Re: some more Irish vowels

16 Dec 2006 07:04:44 -0800: "Peter T. Daniels"
<grammatim@xxxxxxxxxxx>: in sci.lang:

In a phonetic
description, Spanish <e> will probably vary anywhere between [E] and
[e], depending on context, habits of the individual speaker, etc. and
what not.

Linguistics doesn't give the slightest good god damn about orthography.

(Please avoid the swear words, there are children in the room.)

I know that, but I was only using <e> for convencience, as an
unambiguous to refer to the Spanish phoneme, the question was about
whether to call it /E/ or /e/. (Sorry about the probably unacceptable
grammar, but hopefully it's understandable.)
In the case of Spanish, that happens to be possible.

Phonemically, all that matters is that /e/ or /E/ (both are correct,
in my view,

Your view is not the view of the IPA, which recommends <e> and not any
more marked typographic variant when no contrast with another variety
of mid front vowel exists.

OK, that's their view, you mentioned that before. I personally think
it's incorrect to see e as less marked than epsilon, just because e is
used orthographically in the Latin script. But I accept their point of
view. So the vowel phonemes of Spanish are /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/ and /u/.
OK.

provided it is done consisently) is somewhere in between
/a/ and /i/. That is a large space, so there is a lot of room for
variation.
Cf. Arabic, which has only a single low-high grade distinction. As a
result, /a/ can easily be [a], [æ], [E], [6], [3], and even [O]. No
risk of misunderstanding, because there are so few vowels. Yet, /a/ is
the phonemic notation, because being open is what matters.

No, because contrasting with nothing other than /i/ and /u/ is what
matters.

Yes, constrasting with these by being opener. Much opener. Same idea
in different words.

Likewise, Turkish /i/ and /y/ often don't sound like [i] and [y] to me
at all, but much lower. This too is understandable, because Turkish
also has only high-low with nothing in between (phonemically, that is,
so all the more phonetically), in addition to front-back and
rounded-unrounded, resulting is 8 phonemic vowels.

So in my view, IPA symbols have exact cardinal positions when used
phonetically, but not when used phonemically.

That is utterly incoherent.

Why? (See above, about my opinion that cardinal vowel are defined in
articulatory terms.)

Or perhaps you are using "cardinal" in some way that has never appeared
in the phonetics literature before. Perhaps you intend "absolute."

Cardinal vowels, I should have said. But the same is true of
consanant: an IPA p is a p is a p, because it is bililabile, plosive
and voiceless, etc.

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

Relevant Pages

  • Re: some more Irish vowels
    ... Linguistics doesn't give the slightest good god damn about orthography. ... unambiguous to refer to the Spanish phoneme, ... because there are so few vowels. ... in the phonetics literature before. ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: BBC does it again
    ... >> phoneme, and that long vowels are a sequence of two short vowels. ... Does this mean you don't agree that there are such languages? ... phonemic orthography is an ideal orthography. ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Pronunciation dictionaries?
    ... phonemic variation as a modified-orthography transcription. ... (You must remember article titles like 'Yet Another Proto-Austronesian Phoneme') ... orthography phonetically misleading, ... can be divided into short and long vowels, but epsilon is not so easy to ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: BBC does it again
    ... > phoneme, and that long vowels are a sequence of two short vowels. ... Does this mean you don't agree that there are such languages? ... > orthographies are already used to writing English, ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: The Turkic Languages in a Nutshell
    ... archaicisims (like long vowels), was influenced by easternturkicbecause ... standard azeri does not have.in ... orthography uses for etymological reasons. ... it's not an "occassional" substitution, it's a regular contraction of - ...
    (sci.lang)