[Lingtyp] contrast between [ɪ] and [e]

[Christian Lehmann]

Here is a trivial little problem for the phoneticians and phonologists:

IPA 
(https://www.internationalphoneticalphabet.org/ipa-sounds/ipa-chart-with-sounds/#ipachartstart) 
says that [ɪ] and [e] contrast in two features, height and 
frontness/backness.

Being a speaker of a language whose phonetic transcription has involved 
both of the above symbols for generations of phoneticians, and the 
symbols represent different phonemes, I have always taken this for 
granted. However, this pair of phones does not constitute clean minimal 
pairs in German because [e] is long, [ɪ] is short.

Describing now the Cabecar phonetics and phonology, there is a front 
mid-high (IPA says 'near-close' or 'close-mid') vowel phoneme which 
contrasts with both /i/ and /ɛ/, and there is no length. Chibchanist 
tradition transcribes it by [ɪ]. (There is an analogous configuration 
for /u/, /ʊ/ and /ɔ/.) I have two innocent questions here:

 1. Do [ɪ] and [e] actually sound differently? If I click them on the
    IPA webpage indicated, they sound identical to my ears. Same if I
    stretch the [ɪ] in my own pronunciation of /bitte/.
 2. Even supposing that these are two different phones, should the
    (Cabecar) phoneme covering them not be taken to be /e/, rather than
    /ɪ/ (and likewise for /o/ rather than /ʊ/)?

My (less innocent) suspicion is (but please correct me) that 
transcribing German words like /bitte/ with [ɪ] instead of the [e] of 
/bete/ is due to a phonological or even orthographic bias.

Curiously, if you ask Google "Is there a phonological contrast between 
[ɪ] and [e]?", its KI cheats you, adducing English examples spelled with 
<e> which represents an [ɛ].
-- 

Prof. em. Dr. Christian Lehmann
Rudolfstr. 4
99092 Erfurt
Deutschland

Tel.: 	+49/361/2113417
E-Post: 	christianw_lehmann at arcor.de
Web: 	https://www.christianlehmann.eu
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