On Wednesday, May 16, 2018 at 8:04:48 AM UTC+12, Peter T. Daniels wrote:
> On Tuesday, May 15, 2018 at 11:31:04 AM UTC-4, wugi wrote:
> > Op 15/05/2018 om 14:32 schreef Peter T. Daniels:
>
> > > All "long" vowels in English are diphthongized.
Except when they aren't, when you will rule that they are not "English".
I assume you'll use the same trick with West Indian Eng as you did with
Scottish.
> > >
> > > (Which is why Smith-Trager-Bloch can use /e/ for [E], /i/ for [I], and
> > > /u/ for [U], vs. /ey/ /iy/ /uw/ for the "long" equivalents.
> >
> > I wouldn't think in terms of diphthongs in the case of
> > a: in father, o: in law, @: in fir, fur, term.
>
> Obviously there's no @: (whether /@:/ or [@:]) in English.
Obviously??
Even Brit linguists describing RP admit /r/ postvocalically and delete it with
> a very low-level rule.
Example (I mean of one of these linguists)? You mean they have "underlying"
/r/ in park, word, horse, etc. and then get rid of it?
The realization of /@r/ in RP is not [@] (with
> or without r-coloring).
So what is it? You mean you'd rather write it as [ɜ]?
> > But yes for the remaining:
> > main, heel, fine, moan, rude,
> > and the diphthongs 'proper' of course...
> >
> > ... though there I've reported already a tendency to re-monophthongise some:
> > fire, admire, shower, power, sounding like
> > fâh, admâh, shâh, pâh in some's RP.
>
> RP is probably transitional. The gymnastics it has to go through to reach
> those surface forms from the underlying forms indicated in the spelling
> are unsustainable.
Hint: This may mean there is something wrong with the "underlying forms".
I have a feeling that the pronunciations you report
> there are archaic anyway -- perhaps dating no later than the 1940s,
> unless there are some reactionaries who try to preserve their grandfathers'
> speechways. (Not their grandmothers: a robust finding of sociolinguistics
> is that language change is driven by socially respected females.)
What would your "feeling" be based on?
Peter Roach, "British English: Received Pronunciation", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 34 (2): 239–245 (2004)
Includes transcription of the standard "North Wind and the Sun" passage -
female speaker, born 1953.
The stressed vowels of "north", "warm(ly)", "agreed", "first", "blew", "hard",
"more", "last", "immediately" and "two" are long, not diphthongic.