Re: ASCII IPA vowels [was: Re: The last word on cot/caught]

Daniel al-Autistiqui wrote:

Hmmm. I wonder why you have traditionally used the notation /oU/ for
the "coat" vowel phoneme (along with /eI/ for the "mate" vowel
phoneme). This has always bothered me somewhat, and I see no reason
why /o/ and /e/ shouldn't be sufficient.

I assume from the rest of the post that you speak some kind of New-York
dialect. Is that right?

Use of the symbols /e/ and /o/ implies that the underlying realisation
is monophthongal. I believe this true for me, because it seems I do not
usually have any greater offglide on /e:/ and /o:/ than I do on /i:/
and /u:/.

I think of "coat" and "colt" as having the same vowel phoneme. With
"court", I feel that psychoacoustically it's more of an "aw" than an "oh"
(but Bob Cunningham has shown in formant analysis that my "court" vowel
is closer to [o] than to [O]), but I'm HIH (horse is hoarse) so I make no
distinction between /kort/ and /kOrt/.

My "court" vowel is phonetically identical to my "caught" vowel, or at
least very nearly so. I'd probably think of them as the same phoneme,
viz., /O/ or /o@/. I understand that a word like "glory" sometimes
gets pronounced "glow-ree" as opposed to "glawry", and that's the only
thing that an /Or/ vs. /or/ distinction can logically mean to me.

This indicates that [o] and [O] have merged for you. You probably have
an [O] that is considerably raised (as in BrE) compared to the standard
'aw'.

I have compiled a phonemic vowel chart consisting of words that I think
are safe across all normal dialects of English. Here it is:

/a/ ah , father , car
/A./ cot , bother
/O/ law , caught
/&/ cat , man
/E/ bed
/I/ bid

and 'mirror' for NDNRWM dialects like New York City English.

But in Suffolk County English, "mirror" and "nearer" *do* rhyme.

So you have some of the lense-lax merger before 'r' (other than
horse/hoarse), but not all. I'd never heard that there was such a
dialect.

/U/ book
/V/ buck
/e/ aid, air, Mary

In New York City English, the "Mary"/"air" vowel feels like it's a variety
of the "aid" vowel, yet it sounds close to the "man" vowel (see above).
I'm not sure what should be done about this.

You see, when I think about it as hard as I can, I feel that "Mary"
and "air" must have the same vowel phoneme as "man". There have been
times in the past when I have tended to think of these as having the
"aid" vowel but I'm probably simply influenced by other accents in
which these words definitely have this vowel. I mean like, in my
accent there seems to be a rule that none of the seven vowels /i/,
/e/, /aI/, /oI/, /aU/, /o/, /u/ (realized as a diphthong with [j] or
[w] when word-final) is possible before a final /r/. To transcribe
"Mary" as /'meri/ suggests, to me, the pronunciation "Mayree".

I don't think you're understanding that /e/ can have monophthongal and
diphthongal allophones in this transcription. [e] is normally used in
'Mary' and 'air', while [ej] or [ei] is normally used in 'aid'.

Your accent (and othe New-York speech) may indeed merge the 'air' and
'man' vowels as /E:/. It should not be necessary to merge them in
transcription, though, as one only occurs before 'r' and the other
never does.

Such as Suffolk County English? Actually, I think in that accent
"can" = 'be able' can sometimes have the "bed" vowel.

That is, /kEn/. I have heard this in various accents, including
midwestern ones where it may be the predominant version.

Andrew Usher

.

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