Re: Pronunciation symbols

On Wed, 28 Nov 2007 06:12:37 -0800, Bob Cunningham
<exw6sxq@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Tue, 27 Nov 2007 17:58:08 -0800, Bob Cunningham
<exw6sxq@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> said:

[...]

I've read somewhere that the traditional meanings of "long"
and "short" came about because when they were first used,
the vowel in "bate" was indeed longer in duration than the
one in "bat", and so forth. The language changed so that
those vowels didn't differ in length, but the terminology
persisted to cause an awkward conflict between the meanings
of "long" and "short" for the traditional schoolteacher and
for the phonetician.

I said I've read that somewhere, but I've now noticed that
it's in dictionaries.

The _11th Collegiate_ says it somewhat clumsily:

Short
3 b : being the member of a pair of similarly
spelled vowel or vowel-containing sounds that is
descended from a vowel that was short in duration
but is no longer so and that does not necessarily
have duration as its chief distinguishing feature
*short i in sin*

But the _Random House Webster's College Dictionary Second
Edition_ spells it out very clearly:

short
13 b : having the sound of the English vowels in
_bat, bet, bit, hot, but_, and _put_, historically
descended from vowels that were short in duration.

long
18 b : having the sound of the English vowels in
_mate, met, mite, mote, moot_, and _mute_,
historically descended from vowels that were long
in duration.

I'm surprised to find no mention of those meanings of "long"
and "short" in some British dictionaries. I've looked in
the _New Shorter Oxford_, the _Cambridge Advanced Learner's
Dictionary_, and the _Chambers Dictionary 1993 Edition_. Are
those meanings not ordinarily used in British English?

The _Oxford English Dictionary_ (hard copy [1]) recognizes
the above meanings of "long" and "short" but doesn't
specifically mention the historical source of the term. It
says

long
13. a. _Phonetics_ and _Prosody_.
[...]
Various inaccurate uses of the terms _long_ and
short_ were formerly almost universal in Eng., and
are still common.
[...]
(3) In ordinary language 'the long _a, e, i, o_, or
_u_' denotes that sound of the letter which is used in
its alphabetical name, while 'the short _a, e, i, o_, or
_u_' denotes the sound [that is represented in this
dictionary by the symbols (converted to ASCII IPA)]
[&], [E]. [I]. [O]. [u].

I'm not sure what to think about their use of [O].
Apparently they thought traditional short "o" is the vowel
in "short" rather than the vowel in "shot".

[1] The online _Oxford English Dictionary_ is failing to
come up this morning. It does that once in a while.

From OED online:

13. Phonetics and Prosody. Applied to a vowel (less
frequently to a consonant) when its utterance has the less
of the two measures of duration recognized in the ordinary
classification of speech-sounds. Also, in Prosody, of a
syllable: Belonging to that one of the two classes which is
supposed to be distinguished from the other by occupying a
shorter time in utterance.
For various inaccurate uses see LONG a. 13a.

Various inaccurate uses of the terms long and short were
formerly almost universal in Eng., and are still commom.
(1) The vowel of a 'long' syllable, if 'naturally' short,
was said to be 'long by position'.
(2) By a confusion between the principles of quantitative
and those of accentual verse, the stressed syllables, on
the periodical recurrence of which the rhythm of English
verse depends, were said to be 'long', and the unstressed
syllables 'short'.
-> (3) In ordinary language 'the long a, e, i, o, or u'
denotes that sound of the letter which is used as its
alphabetical name, while 'the short a, e, i, o, or u'
denotes the sound which the letter most commonly has in a
stressed short syllable

24. Parasynthetic derivatives in -ED2, unlimited in number,
as short-armed, -barrelled, -billed, -bodied, -frocked,
-handled, -leaved,-necked, -nosed, -vowelled, etc.

1935 G. O. CURME Gram. Eng. Lang. II. xii. 307 In early
Modern English there was alongside of the long-voweled bete
or beat the *short-voweled bett.

--
Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)
.

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