Re: [tied] Re: Retroflexes in Sanskrit

----- Original Message -----

From: richardwordingham

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Tuesday, August 06, 2002 9:57 PM

Subject: [tied] Re: Retroflexes in Sanskrit

> What is the issue?  Is it a general issue with diphthongs.

 

It is. It's surprising in how many ways poor English diphthongs have been dissected. West of the big water most linguists use transcriptions like /ay, oy (= IPA aj, oj), aw/ (a vowel plus a glide) for what their British colleagues write /aI, aU, OI/ (and claim to be unitary phonemes in their local tradition, shared by numerous continental Europeans). Dialectal problems apart, there is also some disagreement as to which vowels are "real" diphthongs and whether all "offglides" count as separate segments (/i, e, u, o/, or /Iy, Ey, Uw, Ow/?). And this uncertainty is what we find in the most extensively studied modern language!

 

> For myself, I would not be able to decide which vowel phoneme the '/O/' belonged to.  My idiolect may be of interest.  Although I pronounce 'groin' /groin/ (one syllable), I pronounce 'coin' /coiin/ (two syllables).

They have a different etymological vowel each: groin < grine < ME grynde (/OI/ and /aI/ used to be confused a good deal in early Modern English and are still confused in some varieties of Scottish English, where <vice> and <voice> are homophones), while <coin> had [ui ~ oi] in Middle English (reflecting Old French /u/ before a palatal nasal < Lat. cuneu-). Are you from the north, by any chance? John C. Wells wonders (on page 300 of his _Accents of English_ [vol. 2]): "why do I say /'kOIIn/ for _coin_ when everyone else says /kOIn/?" He calls it a "personal idiosyncrasy", but if you have this pronunciation as well it may be something else, and there may be a dialectal or historical reason for it.

 

Piotr