"fournet.arnaud" <fournet.arnaud@...> ----- Original Message -----
From: "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@... net>
>Somebody previously mentioned
>that some idiolects have a contrast between
>he can /kan/ and tin-can /keän/
>Are these idiolects the same ones which
>have central neutral /°/ or /&/
>in home or house /h&ws/ ?
>This is interesting from the point of view of general phonology,
>It seems that /°/ is the most open central vowel possible,
>and /eä/ although not central
>plays the role of a central vowel.
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"he can" distinguished from "tin can" I think only
applies to the unstressed (or moderately stressed) version of "he can", which is /hi kVn/ or better /hi k&n/, not really /hi kan/, I think. When "he can" is fully stressed, I think most people have the same vowel as in "tin can" which you write as /keän/ (and really it's more often "can't" that is stressed, which can often be a very pronounced diphthong /kIEnt/ even). But I don't understand what you mean about it playing the role of a central vowel. The central vowel of unstressed "he can" is not its essential sound, it's merely an unstressed allophone of a stressed front vowel.
I think that the /keän/ pronunciation is pretty general (with varieties /kE:n/ and /kI&n/ among others), whether you pronounce "home" as /h&wm/ or /howm/, or whether you pronounce "house" as /hVws/ or /haws/ (or /hows/ or /hæws/). But the pronunciation as /kæn/, or even /kan/ with a front, non-central /a/, is not non-existent, just rarer
(/kan/ with front /a/ considerably rarer) (and these latter two probably much more common in parts of Canada than they are in the U.S.). I'm not sure what you are representing as /*/("*" representing the circle for which I don't know the ASCII code) -- do you mean IPA upside-down "a"? I think this sound is very similar to English /V/ (IPA upside-down "v"), which in RP is probably actually the IPA upside-down "a" rather than a true /V/.
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Upon further consideration I do remember that some people re-stress unstressed "he can" as /hi kVn/ or /hi k*n/ where /*/ represents IPA upside-down "a", which is what I guessed you meant by your little circle. But I don't think it's a full /a/, i.e. it's not as open as true /a/, which betrays this curious phoneme's origin as a restressed version of the unstressed correspondent of /æ/ (including its allophone /Ea/ or /E&/ or /E:/, etc., before nasals), i.e. /&/ or at
least /V/.
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Andrew