comparatives of front and back

Matthew Gordon GordonMJ at MISSOURI.EDU
Fri Jun 21 19:04:07 UTC 2002


When describing the relative positions of vowels, I commonly use
"fronter" and "backer" as comparatives (e.g., /i/ is fronter than /I/).
Students often react to this usage as if I'm being cute. A non-linguist
copyeditor has queried these words. I thought this usage was common in
phonetics.  Can anyone confirm that ?



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