ah/ awe

[Alice Faber]

Tom Zurinskas wrote:
>> From: Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
>>>
>> >Words /light, sight, might/ have one phthong as I hear them in m-w.com.
>> >
>> Um, no.  I just checked and they're all definitely diphthongs (or
>> two-phthongs if you insist), with a vowel nucleus beginning with /a/
>> and ending with /i/.  For them to be monophthongs, they'd be
>> homonymous with "lot", "sot", and "mott" as you've indicated you
>> pronounce the latter set of words ("ah", not "awe").  They are indeed
>> pronounced that way in some areas of the southern U.S., but not by
>> the m-w.com sot...er, site.
>
> Sorry.  Have to disagree.  I really hear no ah-ee transition in those
> words.
>    Can't even fascinate that I hear "ah" in there at all.  It's just one
> solid sound all the way through.  Now "fire" and "file" have transition
> issue and could be two syllables "fie'er" and "fie'ool" (ool as in wool).
> But "fight" has a long i that to me is a solid sound all the way through as
> I hear it in m-w.com, and the way I say it as well.

If you elongate the vowel in BET, you get a longer version of the same
word. If you elongate the vowel in BITE, you will (a) distort the word
(b) feel your tongue moving from the position, roughly, in HOT to the
position in BIT (or even BEET). This doesn't mean that BITE is a two
syllable word; it isn't. But its vowel sound is complex.

Get that intro book on linguistics and language that was recommended
earlier in this thread, and read it.

--
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Alice Faber
faber at haskins.yale.edu
Haskins Laboratories                                  tel: (203)
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