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How do you pronounce ''car''?
<<"father" would be pronounced with an [a].>>
Oh, so it's actually a short vowel? That's interesting, because in my Caribbean accent /a/ with no length is the vowel in ''gather'' as distinct from /a:/ with length which is the vowel in ''father''.
<<but in the traditional (non-rhotic) accent here>>
In my accent, the /r/ is pronounced when at the end of a word as in ''car'' /kja:r/ and not pronounced before a consonant as in ''card'' /ka:d/. So is my accent rhotic or nonrhotic?
I should note that /r/ is pronounced in my accent before a consonant when there's a morpheme boundry.
<<Oh, so it's actually a short vowel? That's interesting, because in my Caribbean accent /a/ with no length is the vowel in ''gather'' as distinct from /a:/ with length which is the vowel in ''father''.>>
No, I just omitted the length mark because vowel length is usually non-contrastive in North American English. (The New England [a:] has no *[a] to contrast with.) On a narrower phonetic level it would probably be [a:] rather than [a]. <<In my accent, the /r/ is pronounced when at the end of a word as in ''car'' /kja:r/ and not pronounced before a consonant as in ''card'' /ka:d/. So is my accent rhotic or nonrhotic?>> I guess your accent would be partially rhotic, or to employ a term that Travis used in describing a similar phenomenon in AAVE, pseudorhotic.
>>I guess your accent would be partially rhotic, or to employ a term that Travis used in describing a similar phenomenon in AAVE, pseudorhotic.<<
Actually, the term "pseudo-non-rhotic", as used by myself, refers to how rhotic NAE is often sung, where word-final /r/ and morpheme-final /r/ are lost and where word-final and morpheme-final /@`/ is de-rhoticized and yet where medial /@`/ within morphemes is preserved as such. I myself have not associated such with AAVE, but rather the singing of normally rhotic NAE dialects.
One interesting use of length marks for dialects like my own, though, might be to distinguish free vowels from checked vowels and schwa. Without length marks, RP "bother" and my "bother" would both be transcribed with [Q], but transcribing my version with [Q:] would make clear the essential distinction that although the two "bother" vowels are similar in quality, the RP one cannot occur word-finally whereas mine can (as in "law", "saw", etc.). And when I think about it, my "bother" vowel does seem a bit longer than the RP one.
Just a thought.
<<Actually, the term "pseudo-non-rhotic", as used by myself, refers to how rhotic NAE is often sung, where word-final /r/ and morpheme-final /r/ are lost and where word-final and morpheme-final /@`/ is de-rhoticized and yet where medial /@`/ within morphemes is preserved as such. I myself have not associated such with AAVE, but rather the singing of normally rhotic NAE dialects.>>
I just remembered you using that term in this thread: http://www.antimoon.com/forum/t1028-60.htm in reference to song lyrics. Looking back, I guess you were using it more in a singing context than in a dialectal context.
>><<Oh, so it's actually a short vowel? That's interesting, because in my Caribbean accent /a/ with no length is the vowel in ''gather'' as distinct from /a:/ with length which is the vowel in ''father''.>>
No, I just omitted the length mark because vowel length is usually non-contrastive in North American English. (The New England [a:] has no *[a] to contrast with.) On a narrower phonetic level it would probably be [a:] rather than [a]. << And then there are NAE dialects, such as my own and Kirk's, where no phonemes have any notion of "default" vowel length to start with, even if such is not phonemically distinctive, but rather vowel length (for both monopthongs and diphthongs) is purely determined by environment. Such consequently acts as a means of communicating the fortis/lenis (for plosives and fricatives) or voicing (for approximants) attribute of following phonemes, and thus can communicate phoneme attributes which have otherwise been removed in realization (such as via assimilation or neutralization), and thus distinguish word pairs (such as "latter" and "ladder" in my own dialect).
<<Oh, so it's actually a short vowel? That's interesting, because in my Caribbean accent /a/ with no length is the vowel in ''gather'' as distinct from /a:/ with length which is the vowel in ''father''.>>
<<No, I just omitted the length mark because vowel length is usually non-contrastive in North American English. (The New England [a:] has no *[a] to contrast with.) On a narrower phonetic level it would probably be [a:] rather than [a].>> In my accent /a:/ in ''father'' does have an /a/ (as in ''gather'') to contrast with. I assume that you're accent has a quality distinction between the vowels, whereas mine is a length distinction.
<<In my accent /a:/ in ''father'' does have an /a/ (as in ''gather'') to contrast with. I assume that you're accent has a quality distinction between the vowels, whereas mine is a length distinction.>>
Well technically I wasn't talking about my own accent, but rather the traditional non-rhotic New England accent. I speak a New England dialect that is completely rhotic and uses [A] in place of [a], but the remark about vowel length being non-constrastive applies equally well in both accents: Traditional non-rhotic New England accent: car - [ka] father - [faD@] gather - [g{D@] My own rhotic New-England accent: car - [kAr\] father - [fAD@`] gather - [g{D@`] As you can see above, the /a/ phoneme for the non-rhotic accent, and the /A/ phoneme for my own accent, don't have contrastive vowel length. But if you're interested in dialects that do have contrastive vowel length, a good example would be Australian English, which distinguishes pairs like: budge - [b6dZ] barge - [b6:dZ] bed - [bed] bared - [be:d] And for some Australians, also: jam (to "jam" something in) - [dZ{m] jam (the "jam" that you eat) - [dZ{:m]
In my accent those are:
car - /kja:r/ father - /fa:d@`/ gather - /gad@`/ So by these examples you can probably see that my accent has contrastive vowel length.
Robert, your contrastive vowel length is interesting there.
<<How do you all pronounce the ''a'' in ''father''? Do you use /a:/ or /A:/? I use /a:/, /fa:d@`/.>> I pronounce "father" as /fAD@r/ --> ["fA:D@`]. As Travis mentioned, I have no phonemic or contrastive vowel-length distinctions. Long vowels are purely allophonic for me.
car - /ka:/
father - /'fa:D@/ gather - /'gaD@/ >>I myself pronounce ''can't'' as /kjan/<< In my opinion, I'm sorry but that sounds a bit annoying. I consider it even a bit of a mispronunciation. CAN'T is pronounced like this: /ka:nt/ || /kAnt/ || /kant/ .- in Southern English accents, and some Australian and New Zealander accents. /k{nt/ || /k{:nt/ .- in some Northern English accents, and most of American and Canadian accents. and I can even hear something like: /ke{ant/ .- in Ghetto-Black-American accent. But /kjan/ is unacceptable to me.
<<In my opinion, I'm sorry but that sounds a bit annoying. I consider it even a bit of a mispronunciation.>>
If it's a native form of English, it's not a "mispronunciation" but just normal variation within the language. |