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From: rdd@usa1.com (Aaron J. Dinkin)
Subject: Re: PIN =/= PINK !
Message-ID: <rdd-0908961919310001@dmn1-29.usa1.com>
Date: Fri, 09 Aug 1996 19:19:31 -0500
References: <4u996o$bfq@cantuc.canterbury.ac.nz> <rdd-0708960908580001@dmn1-53.usa1.com> <320b2731.3869247@news.tcp.co.uk>
Lines: 62

In article <320b2731.3869247@news.tcp.co.uk>, laker@tcp.co.uk (Markus
Laker) wrote:

> rdd@usa1.com (Aaron J. Dinkin):
> 
> > In article <4u996o$bfq@cantuc.canterbury.ac.nz>,
> > mathwft@math.canterbury.ac.nz (Bill Taylor) wrote:
> 
> > > The fact is, the short "i" phoneme has two *very* different phones in it,
> > > to my ear at least.

Say, I just noticed - someone (other than John Lawler or Avi Jacobson) who
used "phone" and "phoneme" correctly in the same sentence!

> > > "pin" and "pink" (or "ping") are pronounced quite differently.
> > > 
> > > It's easy to hear this if you set out to say "pin" but add on a "k" at
> > > the last microsecond; then you get an almost comical or foreign-sounding
> > > word (though still quite recognizable as "pink").
> 
> > I've never noticed any large, overt difference between the allophones of
> > /I/ in "pin" /pIn/ and "pink" /pINk/. Perhaps it's your dialect. However,
> > I do have a quite massive example of phoneme coloration: /&/ before a
> > nasal is quite regularly raised to [e], and if the nasal is /m/ or /n/, it
> > is diphthongized to [e@]. Thus "can" /k&n/ is [ke@n], and "bang" /b&N/ is
> > [beN], all this to the extent that when I was in kindergarten learning
> > about the "short a" (/&/) and the "long a" (/e/), I kept wondering, "When
> > are we going to learn about the "a before n"?
> 
> I find this whole discussion quite bizarre.  As far as I can tell I and
> the people around me use [I] in both 'pin' and 'pink' and [&] in both
> 'can', 'cam' and 'cat', although the vowel is perhaps longer in 'pink'
> than in 'pin' and longer in 'can' and 'cam' than in 'cat'.  I do agree
> that [n] changes to [N] before [k].  All the contributors I've seen so
> far have been from NZ or the US.  Does anyone in Britain recognise the
> vowel-shifting phenomenon?

Though as you know I'm not from Britain, I've read that nearly all native
speakers raise and shorten the diphthong /aI/ to [VI] before unvoiced
consonants. Does this hold with you?

Also, I've noticed another quite bizarre phenomenon in my own speech: the
diphthong /aU/ becomes [&U] before /n/, for reasons I am totally unable to
divine. This holds true even when the /n/ becomes [~] - or rather, a
nasalization of the vowel. "Mountain", for example, is something like
['m&~U?n-]. It sometimes - though not always - even happens after /n/:
"now" /naU/ is [n&U].

> > Incidentally, I pronounce "Lara", "Laura", and "Lora" all differently;
> > anyone else do this?
> 
> Nope: [lA:r@], [lO:r@], [lO:r@].  How do they sound when you say them,
> Aaron?

/'lar@/, /'lAr@/, and /'lOr@/. This is an example of my proof that people
who pronounce "cot" and "caught" the same still distinguish between /A/
and /O/; we just make the distinction in a different place, where others
have homophones. I usually use as my examples "aural/oral" (not homophones
in my dialect) and the whimsical example of "laurel-eyed Lorelei".

-Aaron J. Dinkin
Dr. Whom

