Zompist Bboard Again

I wonder if a language could develop a length contrast this way. You could have a sound change like:

• ʊ > ʌ̆ > ɑ̆

And this new ɑ̆ would remain durationally distinct from the original open back vowel ɑ.

Somehow I didn't notice that mistake when I read it. Something else I just realised. The Wells study I mentioned in the original post had this statement about the vowel /ʌ/: The only vowel noticeably out of place is /ʌ/, which in spite of its half-open to open articulatory position is nearest in ave...

I've done some Googling and found a relevant study . I'll quote the interesting bits here. The introduction: F1 correlates with vowel height: the higher the vowel, the lower the F1. A number of studies have found a positive correlation between F1 and duration in vowels in various languages, such as ...

How do you pronounce beat, bean, bead ? I'm interested in the lengths of the vowels, particularly in the word bean . Is bean durationally closer to beat or bead for you? As a non-native speaker I have short vowels in beat [ˈbit] & bean [ˈbin] but a long vowel in bead [ˈbiːd]. In RP bean would be...

In Wells's A study of the formants of the pure vowels of British English in the chapter on duration under the heading Relationship between duration and tongue height there is the statement: More interesting is the finding ... that the open vowels studied are regularly of greater duration than close ...