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Spelling reform idea.
The difference between syllabic /l/ and nonsyllabic /l/ is phonemic, because, for example:
''buckling'' and ''duckling'' don't rhyme for me. ''curly'' and ''early'' don't rhyme for me.
How about this for a spelling reform:
''aa'' for /A/ ''o'' for /Q/ ''oa'' for /O/ father - faadhyr bother - bodhyr cot - kot - /kQt/ caught - koat - /kOt/ This would be an improvement to Travis's system.
Quote-''schedule'' and ''rule'' don't rhyme for me. the -ule in ''rule'' is monosyllabic and the ''-ule'' in ''schedule'' is bisyllabic.''
/l/ does not usually become syllabic before the /u/ vowel in my accent. ''schedule'' seems to be the only word where it does. Of course, this excludes words which clearly have syllabic rather than nonsyllabic /l/ before ''l'' such as ''individual'', ''gradual'' and any word which ends in ''-ual''.
Quote-''schedule'' and ''rule'' don't rhyme for me. the -ule in ''rule'' is monosyllabic and the ''-ule'' in ''schedule'' is bisyllabic.''
/l/ does not usually become syllabic before the /u/ vowel in my accent. ''schedule'' seems to be the only word where it does. Of course, this excludes words which clearly have syllabic rather than nonsyllabic /l/ before /u/ such as ''renewel'', ''individual'', ''gradual'' and any word which ends in ''-ual''.
The ''u's'' in ''individual'' and ''gradual'' are actually pronounced more like a schwa /@/ sound than an /u/ sound in my accent.
One thing you must remember though is that stress patterns have to be taken into account, as syllables may happen to be realized differently based on how they are stressed, and consonant clusters may happen to be realized differently depending on whether stress is placed in a certain position relative to them. In "rule", one is dealing with a single stressed syllable, whereas in "schedule", one is concerned with the final syllable, which is generally unstressed. Hence, to go and clearly show for a specific dialect that such is phonemic and not just phonology, one will have to take stress and even position within a word into account. Hence, one would have to provide another multisyllabic word with an unstressed final syllable which constrasts with "schedule" with [l=] or [5=] word-finally in dialects with such, and preferably one in which the final syllable differs *only* from the final syllable of "schedule" with respect to the syllabicity of [l] or [5], to make it clear that such is actually phonemic per se.
Quote-''In "rule", one is dealing with a single stressed syllable, whereas in "schedule", one is concerned with the final syllable, which is generally unstressed.''
That just sounds silly. That's just like saying that [du:] and [dju:] for ''dew'' are not phonemically different but rather just different ways of realizing /dju/. Quote-''Hence, to go and clearly show for a specific dialect that such is phonemic and not just phonology, one will have to take stress and even position within a word into account. Hence, one would have to provide another multisyllabic word with an unstressed final syllable which constrasts with "schedule" with [l=] or [5=] word-finally in dialects with such, and preferably one in which the final syllable differs *only* from the final syllable of "schedule" with respect to the syllabicity of [l] or [5], to make it clear that such is actually phonemic per se.'' No we don't. It clearly is, because ''schedule'' does not rhyme with ''rule'' for me, but with ''renewel''.
Quote-''One thing you must remember though is that stress patterns have to be taken into account, as syllables may happen to be realized differently based on how they are stressed, and consonant clusters may happen to be realized differently depending on whether stress is placed in a certain position relative to them. In "rule", one is dealing with a single stressed syllable, whereas in "schedule", one is concerned with the final syllable, which is generally unstressed. Hence, to go and clearly show for a specific dialect that such is phonemic and not just phonology, one will have to take stress and even position within a word into account. Hence, one would have to provide another multisyllabic word with an unstressed final syllable which constrasts with "schedule" with [l=] or [5=] word-finally in dialects with such, and preferably one in which the final syllable differs *only* from the final syllable of "schedule" with respect to the syllabicity of [l] or [5], to make it clear that such is actually phonemic per se.''
Travis, If two words don't rhyme then they're phonemically different. If you say that's not the case then you're just being silly. Also in order to say that /skEdZu=l/ and /skEdZul/ are not phonemically different you'd have to say that /l=/ and /l/ are not different phonemes.
Toyota, but things are not that simple, because consider this: in a dialect that uses ["skE:.dZul=], is it *possible* to construct another word, which is multisyllabic and which does not have stress on its final syllable, which will end in [ul] rather than [ul=]. What you must remember is that not all phonemic distinctions are the same in all positions necessarily.
For example, in most North American English dialects, before /r/, not only are vowels not distinguished by tensenss versus laxness, but also [{], [E], and [e] are all simply different realizations of the same phoneme. Hence, for example, for the word "here", the realizations [hi:r] and [hI:r] of such do *not* differ phonemically; rather, both are different realizations, based on differing phonologies, of what could be denoted as /hir/ or /hIr/, depending on whether one arbitrarily chooses to favor the tense or the lax version as the underlying form. At this level, IPA and X-SAMPA are almost somewhat inadequate for representing phonemes, as they will still force you to choose the phoneme in question as being either tense or lax, whereas phonemically, in this case, such is not phonemically either. My point here is not that ["skE:.dZul=] or ["skE:.dZul] (in many NAE dialects, though, I think those should be [5=] and [5] respectively) *aren't* the result of different phonemes, but rather one has to take into account the kinds of things that I have pointed out here; that is, that different phonemes may be realized significantly differently in different positions, and also that in various positions distinctions between multiple phonemes may be neutralized, to the point that the two are not distinct phonemes in such positions, and how they are realized is just simply a matter of phonology. SpaceFlight, as for [du] and [dju] for "dew", in this case, there is a clear case that indicates that such is not simply the result of /dj/ being realized as [d] and [dj] in the phonologies of different dialects. This is because in many NAE dialects, very many of which also realize "dew" as [du], phonemic /dj/ is very commonly realized as [dZ] or [dZj], yet in such dialects you never hear "dew" pronounced as [dZu] or [dZju], which indicates that in such dialects the underlying form is not /dj/. On the other hand, in some dialects in which one may hear [dju], one may also hear [dZu] or [dZju] to some extent or another at times, which is consistent with the underlying form being /dj/ in such dialects.
Quote-''phonemic /dj/''
I assume you mean, as in ''did you'' and ''would you'', because [dj] doesn't occur phonemically as a cluster in most North American English, but rather only with the /d/ and the /j/ belong to separate syllables. Yod-dropping has gotten rid of the initial clusters /dj/, /tj/, /nj/, /sj/, /zj/ and /lj/ in ''due'', ''tune'', ''new'', ''suit'', ''Zeus'' and ''lute'' in American English. They're pronounced /du/, /tun/, /nu/, /sut/, /zus/, and /lut/.
Quote-''Hence, one would have to provide another multisyllabic word with an unstressed final syllable which constrasts with "schedule" with [l=] or [5=] word-finally in dialects with such, and preferably one in which the final syllable differs *only* from the final syllable of "schedule" with respect to the syllabicity of [l] or [5], to make it clear that such is actually phonemic per se.''
Travis, ''carpool'' is one. I pronounce that /kArpul/, not /kArpu.@l/ and the stress in ''carpool'' is on the ''car'', not the ''pool''. While for me, ''schedule'' is clearly three syllables. ''schedule'' is clearly a special case in my accent, because /ul/ does not usually become /u.@l/ anywhere in my accent, even in unstressed syllables with the exception of the word ''schedule''.
Travis,
How does this sentence come out in your phonemic orthography: ''My father went to the store and was bothered by the people who caught him stealing stuff''. I assume it would be something like this" mai faadhyr went tu dha stoor aend waz baadhyrd bai dha pipyl hu kot him stiling staf''. Right? Or is it: ''mai faadhyr went tu dha stoor aend waz bodhyrd bai dha pipyl hu koat him stiling staf''. In one of my orthographies, it's: ''mie faathur went too thu stor and wuz bothurd bie thu peepul hoo kaut him steeling stuf''.
I've made a number of changes to my orthography, so such'd be:
"Mai faadher went tu dha stoor aend was baadherd bai dha pipyl hu kot him stiling staf." I made just a few modifications due to going and actually giving into aesthetic considerations, but also because I'm handing vowels before /r/ differently from other vowels, and also because /@/ and /A/ are now being handled as a pair like /E/ and /e/, except that word-finally, "a" is /@/, and "aa" is /A/. And as for your question, remember that this design assumes "father"-"bother" merger, and the default version of it also assumes a full "Mary"-"merry"-"marry" merger, "horse"-"hoarse" merger, "nearer"-"mirror" merger, and change of /Ur/ to /@`/. However, it has designed-in means to represent dialects which do not merge all of those; note though that the way it is designed, the merged versions default to appearing tense orthographically, even though in many cases, the realization may very well be lax. On another note, as for /dj/ in North American English, yes, in most dialects of it it will not show in a word-root. However, as you already said, it can show up across word boundaries; furthermore, it should be able to show up as a result of reduction, and in theory possibly as a result of cliticization. In the case of reduction, consider this /di@/ (unreduced) -> /dj@/ (reduced) -> [dZ@]. I cannot think of a particular case of this which sticks out in my head at the moment, but I do know of similar examples in other cases, such as in the English pronunciation of the name of city of Valencia in Spain, which is: /si@/ (unreduced) -> /sj@/ (reduced) -> [S@]. As for your example for "schedule", that is not that bad of an example, even though probably better cases can be found, simply because "carpool" involves two different roots tied together, and at times phonology *within* words doesn't work quite as one would expect when one is involving morpheme boundaries, just like phonology within morphemes can often differ from phonology across word boundaries (even though this is a much more common matter as a whole). I honestly myself haven't thought of an example that does serve this which does not involve multiple morphemes, and it would be really interesting to see if we can find an example of such which involves purely just a single root as a single morpheme. But this is getting rather arcane to start with, and I would assume we can get along with just from an orthographic standpoint going and treating /l/ and /l=/ separate in most cases, with the important exceptions of following certain vowels, in particular the diphthongs /aI/ and /aU/, especially when not intervocalic, in many dialects, where what should probably be considered as /l/ is very often realized as [l=] or [5=].
Quote-''this design assumes "father"-"bother" merger''
Travis, Many dialects do not merge the vowels in ''father'' and ''bother''. I have /fAD@`/ and /bQD@`/. Your ''faadher'' and ''baadher'' is a step in the wrong direction. To not include /Q/ in your system is to say that the people who use it are speaking incorrectly. What's your objection to including it? It's much better than not including it. In other words, How about these: three = free caught = cort bother - bovver These would work for some. Wouldn't you object these spellings? I certainly would, because they say that the speakers who do make the distinctions are speaking incorrectly. |