"Monday"

[Laurence Horn]

On Jul 29, 2012, at 10:54 AM, W Brewer wrote:

> Laurence Horn wrote: <<< I'd have used a barred-i if I knew the ascii for
> it, but for me, unstressed barred-i and unstressed schwa are
> basically indistinguishable.>>>
> WB: Barred-eye should be an allophone of schwa before [n]. Alveolar raising.
>
But in other environments they supposedly contrast.  In Gleason's old _Intro to Descriptive Linguistics_ that I was weaned on in the early 60s, there was a purported minimal pair, "Rosa's" (with schwa) vs. "roses" (with barred-i).  They always sounded like homophones to me, probably because they're both totally unstressed, although I certainly contrast them in the Bolinger way:  "No, I said "ros-uhz", not "rose-izz".  (Or George-uhz vs. Georg-izz, for "Georgia's" vs. "George's", which did come up when I was hanging out with both G. Lakoff and G. Green; if you cited a sentence from "Georg{e/ia}'s paper", I'd have had to ask whether you meant Georgia or George.)  For me, these are just spelling pronunciations.

LH

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org