schwa-raising - English = English?

[Rankin, Robert L]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Mark Jones writes:
> just a response to Bob Rankin's latest comments on the validity of his
judgement here as a non-native speaker of the variety in question. I
disagree that his being a speaker of another variety of English makes him
qualified to comment on my phonology.

With so many over-extended analogies and exaggerated claims in play, I
wonder how many readers remember exactly what the question is/was here.  I
had to go back and look through my deleted postings to be sure myself.

Bob Rankin wrote:
> "I was listening to the BBC newshour this noon and heard Lise Doucett...
say very clearly [kImyunikey$In] 'communication' with a very clear phonemic
/I/ (small cap I) as in the proper name Kim."

Cecil Ward wrote:
> "That's how Bob Rankin _heard_ his particular word, so that instance
passes my test, regardless of the precise phonetic realisation of Lise
Doucett's pronunciation."

Indeed.  If anyone would like to present evidence that

Mark Jones responds:
> "What he is doing is mapping the phonetic realisations of one accent to
the phonemes in his own."

No, what he is doing is identifying the sound phonologically in his own
dialect.  Ditto, Cecil Ward.

Mark continues: " ... that tells us nothing about standard southern British
English phonology."

Of course not, but no one has said that it did.  Although I have said that I
am not an Anglicist, I should add that I am indeed conversant with the
phonologies of a variety of British, North American and Australian English,
although not a specialist in them.  I frankly doubt very much that for Lise
Doucett an [I] would be normally identified as a phonological schwa if
semantically identifiable material around it were removed.  That would be an
experiment for someone who felt strongly that it was worth doing.  In this
instance I don't think it is.

Talk of Tamil dialects or Scottish buns is as irrelevant to this discussion
as most of this discussion is to historical linguistics.  I suggest that
interested persons take it to a phonetics or phonology list.  Any relevance
to sound change has gotten pretty distant at this point.

Bob Rankin