Date: Wed, 28 Jan 1998 20:45:43 -0500

From: Alan Baragona baragonasa[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]VAX.VMI.EDU

Subject: Re: Phonetic transcription--help



I think, as has been suggested, that the [a] now on the Pyles/Algeo flyleaf

(the 1989 revision of the IPA) is pretty much this sound between [ae] and

script-a, but I kind of like Edwin Duncan's use of a superscript schwa.

It's interesting to a none linguist to find such matters still in flux, and

I know my students are going to love reading these posts, especially the

picture of Mary with her fingers in her mouth. Thanks. This has been very

interesting.



Alan B.



At 05:51 PM 1/28/98 CST, Breland, Mary wrote:

The vowel Alan Baragona described sounds to me like one I have in my

phonological system as a result of growing up in Mississippi. In my

family, we referred to it as "flat-I" and used it as a shibboleth to

distinguish between TV characters who were "real Southerners" and those who

were "fake ." When I was learning IPA transcription (using a book by Pyles

and Algeo) I was quite frustrated by the absence of a symbol to represent

the sound I produced. I have both the diphthong [ai] and "flat-I" in my

speech. The diphthong occurs before voiceless consonants in words such as

"light" [lait], "wife" [waif], "rice" [rais], etc.; flat-I occurs before

voiced consonants and in open syllables "lied," "hive," "rise," etc. I

couldn't figure out a way to represent both sounds in transcribing my own

speech. The closest representation I could come up with was [a:] to

represent a lengthened monophthong, but I was not happy with it because it

seemed to indicate something lower and farther back than what I believed I

produced. I spent a good bit of time with my fingers in my mouth trying to

find out what was going on in there. I decided, finally, that we had come

up with the name "flat-I" because the tongue is held still and "flat,"

almost level or straight rather than raised or lowered very much like the

mid-central lax vowel "uh" represented by a schwa but the mouth is more open

than for "uh. " But there's more to it than tongue position; the lips are

involved, also. The corners of the mouth, particularly the lower lip, are

tensed and pulled out to the sides and slightly up as for [ae] and [i]. I

finally settled on using an "upside-down a" to represent an open mid-central

spread vowel.