[Lexicog] new nosey word

[Ron Moe]

Peter Kirk wrote: "For some speakers "interred" vs. "entered" might be the minimal pair you 
are looking for, with different stress. For me, the second syllables of 
these words differ only in length and stress."

Interesting. In my dialect (my Mom was from Los Angeles) "interred" is [Int'Rd] and "entered" is ['Entrd] (I is near-close as in 'bit', and E is open-mid as in 'bet'). So it isn't a minimal pair contrasting C*R and CR. Someone else mentioned that some phonologists posit an underlying * that accounts for the syllabic. My native speaker intuition says there is no underlying vowel. But it is interesting that I perceive a vowel in 'cull' but not in 'cur'. So I will not be dogmatic on the point. Phonologists also suggest that 'sing' is underlyingly /siNg/ (velar nasal followed by 'g'). I don't think so. We have 'finger' [fINgR] and 'singer' [sINR]. I appreciate lexical phonology, but positing a level one rule that deletes something that never shows up on the surface seems a bit far fetched. But maybe I forget all the reasons for the rule.

I still want to know what people have done with this sort of problem in their dictionaries. Do you use a pronunciation guide that is close to phonemic? Or do you use a pronunciation guide that is closer to IPA? What do you do when orthographic, phonemic, and phonetic are mismatched:

burnable /b*rn*b*l(?)/ ['bRn*bL] adj....

interesting /'In.tR.Es.tIN/ ['In.tR.Es.tIN, 'In.tr*s.tIN, 'I.nR.Es.tIN] adj....

Or do you duck the problem and leave it for the phonology statement?  :)

Ron Moe

-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Kirk [mailto:peterkirk at qaya.org]
Sent: Monday, April 12, 2004 3:50 PM
To: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Lexicog] new nosey word


On 12/04/2004 14:05, Ron Moe wrote:

> In my dialect of English it is impossible for there to be a vowel between
> the 't' 'l' and 'd' in 'bottled' since the tip of the tongue never leaves
> the roof of the mouth. Merriam-Webster is either wrong or describing some
> other dialect of English. By contrast the tip of the tongue does drop
> between the 'l' and the 'd' in 'clued'. I've noticed numerous times that
> so-called phonetic transcriptions put a schwa before a syllabic 'l' 'r' or
> nasal. But there is a distinct difference between the sequence of 'k' and
> 'l' in 'cull' and 'clue'. The first is [k*l] and the second [klu] (where *
> is schwa). Similarly there is no difference in pronunciation between 
> 'burr'
> (thorny seed) and 'brrr' (idiophone for 'cold'). Both are [bR] (where 
> R is a
> syllabic r). My native speaker intuition tells me there is no vowel in 
> these
> words. English spelling is a poor guide to phonetics. If I was to 
> write all
> these words phonemically, I would spell them /batld, klud, k*l, klu, br,
> br/. Similarly 'button' is /b*tn/, 'burned' is /brnd/ with a syllabic 'r',
> 'bull' is /bl/ (notice the contrast with 'cull' /k*l/), 'hackle' is /hAkl/
> (where A is front, near-open). Unfortunately I have no minimal pairs to
> prove a phonemic contrast between C*S and CS (where S is a syllabic).


Interesting to see the subtle difference between your dialect and mine. 
In mine there is I think always a real vowel in stressed syllables, 
except e.g. for "brrr"; syllabic L, N etc are always unstressed. Also 
syllabic R is for me a phonetic vowel.

For some speakers "interred" vs. "entered" might be the minimal pair you 
are looking for, with different stress. For me, the second syllables of 
these words differ only in length and stress.

An extreme example of syllabic consonants is the alleged British dialect 
pronunciation of "Birmingham" as something like [brmŋm], monosyllabic 
with a syllabic R (fourth letter is eng).


-- 
Peter Kirk
peter at qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk at qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/



 
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