Zompist Bboard Again

I would classify my synchronic stressed vowels (this is assuming a conservative analysis) as:

• Lax: /ɘ ɛ ɜ ʌ ʊ/
• Tense: /i e a ɑ ɒ o u/
• Rhotic: /ɪr ɛr ər ɑr ʌr ɔr ur/
• Diphthongs: /ae əe ɑɔ ɔɪ/

The biggest criterion for 'tense' versus 'lax' is that tense vowels can exist in hiatus and morpheme-finally whereas lax vowels must be followed by a consonant aside from in certain interjections.

Note that the above classification does not align with traditional lexical sets. For instance, /ae əe/ both derive from traditional PRICE while /ɑr ʌr/ both derive from traditional START. Also note that the three-way contrast between /a ɑ ɒ/ is very marginal; the main evidence for this is that palm for me has neither /a/ (as in pom) nor /ɒl/ [ɒ(ː)o̯] (as in pall) but rather a vowel between the two.

Note that rhotic vowels in realization contrast with sequences of non-rhotic vowels followed by /r/, but this is always due to elision and thus is not considered in a conservative analysis.

Travis B. wrote:The biggest criterion for 'tense' versus 'lax' is that tense vowels can exist in hiatus and morpheme-finally whereas lax vowels must be followed by a consonant aside from in certain interjections.

That's a better criterion than mine. The only words I can think of that break this rule are the interjections YEAH, BAH, MEH, UH, and DUH.

Edit: And NEAH, and HUH.

jcb wrote: ↑Thu Jul 10, 2025 9:37 pm

Travis B. wrote:The biggest criterion for 'tense' versus 'lax' is that tense vowels can exist in hiatus and morpheme-finally whereas lax vowels must be followed by a consonant aside from in certain interjections.

That's a better criterion than mine. The only words I can think of that break this rule are the interjections YEAH, BAH, MEH, UH, and DUH.

How do you pronounce ma and pa (edit: and what about spa, ska, bra, and Ra)?

I don't consider my /a ɑ/ to be 'lax' as there are too many words which end in them which are not interjections.

Of words that violate this rule** for me, there are yeah, neah*, meh, uh, duh, and huh (which has a phonemic nasal vowel as well) off the top of my head.

* A negative counterpart to yeah, parallel to yah versus nah in my dialect.

** Excluding words like have which may violate this rule due to elisions; e.g. have can be /hɛ/ or simply /ɛ/ synchronically for me.

How do you pronounce ma and pa (edit: and what about spa, ska, bra, and Ra)?

They're all /A/. "bah" as in "bah humbug" has /A/, but "bah", as in the sound a sheep makes, has /{/, which is what I was thinking of.

Of words that violate this rule** for me, there are yeah, neah*, meh, uh, duh, and huh (which has a phonemic nasal vowel as well) off the top of my head.

I missed "neah" and "huh"! Nice catch!

Travis B. wrote: ↑Thu Jul 10, 2025 7:24 pm The biggest criterion for 'tense' versus 'lax' is that tense vowels can exist in hiatus and morpheme-finally whereas lax vowels must be followed by a consonant aside from in certain interjections.

That is increasingly breaking down in British English, where I more and more frequently hear people dropping their final glottal stops.

Richard W wrote: ↑Fri Jul 11, 2025 3:14 pm

Travis B. wrote: ↑Thu Jul 10, 2025 7:24 pm The biggest criterion for 'tense' versus 'lax' is that tense vowels can exist in hiatus and morpheme-finally whereas lax vowels must be followed by a consonant aside from in certain interjections.

That is increasingly breaking down in British English, where I more and more frequently hear people dropping their final glottal stops.

The outcome of intervocalic elision, including across word boundaries, where the preceding vowel is lax in my dialect is to form a long or overlong diphthong or, before /ər/, /əl/, or certain cases of final /ə/, a long or overlong monophthong. Note that in certain instances such as gonna /ˈɡʌntə/ [ɡ̥ʌ̃ː] this allows a lax vowel to occur finally in realization; however in a conservative analysis it is not phonemically final.

For AusEng it's very simple

Lax/short: /i ʊ e ɔ æ a/
Tense/long: /ɪː o̝ː eː ɵː æː aː/
Diphthongs: /əi əy ((əu)) æi ɑe ay (au) ɛo oɪ/
Unstressed: /ɜ/
Unstressed diphthongs: /əi ay/

/au/ is the GOAL vowel which is semi-phonemic, /əu/ is a parallel GOOSE + /l/ or hiatus, but it's merged with THOUGHT + /l/ so it's probably better to analyse as the latter.

I prefer to analyse any unstressed vowels other than happY and follOW as being secondarily stressed because they sorta are. Lax vowels are always followed by a consonant, long vowels and diphthongs often aren't. In fact hiatus is completely absent; there's intrusive /r/ and diphthongs get offglides. There's checking and shortening of lax vowels before glottalised obstruents and maybe a slight length difference in e.g. Bert/bird.

Darren wrote: ↑Fri Jul 11, 2025 4:56 pm For AusEng it's very simple

Lax/short: /i ʊ e ɔ æ a/
Tense/long: /ɪː o̝ː eː ɵː æː aː/
Diphthongs: /əi əy ((əu)) æi ɑe ay (au) ɛo oɪ/
Unstressed: /ɜ/
Unstressed diphthongs: /əi ay/

/au/ is the GOAL vowel which is semi-phonemic, /əu/ is a parallel GOOSE + /l/ or hiatus, but it's merged with THOUGHT + /l/ so it's probably better to analyse as the latter.

I prefer to analyse any unstressed vowels other than happY and follOW as being secondarily stressed because they sorta are. Lax vowels are always followed by a consonant, long vowels and diphthongs often aren't. In fact hiatus is completely absent; there's intrusive /r/ and diphthongs get offglides. There's checking and shortening of lax vowels before glottalised obstruents and maybe a slight length difference in e.g. Bert/bird.

What is /ɛo/ equivalent to in SSBE and in GA?

Edit: is it MOUTH?

If I didn't know that NAE and AusE were crossintelligible I'd think that they were two entirely separate languages if I just saw the vowel phonemes laid out in this thread.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Fri Jul 11, 2025 8:09 pm What is /ɛo/ equivalent to in SSBE and in GA?

Edit: is it MOUTH?

Yep, MOUTH is /æo̯/ ~ /ɛo̯/

Travis B. wrote: ↑Fri Jul 11, 2025 8:21 pm If I didn't know that NAE and AusE were crossintelligible I'd think that they were two entirely separate languages if I just saw the vowel phonemes laid out in this thread.

Indeed. But I've never struggled to understand even the strongest of American accents. Scottish people on the other hand are sometimes incomprehensible.

Darren wrote: ↑Fri Jul 11, 2025 11:54 pm

Travis B. wrote: ↑Fri Jul 11, 2025 8:21 pm If I didn't know that NAE and AusE were crossintelligible I'd think that they were two entirely separate languages if I just saw the vowel phonemes laid out in this thread.

Indeed. But I've never struggled to understand even the strongest of American accents. Scottish people on the other hand are sometimes incomprehensible.

Likewise, I've never had a problem with AusE, whereas I find ScotE to be difficult at times... and that's ignoring Scots proper, which I can generally understand in writing but find unintelligible as actually spoken.

Richard W wrote: ↑Fri Jul 11, 2025 3:14 pm

Travis B. wrote: ↑Thu Jul 10, 2025 7:24 pm The biggest criterion for 'tense' versus 'lax' is that tense vowels can exist in hiatus and morpheme-finally whereas lax vowels must be followed by a consonant aside from in certain interjections.

That is increasingly breaking down in British English, where I more and more frequently hear people dropping their final glottal stops.

How do you think people who do this maintain a distinction between e.g. sought and saw? (Or don't they?) My feeling is that it might involve a vowel length distinction (with sought retaining some clipping from the vanished /t/) and that there might also be some creaky voice left from the glottal stop.

anteallach wrote: ↑Mon Jul 14, 2025 5:40 am

Richard W wrote: ↑Fri Jul 11, 2025 3:14 pm

Travis B. wrote: ↑Thu Jul 10, 2025 7:24 pm The biggest criterion for 'tense' versus 'lax' is that tense vowels can exist in hiatus and morpheme-finally whereas lax vowels must be followed by a consonant aside from in certain interjections.

That is increasingly breaking down in British English, where I more and more frequently hear people dropping their final glottal stops.

How do you think people who do this maintain a distinction between e.g. sought and saw? (Or don't they?) My feeling is that it might involve a vowel length distinction (with sought retaining some clipping from the vanished /t/) and that there might also be some creaky voice left from the glottal stop.

I don't speak EngE, but I should note that elided fortis obstruents leave cheshirized short vowels (and long vowels, in cases where elision of a non-fortis consonant in the same position would leave an overlong vowel) in their absence in my native NAE dialect. For instance sort of is commonly realized with a short vowel as [ˈsɔʁˤə(ː)] (contrast with sorry [ˈsɔːʁˤi(ː)]).

Travis B. wrote: ↑Mon Jul 14, 2025 2:59 pm cheshirized short vowels

I just want to note how much I like that phrase.

Raphael wrote: ↑Mon Jul 14, 2025 3:31 pm

Travis B. wrote: ↑Mon Jul 14, 2025 2:59 pm cheshirized short vowels

I just want to note how much I like that phrase.

You can thank Matisoff for the word cheshirization.

I don't imagine this would have any counterpart in BrE, but I had to think about it to realize sought and saw have the same vowel - for me they're [sɔə̯t] and [sɔː]

jcb wrote: ↑Thu Jul 10, 2025 9:37 pm

Travis B. wrote:The biggest criterion for 'tense' versus 'lax' is that tense vowels can exist in hiatus and morpheme-finally whereas lax vowels must be followed by a consonant aside from in certain interjections.

That's a better criterion than mine. The only words I can think of that break this rule are the interjections YEAH, BAH, MEH, UH, and DUH.

Edit: And NEAH, and HUH.

bruh

Nortaneous wrote: ↑Tue Jul 15, 2025 11:46 am I don't imagine this would have any counterpart in BrE, but I had to think about it to realize sought and saw have the same vowel - for me they're [sɔə̯t] and [sɔː]

I have [sɒʔ(t)] and [sɒ(ː)] for these, but in a conservative analysis they have the same synchronic vowel phoneme, /ɒ/ (i.e. THOUGHT).

Nortaneous wrote: ↑Tue Jul 15, 2025 11:46 am

jcb wrote: ↑Thu Jul 10, 2025 9:37 pm

Travis B. wrote:The biggest criterion for 'tense' versus 'lax' is that tense vowels can exist in hiatus and morpheme-finally whereas lax vowels must be followed by a consonant aside from in certain interjections.

That's a better criterion than mine. The only words I can think of that break this rule are the interjections YEAH, BAH, MEH, UH, and DUH.

Edit: And NEAH, and HUH.

bruh

That's not a word for me.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Tue Jul 15, 2025 1:47 pm

Nortaneous wrote: ↑Tue Jul 15, 2025 11:46 am I don't imagine this would have any counterpart in BrE, but I had to think about it to realize sought and saw have the same vowel - for me they're [sɔə̯t] and [sɔː]

I have [sɒʔ(t)] and [sɒ(ː)] for these, but in a conservative analysis they have the same synchronic vowel phoneme, /ɒ/ (i.e. THOUGHT).

For me they have the same vowel phoneme, but I read the words out mentally before I started thinking about phonemes.

Nortaneous wrote: ↑Wed Jul 16, 2025 5:52 pm

Travis B. wrote: ↑Tue Jul 15, 2025 1:47 pm

Nortaneous wrote: ↑Tue Jul 15, 2025 11:46 am I don't imagine this would have any counterpart in BrE, but I had to think about it to realize sought and saw have the same vowel - for me they're [sɔə̯t] and [sɔː]

I have [sɒʔ(t)] and [sɒ(ː)] for these, but in a conservative analysis they have the same synchronic vowel phoneme, /ɒ/ (i.e. THOUGHT).

For me they have the same vowel phoneme, but I read the words out mentally before I started thinking about phonemes.

So what is the rule in your dialect? THOUGHT is [ɔə̯] before fortis obstruents (in general or only in the coda?) and [ɔː] elsewhere?

anteallach wrote: ↑Mon Jul 14, 2025 5:40 am

Richard W wrote: ↑Fri Jul 11, 2025 3:14 pm

Travis B. wrote: ↑Thu Jul 10, 2025 7:24 pm The biggest criterion for 'tense' versus 'lax' is that tense vowels can exist in hiatus and morpheme-finally whereas lax vowels must be followed by a consonant aside from in certain interjections.

That is increasingly breaking down in British English, where I more and more frequently hear people dropping their final glottal stops.

How do you think people who do this maintain a distinction between e.g. sought and saw? (Or don't they?) My feeling is that it might involve a vowel length distinction (with sought retaining some clipping from the vanished /t/) and that there might also be some creaky voice left from the glottal stop.

I think they're not very likely to use sought - sort v. saw is likely to be a better test case. I'm not sure I've noticed the dropping after long vowels. It may be the novel phonology that triggers my attention.