On Tue, 19 Jan 2010 13:53:08 -0500, Mark J. Reed wrote:
>On Tue, Jan 19, 2010 at 1:38 PM, Roger Mills <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> In the analysis of most languages, it makes most sense to consider /a/
either a central vowel [-Cons +Voc -hi -fr -ba +lo] (esp. if there is
another higher central V like /@/) or else back unrounded [...-hi -fr +ba
+lo -rnd] (if there is no other central V). I've seen Engl. /a/ described
both ways. An advantage to calling /a/ central [-fr -ba] is that you don't
then have to specify [rnd]
>
>If it's a back unrounded vowel, then /a/ would seem to be a poor
>choice of symbol when /ɑ/ is available.  :)

Convenience of (phonemic) transcription…

> Does any language have a
>three-way contrast among /æ/, /a/, /ɑ/?  I know my variety of English
>doesn't, but then it doesn't have /ɔ/ or /ɒ/ either, so it's not
>necessarily the best exemplar.  John mentioned Danish?

I don't seem to have the paper I got that out of at hand, sorry (but at any
rate, at least one of the first two was an allophone of something else).
OTOH if central values of /a/ are permitted, I recall reading of an English
dialect (south~midwest US) that has all three contrasting — /æ/ in
TRAP/BATH, /ä/ in START, /ɑ/ in LOT/CALM/THOUGHT.

In case of such a situation I suspect /ɑ/ could be analyzable as [+round]?
Or perhaps we do need both [±front] and [±back] anyway for explaining /ɛ ɜ
ʌ/ as well.

As an aside, I never liked IPA's insistence that [æ] is not fully open. I've
seen competing vowel diagrams that place it at the corner with [a] rather as
near-front…


>If you regard the distinction as one of height, with both as front
>vowels and no tense/lax distinction (which I understand is somewhat
>controversial), then you need a third binary feature to capture that
>parameter (since the IPA has seven different vowel heights in its
>chart).   Maybe +/- hi, +/- lo, and +/- near?

/i a/ would presumably be [-near] and /ɪ æ/ [+near], but which of /e/ and
/ɛ/ would be which?

My hunch as a purely amateur linguist is that there is no *phonemic* sense
of "open-mid" — on other hand there are languages where /ɛ/ occupies the
[+lo +front] slot (German, Vietnamese), on the other it may be [-lo -hi]
("[mid]") and [-tense] or [-ATR] (English, French, half of Africa).

John Vertical