Re: Two questions about Esperanto

From:    Tristan Mc Leay <kesuari@...>
> Mark J. Reed wrote:
> > No, no.  Esperanto "ej" is also [ej] (or [ei_^] in X-SAMPA.
>
> Really? I thought both were perfectly good X-SAMPA and whether you chose
> to say [ej], [ei_^] or [ei] was a matter of taste (and perhaps whether
> the language in question uses /ej/, /ei_^/ or /ei/, which is sometimes a
> matter of taste and sometimes semantically important).
It really depends on the language being described.  The difference
between phonetic [] and phoneme // notation is not one of absolute
versus distributional, although it often put that way.  Phonetic
notation still requires some level of interpretation; it is just
narrower than phonemic notation.  In this case, the glide in some
languages is vary salient, while in others (in my dialect of English
for off-glides only), it isn't as much, so use of one over the other
might have subtle implications.

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Thomas Wier	       "I find it useful to meet my subjects personally,
Dept. of Linguistics    because our secret police don't get it right
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