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From: rdd@usa1.com (Aaron J. Dinkin)
Subject: Vowels (was Chain Shift)
Message-ID: <rdd-2507961445260001@dmn1-58.usa1.com>
Date: Thu, 25 Jul 1996 14:45:26 -0500
References: <4suk93$pob@carrera.intergate.bc.ca> <4t0be8$ls8@newstand.syr.edu> <4t0usc$kaa@thighmaster.admin.lsa.umich.edu> <1996Jul23.094214.1@ahecas> <4t7na2$gn1@thighmaster.admin.lsa.umich.edu>
Lines: 64

In article <4t7na2$gn1@thighmaster.admin.lsa.umich.edu>,
jlawler@snoopy.ling.lsa.umich.edu (John Lawler) wrote:

> I can't give you a good diagram of Am English vowels in ASCII,
> but if I could, it would go something like this:
> 
>            Front               Central              Back
> 
> High         [i] "beet"                          "boot" [u]
>                  "bit" [I]                     [U] "foot"
> Mid            [e] "fail"                      "boat" [o]
>                 "fell" [E]       "but" [@]     [O] "bought" *
> Low                  "sad" [ae]            [a] "sod" *
> 
> The letters in [brackets] approximate IPA symbols for the vowels,
> which are indicated by the words in "quotes" next to them.

I don't know about you, but I'm American and I have thirteen separate
vowel phonemes excluding diphthongs:

             Front               Central             Back

High        /i/ "beet"                               /u/ "boot"
            /I/ "bit"                                /U/ "foot"
Mid         /e/ "fail"      /@/ "Bert" (/b@rt/)      /o/ "boat"
            /E/ "fell"           /V"/ "butt"         /O/ "port" (/pOrt/)
Low         /&/ "sad"       /a/ "Bart" (/bart)       /A/ "sod"

I base my claim that /@/ and /V"/ are separate phonemes on the fact that
"hurry" /'hV"ri/ and "furry" /'f@ri/ don't rhyme. I base my claim that /a/
and /A/ are separate phonemes on, for example, the facts that "bother"
/'bAD@r/ and "father" /'faD@r/ don't rhyme and that "cocky" /'kAki/ and
"khaki" /'kaki/ aren't homophones, among others. (/a/ is rare not
preceding /r/; /O/ is rare without preceding /r/ or /l/; /@/ is rare -
probably utterly absent - in stressed syllables without /r/.)

> * Many US English speakers, especially West of the Mississippi,
>   do not distinguish [a] from [O], pronouncing both identically
>   with a vowel intermediate between them, thus not being able
>   to tell the difference between "Dawn" and "Don", which gives
>   considerable problems for men named Don and women named Dawn
>   in those areas.

You fall into the trap here of assuming just because some speakers have a
different distribution of /A/ and /O/ than you do that they don't make the
distinction at all. I use /A/ in both "Dawn" and "Don" (you can prove this
by asking my cousin Dawn what happened when she asked me to spell her name
when I was quite young), but /O/ and /A/ remain quite separate phonemes. I
use /A/ in "bald" and /O/ in "bold". You would hear two separate vowels if
I ever had need to speak of a "laurel-eyed Lorelei". For you to state
categorically that people for whom "Don" and "Dawn" are homophones are
missing a phoneme is just as wrong as it would be for me to say the same
thing about people who pronounce "aural" and "oral" the same (I don't).
It's not a different inventory of phonemes, just a different distribution
of the same ones. (Incidentally, I live in a suburb of Boston.)

I think I'm going to write a logic puzzle about three women named Lara,
Laura, and Lora, each of whom have different dialects - so, for example,
when Lara addresses Laura, Laura thinks she's addressing Lora because of
the pronunciation differences. The object would be to determine which is
which based on their conversation.

-Aaron J. Dinkin
Dr. Whom

