Rosa/rowz@

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Apr 20, 2008, at 8:15 PM, Mark Mandel wrote:

>>> Mark Mandel wrote:
>>>> English doesn't have pure [o]; Italian or French often does.
>>>> English
>>>> "long vowels" are all diphthongs.
>
>> At 7:17 PM -0400 4/20/08, Michael Covarrubias wrote:
>>> Tell dat dere to a Minnesotan, den
>
> On Sun, Apr 20, 2008 at 7:34 PM, Laurence Horn
> <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>> Or a youper; one of the most noticeable traits of Upper Peninsula
>> (MI) English is precisely the "pure" long vowels, presumably because
>> of the influence from the Finnish substrate.
>
> OK, I stand dialectally corrected. MOST English dialects don't have
> pure [o] or [e].

but those facts don't bear directly on the choice of a phonemic
transcription.  if separate symbols are used for tense and lax vowels,
as in IPA, then an indication of an offglide on the tense vowels is
not needed in a phonemic transcription, even for dialects that have
offglides; it's a matter of phonetic detail.

arnold

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