--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham"
<richard.wordingham@...> wrote:
>
> Apart from the side issue that in your dialect [N] seems still
> to be an allophone of /n/, Europeans are uneasy about such
> biphonemic analyses of English long vowels and diphthongs.
But why? Is not a diphthong by definition a sequence of _two_
sounds? Is not the analysis of a long vowel as the geminate of
its short equivalent about the most natural assumption one can
make?
> It's not an issue of dialect.
But it must be an issue of dialect. Every dialect should get
its own analysis. If a "shadow" segment, which is based on
diachronic analysis but not actually present in a strictly
phonetic analysis, may not be invoked, then no diachronic
consideration may be, nor a consideration of other dialects'
systems of contrasts either. My dialect might, in fact I
know that it does, have a different system of contrasts than
that of British English.
In my dialect /e/ and /i/ occur only before /j/, /o/ and /u/
only before /w/. So I still don't see how the following
representation, grouping [E] and [e] in /e/, [O] and [o] in
/o/, [U] and [u] in /u/, and [I] and [i] in /i/, threatens
to reduce English's phonological system to binary code:
beat /bijt/
bit /bit/
bait /bejt/
bet /bet/
suit /suwt/
put /put/
boat /bowt/
toy /toj/
buy /baj/
bow /baw/
yeast /jijst/
east /ijst/ or /?ijst/
woo /wuw/
year /jir/
ear /ir/ or /?ir/
saying /sejing/, or /sejiN/ if the concept of
morpheme boundry is disallowed
seeing /sijing/, or /sijiN/
Is the more open pronuncation of /j/ in these
last two, as opposed to that of the first /j/
in 'yeast', part of what causes a problem with
this sort of analysis for some? I don't see
why.
David