Six-vowel system for English

[Travis B.]

This discussion reminds me of people on Unilang discussing forcing English into a six-vowel system (/i e a ə o u/) for some reason.

[Ryusenshi]

I reckon /i e a ə o u/ are for KIT DRESS TRAP STRUT LOT FOOT, and other vowels are treated as vowel + semivowel? Probably /ij ej aj oj aw ow uw/ for FLEECE FACE PRICE CHOICE MOUTH GOAT GOOSE, and I guess /ah oh/ for PALM, THOUGHT?

[Kuchigakatai]

I reckon /i e a ə o u/ are for KIT DRESS TRAP STRUT LOT FOOT, and other vowels are treated as vowel + semivowel? Probably /ij ej aj oj aw ow uw/ for FLEECE FACE PRICE CHOICE MOUTH GOAT GOOSE, and I guess /ah oh/ for PALM, THOUGHT?

You don't even need /ah oh/ if you speak a dialect where LOT, PALM and THOUGHT are merged into one vowel, due to co-occurring father-bother and cot-caught mergers, as in Canada and much of the western and central US.

[Ryusenshi]

You don't even need /ah oh/ if you speak a dialect where LOT, PALM and THOUGHT are merged into one vowel, due to co-occurring father-bother and cot-caught mergers, as in Canada and much of the western and central US.

True. But then how do you note the difference between START and NORTH?

[Kuchigakatai]

True. But then how do you note the difference between START and NORTH?

Most everyone has the horse-hoarse merger, so perhaps as /or/ (START) vs. /owr/ (NORTH).

[Nortaneous]

True. But then how do you note the difference between START and NORTH?

Most everyone has the horse-hoarse merger, so perhaps as /or/ (START) vs. /owr/ (NORTH).

Do many people have the cot-caught and horse-hoarse mergers but not the poor-pour one? If not, /or/ vs. /ur/ seems like the best option. (For me, the onsets of START and NORTH are something like [ɔ̜] and [o̝]. I once met an old guy from Minnesota (I think) with an actual [a] for the onset of START - it was very salient.)

[zyxw59]

Why not /ar/ START vs /or/ NORTH? Or is /ar/ used for one of MARRY MARY MERRY (which are all the same to me)?

[Ryusenshi]

Why not /ar/ START vs /or/ NORTH? Or is /ar/ used for one of MARRY MARY MERRY (which are all the same to me)?

Well, in this scheme /a/ is TRAP, i.e. [æ], and /o/ is PALM/LOT/THOUGHT, i.e. [ɑ]: we probably want START to have the same symbol as PALM, as it's the same vowel (or at least very similar). Though it's starting to get a bit far-fetched.

[Imralu]

... /o/ is PALM/LOT/THOUGHT ...

I have immediate problems with this. Those are three different vowels for me.

[KathTheDragon]

This whole venture is very focussed on very specific dialects. It breaks down in much of England, for instance, where positing underlying /r/ for what have become long monophthongs is unjustified.

[Travis B.]

True. But then how do you note the difference between START and NORTH?

Most everyone has the horse-hoarse merger, so perhaps as /or/ (START) vs. /owr/ (NORTH).

Do many people have the cot-caught and horse-hoarse mergers but not the poor-pour one? If not, /or/ vs. /ur/ seems like the best option. (For me, the onsets of START and NORTH are something like [ɔ̜] and [o̝]. I once met an old guy from Minnesota (I think) with an actual [a] for the onset of START - it was very salient.)

I have [ɑʁˤ ɔʁˤ uʁˤ] for START, NORTH/FORCE, and POOR (I won't say CURE, because /jur/ does not pattern with /ur/ for me). Actually saying [aʁˤ] for START comes off to me like trying to pronounce /ær/ without a Mary-merry-marry merger.

[Ryusenshi]

Well, this scheme isn't hard to use for an English-type accent:

• /a/ TRAP
• /e/ DRESS
• /ə/ STRUT/commA
• /i/ KIT
• /o/ LOT
• /u/ FOOT
• /aj/ PRICE
• /ej/ FACE
• /ij/ FLEECE
• /oj/ CHOICE
• /aw/ MOUTH
• /ow/ GOAT
• /uw/ GOOSE
• /ah/ PALM/START
• /eh/ SQUARE
• /əh/ NURSE
• /ih/ NEAR
• /oh/ THOUGHT/NORTH/FORCE
• /uh/ CURE

Of course it doesn't account for some Australian specificities, like the bad/lad split, or the fact that your FACE diphthong begins closer to your TRAP than your DRESS, and PRICE begins closer to STRUT or even LOT.

For the Western US and Canada (rhotic + low-back merger) we don't really need the /-h/ vowels... but then we run into problems with some of the pre-R vowels.

Of course this is all rather contrived anyway. We can try to force English into a six-vowel system, but why would we want to?

[Rounin Ryuuji]

My (American, close to General American) can fit into a six vowel system:

/i/, usually [ɪ], but terminally often [i]; /ij~iː/ is usually [i(ː)j]; may be [ɨ ə] when unstressed.
/e/, usually [ɛ], but [e] in /ei/, [ej]; may be [ɨ ə] when unstressed.
/a/, usually [æ], but [ɑː] before [ɹ]. and [a] in the dipthongs /ai au/, usually [aj aw]; usually [ə] when unstressed.
/o/, usually [ɒ], but [ɔː] before [ɹ], [ɔ] in /oi/, [ɔj], and [o] in /ou/, [ow]; may be [ɵ ə] when unstressed.
/u/, usually [ʊ], but /uː/ is [ʊw~uw]; may be [ə] when unstressed.
/ʌ/, usually [ʌ] when stressed, but [ə] when unstressed.

It isn't a terrible explanation, but I tend, for historical and psychological reasons, not to conceive of it that way.

[Ryusenshi]

We discuss the possibility of analysing the vowel system of English as having six vowels, plus combinations. [Slip from Pronunciations you had to unlearn.]

[alice]

Of course you have to clarify what you mean by "English".

[KathTheDragon]

Well, this scheme isn't hard to use for an English-type accent:

• /a/ TRAP
• /e/ DRESS
• /ə/ STRUT/commA
• /i/ KIT
• /o/ LOT
• /u/ FOOT
• /aj/ PRICE
• /ej/ FACE
• /ij/ FLEECE
• /oj/ CHOICE
• /aw/ MOUTH
• /ow/ GOAT
• /uw/ GOOSE
• /ah/ PALM/START
• /eh/ SQUARE
• /əh/ NURSE
• /ih/ NEAR
• /oh/ THOUGHT/NORTH/FORCE
• /uh/ CURE

I'm honestly rather suspicious of combining the STRUT and commA vowels. I don't perceive a specific similarity between them, and when I secondarily stress commA I get NURSE.

[Pabappa]

Im not convinced by any system that relies on positing an underlying silent /h/ offglide, a phoneme that is never pronounced and only comes to be spelled with an H because the proper /h/ sound cannot be pronounced in the coda. It's entirely arbitrary.

You can get it down to maybe eight vowels without using the H's, but that small difference really takes all the acheivement away, since eight vowels means you still have to type in weird symbols like with the traditional analysis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_p ... wel_system has details of another system, which i think is what you guys are pulling from .... it says it has seven, but it seems to actually have six. This one looks a lot more solid, although I still find it unconvincing, since for example in American English the six vowels they list as long are barely any longer (in tempo) than the short ones, and slow vowel tempo is primarily associated with a voiced coda (e.g. write vs ride). I would prefer to say that American English has no vowel length contrast at all, and therefore the six-vowel analysis falls apart. That said, people seem to have no trouble analysing German with long and short vowels, and I imagine their speech tempo is similar in that vowel tempo is not well correlated with the traditional inherited length.

[anteallach]

(in the other thread)

This whole venture is very focussed on very specific dialects. It breaks down in much of England, for instance, where positing underlying /r/ for what have become long monophthongs is unjustified.

... though, playing devil's advocate a bit, you could argue that that underlying /r/ surfaces whenever those vowels are followed by another vowel.

[Darren]

You could bring my Australian English idiolect down to 6 vowels /i ʊ e æ a ɔ/ without too much of a stretch

/i ʊ e æ a ɔ/ = [i ʊ e æ~ɛ ä ɔ] (KIT/happY FOOT DRESS TRAP STRUT LOT)
/aj æj æw ij ʊw ʊj ɔw/ = [ɑe̯ æi̯ æu̯ ɪi̯ ʉu̯ ʊi̯ ɒʉ̯] (PRICE FACE MOUTH FLEECE GOOSE CHOICE GOAT)
/iɹ ʊɹ eɹ æɹ aɹ ɔɹ/ = [ɪː ʊː eː æː äː ə(ː)] (NEAR THOUGHT/NORTH/FORCE SQUARE BAD PALM/START NURSE/lettER/commA)

This requires you to count most instances of [ə] as unstressed /ɔɹ/ which is wack but doesn’t create any inconsistencies, and stressed [əː] is treated as /ɔɹ/ which would otherwise never occur. Otherwise it kinda makes sense cause it's /ɹ/-intrusive (counting [æː] as /æɹ/ only works cause it only occurs pre-consonantally) and non-rhotic long vowels are noticeably diphthongised.

[quinterbeck]

SSBE as analysed by Geoff Lindsey is solidly 7-vowel based, crossing /ɪ ɛ a ɔ ɵ ə ʌ/ with [-j -w -ː(ɹ)]. It wouldn't stretch it too much to consider commA /ə/ and STRUT /ʌ/ as one vowel, since they each appear only in unstressed and stressed syllables respectively. Boom, 6 vowel English.