Re: OT: Definitely Not YAEPT: English phoneme inventory?

On Wed, Jul 16, 2003 at 12:00:54PM -0500, Nik Taylor wrote:
> That's still an EPT, because even the *number* of phonemes is not
> constant.  For example, my dialect does not distinguish /O/ and /A/, but
> others do.
I'm looking for the ones that are phonemically distinct in *some*
dialect.  I don't distinguish /O/ and /A/ either - [O] doesn't
appear at all in my speech unless I'm intentionally imitating another
dialect or speaking another language.  But I recognize that they're
distinct English phonemes because in some dialects they're distinct.

> > It also includes these symbols:
> >
> >         \<sup>&</sup>\ as e in kitten
> >         \&r\as ur/er in further
> >
> > Both of the above are really just examples of syllabicizing the
> > following consonant, though, so I don't consider them phonemes.
>
> Well, the "e in kitten" is schwa in many dialects, i.e., /kIt@n/.  For
> me, it's *usually* syllabic, but /@n/ occurs on occasion.
Right, but in such cases, it's just /@/ + /n/.  It's still not a
separate phoneme.  Ditto for 'lects where /r=/ is actually realized
as [@`\r] or whatever.

I think the only reason such schwas are treated separately
in the pronunciation guide is because of the fact that they often
disappear in actual speech; but the lack of a phone does not a phoneme
make. :)

Incidentally, on an earlier YAEPT I said that /t/ never turned into
[?] for me, but I was wrong.  It does so in <kitten>, <button>, etc.
even though it doesn't in <bottle>, etc.

-Mark

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