Talk:Phonological history of English high front vowels
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[edit] Moved from Talk:Weak vowel merger
[edit] Hundred, pretended, cases
Is this what's happening to my "hundred", "pretended", "cases", etc.? Jimp 4Oct05
- Hard to say without knowing more about you and your accent. Where are you from? --Angr/tɔk tə mi 07:18, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
- Could be, but this is quite complicated. Accents which have two weak vowels don't all have the same distribution of them. I don't rhyme abbot /ˈabət/ and rabbit /ˈrabɪt/, so I wouldn't say I have this merger. However, I do have /ə/ in the last syllables of all the words you mention (although I do have a weak /ɪ/ in the first syllable of pretended /prɪˈtɛndəd/). I'm from northern England; RP is different, and has /ɪ/ in those plural and past participle endings, though not in hundred, according to the OED.--JHJ 16:27, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
I'm from Sydney, Australia. I do rhyme abbot and rabit and my pretended is /prətendəd/. Jimp 19Dec05
[edit] Article content
I don't know what the article means by "While there are some dialects that have a variable distinction, there are very few dialects that maintain a complete distinction."--JHJ 16:27, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Moved from Talk:Kit-bit split
[edit] New Zealand English
I've changed the last two paragraphs:
- Realization of the vowel in bit as [ə] is also found in New Zealand English. Unlike in South African English, that phoneme is always realized as [ə] and so there is no split and kit and bit rhyme in New Zealand English as /kət/ and /bət/. Some Australians commonly claim that New Zealanders say fush and chups for fish and chips, but that is an exaggeration, because the pronunciation for New Zealanders is actually like [fəʃ ən tʃəps] (with a stressed schwa sound), not *[fʌʃ ən tʃʌps].
- New Zealanders conversely often claim that Australians pronounce fish and chips as feesh and cheeps, because /i/ is the closest equivalent New Zealanders have to the Australian /ɪ/. The Australian /ɪ/ is slightly more raised than the /ɪ/ in other accents.
into one much shorter one:
- Centralized realizations of the vowel in bit is also found in New Zealand English. Unlike in South African English, this does not involve a phonemic or allophonic split.
New Zealand English does not have a kit-bit split, so a discussion of what happens in New Zealand English isn't really relevant. With those two paragraphs, the article is one-third about the kit-bit split and two-thirds about some different phenomenon that only involves the same phoneme and a similar realisation of it. It also seems a bit odd having so much discussion about perceptions of Australians' and New Zealanders' language use (and what they do) in an article about a phenomenon limited to South African English.
—Felix the Cassowary (ɑe hɪː jɐ) 03:57, 19 December 2005 (UTC)
- Hear! Hear! Jimp 03:55, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
- ... I've thus removed the following.
-
- In New Zealand English this extends to stressed /ɪ/s as well, so that dinner is pronounced /dənə/.
- This is not a vowel split/merger but a vowel shift. Jimp 13Jan06
[edit] Trigger for Lennon-Lenin
What is the trigger condition for the Lennon-Lenin merger? Linguofreak 23:37, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
- I'm not sure what you're asking. In dialects with the weak vowel merger (which is what it's really called, "Lennon-Lenin" is just an example of it), unstressed [ɪ] and [ə] are merged to [ə]. The "classic" example is roses vs. Rosa's: in accents without the merger, the two words are different, [rozɪz] vs. [rozəz], while in accents with the merger, the two words are homophonous as [rozəz]. Mergers aren't usually described as having "triggers" the way phonological rules are. Angr/talk 23:43, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
- Yes, it's really called the weak vowel merger so why did we end up with that title? Why? Because of User:DecGon a suspected sockpuppet. I've reverted him. Jimp 16:04, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
- No, in my dialect "roses" as "Rosa's" are seperate ("roses" with /I/ "Rosa's" with /@/), but Lennon and Lenin are the same (both with /I/). So maybe we're actually talking two different phenomena here... Mine is a conditional phenomenon that I can't find the condition for. Random schwa's become /I/ with no (apparent) rhyme or reason, but some stubbornly remain schwa's (as in "Rosa's"), and every once in a while /I/ becomes schwa (as in the third i in "invincible", although the i's that become schwa's usually can be pronounced as either without sounding wierd). (BTW, for geographic reference, I speak American English of the Colorado variety.) Linguofreak 05:51, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
- Yes, it's really called the weak vowel merger so why did we end up with that title? Why? Because of User:DecGon a suspected sockpuppet. I've reverted him. Jimp 16:04, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
