Richard:
> No, I would have hoped that you remembered that I said 3 chrones
> but 2 chronemes. Chrone : phone :: chroneme : phoneme.
How are you using chrone in this sentence?
> On the other hand, the reported 3-way contrast of <mettre> ~ <mètre>
> ~ <maître> looks like a textbook example of the establishment of
> phonemes. So what is your phonemic analysis in this case? That
> <mettre> is /mEt:r/?
No, that it's [mE(.)tR]. There is no three-way contrast, and even
the pdf I quote shows that such a thing is rare if anything.
However I still don't know of what speech area actually shows
this three-way length. So far, it's a bunch of hypothetical talk
on Miguel's part but he doesn't know what he's really saying.
Again, WHERE is this distinction made in French? In Paris? In some
suburb down a back alley somewhere? We could say that some drunk
in Gaston makes the distinction but back in reality-land, I've
just shown that Standard French doesn't make that contrast. It's
your onus to show a three-way contrast in French, I mean a real
one that living human-beings are now making as we speak.
> That is what I asked you to expand on. Or does it all turn on
> beliving that <maître> is /me:tr/?
But, Richard, I'm telling you seriously that circumflex vowels
ARE pronounced differently from the non-circumflex ones in some
speech varieties, so it very much IS the issue. I know this for
a FACT. I've read about it, and I've heard it. You can even
read about it in the pdf that I supplied in the last post.
Remember? The pdf from a _university_? Meanwhile Miguel is
quoting some guy called "Jacques" and relying on his knowledge
of Spanish and Dutch. What do I need to expand on here? What
needs to be expanded on is how what Miguel is stating is based
on something real. I'm not sure that it is. I still haven't
been told what area of France or Quebec or whatever part of
the world makes such a distinction. And does the uncommon
speech variety of some small area really dictate the overall
qualities of a language? If not, then I restate that French
doesn't have double-long vowels which is correct as we see
99% of the time, if not 100%.
= gLeN