--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, enlil@... wrote:
> Jens:
> > I am not sure I do not myself have an opposition between
> >
> > /pa/ <par> '(a) pair'
> > /pa:/ <parre> 'to pair'
> > /pa::/ <parrer> 'pair(s)' (prs.) or sg. 'person who pairs'
> > /pa:::/ <parrere> 'pairers' (pl. 'persons who pair')
>
> And don't forget /pa:::::::::/ 'Paaaaaaaaaa?????!!!!'
>
> Can anyone see now how the concept of double-length has now
> been contorted into some artsy concept that hasn't anything to
> do with true linguistics? If you honestly speak like this, Jens,
> then I'm sure that people must be giving you double glances and
> strange looks. This might be normal for people with cerebral
> palsy or some other neuromuscular disorder but an average person
> with an average capacity for speech is not making such contrasts.
Well, I know all that, but I do have to respect the competence of a
native speaker, and my speech does not deviate from that of
everybody else on this particular respect, and even if it did the
point was about human speech in its broadest sense, so I do not see
how anybody's speech can fail to qualify. It may be noted that the
fourth degree is (in this set) only represented by a word of low
frequency, so low actually that I don't believe I've ever heard it,
but it is certainly part of the productive system, on the basis of
which I made it up. The only thing I am uncertain of is whether
there really is a consistent opposition of length between the second
and third degree, i.e. whether words like <vare>, <snare>, <klare>
are really shorter than <varer>, <snarer>, <klarer>. In normal
speech, even in quite careful speech, they all end in a long IPA [a]-
vowel of some length which is certainly longer than the length of
<par> and <var>, and certainly shorter than that of <snarere>,
<klarere>, <barere> which have the same vowel only longer still. The
three degrees of the a-vowel are beyond dispute. The fact generally
escapes notice, even of phonetic scholars, because conscious speech
production perceives of them as /ar/ + schwa ((+ /r/) + schwa). In
terms of conscious articulation they consist of a long /a:/ followed
by one or two extra /a/-segments, i.e. /a:a(a)/, but there are no
audible or articulatory breaks between the elements, it is just the
very same vowel that goes on and on, or on and on and on. It works
only with <ar> which produces an open (i.e. normal IPA) [a]-vowel
which in turn assimilates following schwa and /r/ and even schwa
again. Other vowels are diphthongized in the same environment.
I once heard Robert Austerlitz say in a lecture that Finnish has
compounds combining /aa/ and /aa/ into /aa-aa/ which is pronounced
with a tonal curve that gives away the segmentation, but the tone is
of course subphonemic, so it is the length that is phonemic, meaning
that this also produces cases of one, two, and three, and quite
probably even four quanta of duration.
Jens