correctly) is much _lower_ than the sax vowel, and possibly
centralised? Almost other people's sucks vowel (no pun intended)?
In that case all bets are off, because that one is really too much
different from all the usual variants in American English and
elsewhere.

Of course not. I'm a few years older than you.

but has obligatory spreading

Spreading of what? Lips? So are the other two rounded?

No, Ruud. If you'd ever had phonetics training, you'd know that
"spread" and "rounded" are two lip positions you can move to from
"neutral."

I know that, and it's not an answer to my question. Let me ask you
again, and add more:
1) By "obligatory spreading", do you mean obligatory "spreading of the
lips", as opposed to rounding of the lips?

AS OPPOSED TO NEUTRAL. TRY READING WHAT'S IN FRONT OF YOU.

2) When you say that Mary requires spreading, does it mean set and sat
(merry and marry) do not have spread lips? So they have neutral lips
(as rounded is just too unlikely).

Yes, Ruud. If something is not marked, it is unmarked.

3) Does this imply that English has a threefold distinction: some
vowels have rounded lips, some have spread lips, and some have neutral
lips?

No, it has no distinction at all. The spreading for Mary is utterly
unconscious and is merely a concomitant of the height difference --
perhaps it serves to provide additional salience to the phonemic height
distinction.

4) Is this distinction independent of the inherent difference in lip
opening shape that is connected to the height of vowels? Cf. "Back
over-rounded vowels in Assamese" at
http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/index/sounds.html
http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/appendix/languages/assamese/assamese.html

I don't know what Assamese would have to do with it, but when I
reported to you that Mary is accompanied by spreading, did you believe
I was lying?

Item 3) Is completely new to me and seems very unlikely.

BTW. I object to your use of the word "is" when you says things like
"[E] is uncontroversially the vowel of merry." No two vowels are
alike. Even a cardinal [E] isn't the same for all speakers, because
its definition refers to relative tongue height, and every speaker's
speech organs are physically different, although great similarities
exist.

So you have been using the term "cardinal" in some idiosyncratic sense
that doesn't mean 'cardinal' at all?

Or spreading of position among different speakers?
An attempt at a joke, I presume?

If you didn't write unclearly, I would immediately understand you.

If I didn't assume that you knew what you were talking about, I
wouldn't use terminology in normal ways.

.

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