Thank you. There's a lot here for me to think about,
but I do want to answer now those parts that I can
answer now to get them out of the way.

--- In phoNet@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham"
<richard.wordingham@n...> wrote:

>
> Incidentally, whoever called [&] an 'undisputed allophone of /V/'

was

> being provocative. It is disputed for 'Received Pronunciation'

(RP), near =

>
> minimal pairs of /&/ v. /V/ being 'oppose' v. 'uphold' and 'gallop'
> v. 'hiccup'. My source for these pairs is 'Phonetics' by J. D.

O'Connor

> (Penguin Books, 1973). He admits that they are allophones in
> American English.

In normal fast speech I pronounce 'uphold' [&phold], 'gallop'
[gæl&p], but 'hiccup' I do pronounce as [hIkVp]. The only
explanation I can give is maybe there is secondary stress
on the /V/. The reason I called them undisputed is I could
think of no instance of unstressed /V/ or stressed /&/,
at least not until you gave me the hiccups!

> I'm curious about your low and low back vowels.

I hoped that someone would comment on that. The situation
seems strange to me also, and it may very well be that I've
misanalyzed my own phonological system. I'm going only
by ear and it would be nice to someday have my speech
analyzed by a professional with the equipment. On the
other hand, I think that what I speak is your average
N. American English, the form most people on T.V. and
radio use.

> How do you pronounce 'top', 'bomb', 'calm', 'talk',
> 'walk', 'horse' and 'hoarse'?

Like this [tap], [bam], [kalm], [tak], [wak], [hOrs] and [hOrs].

It's my perception that I have no [A] (if 'A' is the round, most
open, back vowel), and [O] seems to occur only before /r/ and /j/,
or in the diphthong oi if the /j/ is objected to. Does this seem
right? I once told my grandfather over the phone that my mother
was at the doctor [dakt&r]. He said "[dækt&r] what's a
[dækt&r]".
That was the first time I wondered if my speech wasn't merging
a back rounded vowel with the central low vowel. I also pronounce
'pen' [pIn], my sister Wendy's name [wIndi], but 'men' [mEn], and
'sent' [sEnt]. So there's some kind of odd mixture here. I've
also noticed that most people pronounce a simple /w/ where I have
/hw/, as in 'which', 'where', 'wheat' and have even been told
that I pronounce 'who' as [xu], which I wouldn't think would be
that odd in loud emotional speech, but apparently it stuck out
for some.

> When the going gets tough, I resort to Extended
> SAMPA, save that I use '&' for schwa, as text after an at sign (@)

gets

> mangled in the archives to prevent spammers gathering e-mail
> addresses. I can actually enter 'æ' from the keyboard -
> alt/numlock/0230. Extended SAMPA is defined at
> http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/sampa/ipasam-x.pdf .

Thanks for the address. I also enter æ with ALT 0230, but
Ossetian friends tell me that it doesn't show up correctly
in e-mail. I'm not sure why, it seems to work in my posts
to cybalist, although maybe it's not showing correctly in
people's individual deliveries.

David