[o] vs. [oU] and [e] vs. [eI]

Travis   Thu Jan 26, 2006 8:38 am GMT
>>You reasoning for favouring /e/ and /o/ over /eI/ and /oU/ analysis-wise the context of your dialect does make sense to me. Your analysis expressedly ignores "even trying to maintain any concordance of underlying forms across dialects" which is fine in that particluar context. What I have in mind, though, is transcriptions for English phonemes in general.

This, may, of course, be an absurdly impossible task but not entirely. It may be laxness verses tenseness which distinguishes "wet" and "wait" for you whereas for me the distinction is short vowel verses diphthong but can we not argue that my [e] and your [E] are the same phoneme and that my [{I] and your [e] are also the same phoneme?<<

Of course, this would likely require some notation for marking phonemes which is not based on what their "default" surface forms in any given dialect are, but rather is based on referring to phonemes logically in a crossdialectal fashion based on direct correlation of different forms in different dialects. Such would act to remove how linked phonemes in different dialects are actually realized at all from the picture, and limit matters to solely the common origin or correlation of the phonemes in question.

>>There will, of course be phonemes that one dialect has and another lacks but is this too great a problem? You don't have my /O/ (RP's /Q/). Can't I just say that you're missing a phoneme? Of course, it's not really that simple but maybe you see where I'm trying to get.<<

Yes, I get what you're saying. In most but not all cases, my /O/ is logically a different phoneme from your /O/, with the primary exceptions being places where RP has /Q/ and my dialect has /O/ rather than /A/.

>>Now, in a general English context how do we represent these vowels? All I'm trying to say is that "/eI/" and "/oU/" are probably less apt to cause confusion in such contexts than "/e/" and "/o/" would be. Of course this is very artificial but it's a real problem for people like the dictionary editors.<<

In this way, yes, "/eI/" and "/oU/" are suitable if one is seeking "names" for the logical phonemes in question crossdialectally, even if they might not be accurate for actually marking the specific phonemes in question in various individual dialects.
Fooge   Fri Jan 27, 2006 12:46 am GMT
I'm from Georgia and my vowels in "cake" and "Coke" are definitely diphthongal.
Jim   Sat Jan 28, 2006 7:13 am GMT
Yes, Travis, your /O/ is a different phoneme to mine. Your /O/ would be my /o:/.
Kirk   Sat Jan 28, 2006 8:28 am GMT
<<Your /O/ would be my /o:/. >>

And my /A/. Hehe, aren't English dialects great? ;)

<<Of course, this would likely require some notation for marking phonemes which is not based on what their "default" surface forms in any given dialect are, but rather is based on referring to phonemes logically in a crossdialectal fashion based on direct correlation of different forms in different dialects. Such would act to remove how linked phonemes in different dialects are actually realized at all from the picture, and limit matters to solely the common origin or correlation of the phonemes in question. >>

John Wells does this by referring to common words like FLEECE, KIT, DRESS, TRAP, etc. (he capitalizes them to distinguish them from the actual individual words) which don't vary in phonemic distinction amongst dialects. From these base words you can describe splits and mergers for certain dialects in certain contexts, like saying that RP "bath" belongs to PALM and not TRAP as it does for GA.
Kirk   Sat Jan 28, 2006 8:39 am GMT
Here is a list of the lexical sets John Wells uses. Also note that there may be dialect-specific ones that explain whole classes of words for certain dialects (like BATH):

NEAR
FLEECE
KIT
FOOT
GOOSE
CURE
SQUARE
FACE
DRESS
STRUT
GOAT
FORCE
PRICE
TRAP
LOT
MOUTH
NORTH
CHOICE
BATH
CLOTH
START
PALM
THOUGHT
NURSE
HAPPY
COMMA
LETTER
Travis   Sat Jan 28, 2006 9:50 am GMT
Of course, the problem with such names is that they can be very confusing at times; I myself very often get completely confused by just what phoneme individuals mean when they use such names, and it is especially confusing when people use such terms to refer to *phones* rather than phonemes per se.