Glossonomia

In Part Two of this series on Diacritics, Phil Thompson and Eric Armstrong discuss the intricacies of diacritic symbols and what they mean when applied to vowel and consonant symbols of the IPA. The guys follow along with the list of diacritic marks on the Wikipedia page for the International Phonetic Alphabet. The episode begins at laminal diacritic, which Wikipedia classifies as part of the “articulation diacritics”, and continue on to discuss “co-articulation diacritics” and “suprasegmentals”.

Though Phil and Eric had intended to cover all the diacritical marks in the IPA in this podcast, they just couldn’t do it. In fact, Eric’s recorder stopped recording after 45 minutes, though they kept talking for 15 more minutes... so this is merely an introduction to diacritics, not an exhaustive review of all of them. For reference, the boys work their way through the symbols following the order that the wikipedia article on the International Phonetic Alphabet’s section on diacritics takes, so you might want to follow along.

In this episode, Phil and Eric tackle two of the “centering diphthongs” (aka the r-colored diphthongs in rhotic accents), square and start. Much of the episode is spent tackling the very subtle possibilities of vowel quality where these lexical sets might be realized, and the fun that one can have tweaking those possibilities—smoothing, breaking, more or less rhoticity, more open vs. more close nuclei or codas. FUN!

This week we delve deeper into the topic of weaken vowels that behave similarly to schwa /ə/, namely the weakened forms of the /i/ and /u/ vowels [usually realized as somewhere in the range of [i̽] or [ɨ], [ʊ] or perhaps [ɵ], sometimes known—controversially—as “schwee” and “schwoo.” We even chat about weakened diphthongs and what that might mean for speakers (“schwoe” and “schwhy,” anyone?). Phil and Eric also chat for quite some time about Geoff Lindsay’s blog post on the topic of “Schwee”.

We’re tackling strings of consonants in this episode! Phil and Eric talk about clusters of consonants and how they “work” for us. Eric refers to J.C. Catford’s book A Practical Introduction to Phonetics quite a bit!

Phil and Eric managed to do an episode on the Lexical Set choice this week, in spite of Phil’s never-ending cold and Eric’s dogs (who wanted to go out when they were in, and in when they were out...) Phil talks a bit about the history of the set, we talk about its representation in the IPA and we tackle odd variations, including the classic New York choice - nurse (near) merger.

We tackle the consonants that don’t conveniently fit within the Pulmonic Consonant chart of the IPA — the Non-pulmonics and the so-called “Other Symbols” area. Many of these consonants are a review of things we’ve covered elsewhere in the podcast series, but it’s always nice to tidy things up, to pick up the leftovers.

Phil and Eric tackle the mouth lexical set, and compare it, briefly to the price set. We reference Robbie Burns’ To a Mouse, and talk about how it evolved through the Great Vowel Shift from an /u/ vowel, to its present location, in the range of /æʊ/—/aʊ/—/ɑʊ/. Eric touches on Canadian Raising, and the two glossonomians explore the range of articulations, modulating the initial component of the “vector”, and then the final component.

Eric and Phil tackle the entire Pulmonic Chart of the IPA, focusing on the Non-English sounds. We move quickly, and don’t focus on what languages you might here these consonants. Instead we focus on how to make them and points to remember when teaching them. If you do want to know what language you want to hear a certain consonant in, please refer to Wikipedia. The best method is to search for the consonant that you’re interested in, for example, the voiceless velar fricative /x/, which would take you here. In this case, /x/ occurs in languages literally from A-Z, Abaza to Zapotec.

After a YEAR on hiatus, Phil and Eric return to Glossonomia with an episode about the lexical set price. We cover the history of the /aɪ/ sound, how it evolved from the /i/ sound we hear in fleece words today. We also dig deep into concepts such as smoothing, Canadian Raising, price allophony, and other variations of the set, such as we hear in the South of the United States, in Scotland or Ireland.

Hosts Phil Thompson and Eric Armstrong work their way across the Pulmonic Consonant Chart, focusing in on the Fricative row. Though they do cover English fricatives [θ ð f v s z ʃ ʒ], they go into much greater depth on the non-English sounds [ɸ β ʂ ʐ ç ʝ x ɣ χ ʁ ħ ʕ ʜ ʢ h ɦ ]. (note that they follow the IPA chart on the wikipedia page, which sort of blends the very back fricatives with the approximants.)

Today, Phil and Eric finish off our four part trifecta on R, with a deep discussion of linking r, instrusive r, triphthongs and other R-ful tidbits to delight and enthral you.

In this Episode, Phil and Eric talk about the consonant sounds known as Affricates. The sounds, which begin with a stop and release into a fricative, are important in English, as there are two affricates we use on a regular basis: /tʃ/ and /dʒ/. Phil and Eric also discuss non-English affricates, the difference between an affricate and a stop-affricate pair (as in the difference between ratchet and rat-shit, which exemplify both).

In this episode, Phil and Eric start to unpack the overstuffed suitcase known as rhotic vowels, or r-colored vowels. They cover things like what a rhotic vowel is, the possible use of syllabic consonant R [ɹ̩] rather than using vowel r’s, the difference between rhotic-schwa (aka “schwar,” “r-colored schwa,” or even “flying-schwa”) and rhotic-turned-epsilon (aka “rhotic-3” or “flying-3”). That’s ɚ or ɝ. There is also discussion of the possibility of other rhotic vowels, such as ɑ˞ or ɔ˞. Phil and Eric leave plenty of room for further discussion on future episodes on R-vowels!

After our overview episode last week, Phil and Eric look in greater detail at the full range of R consonant variation. We follow the Rhotic Consonants page on wikipedia as a means of tracking the various possible articulations. You can follow along, too! We cover: • Trills • Alveolar [r] • Uvular [ʀ] • Retroflex [ɽ] • Taps and flaps • Alveolar tap [ɾ] • Alveolar lateral flap [ɺ] • Retroflex flap [ɽ] • Labiodental flap (perceived as non-rhotic) [ⱱ] • Alveolar approximant [ɹ] • Molar approximant (aka “braced” /r/) -- see John Wells’s phonetic blog on the VASTA discussion and Erik Singer’s “anchor” [] • Retroflex approximant [ɻ] • Uvular fricative [ʁ]

We’ve been moaning about this one, and now we have to face it: we’re tackling the category of sounds that have an R quality, and this episode gets Phil and Eric talking about vowel and consonant R, similarities to semi-vowels, trills, taps, fricatives, approximants, and even the lowered third formant associated with the acoustic qualities of R-ish-ness. We talk about the history of the letter shape, rhotic and non-rhotic accents, and much more.We’ve also added a Facebook group! Won’t you come join us there? And, as always, you can contact us via our email address: glossonomia@gmail.com

We’re going to get your goat with this episode: Phil and Eric tackle the lexical set goat, that mirrors the set in last episode, face. They discuss the sound of the diphthong and monophthong versions and the history of both the phone and even the letter shape.

Phil and Eric face the music on this one: they tackle the ticklishly intriguing face lexical set, and discuss diphthongs, monophthongs and other phthings, er, things related to the set! And Eric manages to avoid making his lame joke about dip-thongs (something about small European bathing suits...)In the course of things, they discuss the chart on wikipedia that lays out the sound changes of the Great Vowel Change. Follow along with the chart while listening!They also discuss the breve (which wikipedia says is pronounced [bɹiv] though we say [bɹɛv] through the whole episode) and the nonsyllabic diacritics, which look like this respectively (though I can’t seem to get them to line up with the small cap i symbol...):eɪ̆ and eɪ̯

Dark and Light (or is it “clear”?) /l/ forms the core of this episode, where Phil and Eric tackle all the elements of the “el” sounds in English and the world’s languages.

In our silver anniversary episode, Phil and Eric talk about the lexical set dress, and all the various vowels that are associated with it. That includes [e] or is it [ɛ]? The guys try to uncover the history behind the choice to use [e], and advocate pretty hard for their preference, [ɛ]. Show Notes:We referred to these as we chatted, but wandered all over the place, so we probably don’t get to most of them...DRESSOpen-mid front unrounded vowelNotice that it isn’t mid. We don’t have a symbol there at mid. It’s front , though we can feel how much more front /i/ is. The chart reflects thisIt’s unrounded, but that doesn’t necessarily mean spread.It’s a short vowelIt’s a checked vowelCardinal vowel #3 – Daniel Jones /ɛ/Cardinal vowel #2 – Daniel Jones /e/“Cardinal vowels (2), (3), and (4) are defined as front vowels that form a series of auditorily equidistant steps between cardinal vowels (1) and (5)” -Ladefoged Jones also makes a tense/lax distinctionIn The Pronunciation of English:We distinguish two intermediate positions, half-closed and half-open, in which the tongue is lowered from the closed position to about one-third, and two-thirds, of the total distance from the closed position to the open position Examples of …, halfclosed, half-open, … vowels aree (pen, pen), ɛ (pair, pɛə),e: the half-closed front tense unrounded vowelɛ: a lengthened ɛe Half-closed front lax unrounded. Examples: pen, pen, head, hed. 
In L this vowel is often replaced by i, e.g. git, indʒin for get (get), endʒin (engine). In many dialects it is replaced by the opener ɛ , thus, pɛn, hɛd.

Besides occurring independently, the sound e occurs in StP as the first element of the diphthong ei, e.g. day, dei. With many speakers, especially in N.Eng. this diphthong is tense, i.e. the two elements are the tense vowels corresponding to the lax e, i. In Sc the diphthong is not generally used, a pure tense vowel (phonetic symbol e:) being substituted (de:). In L the first element of the diphthong ei is much opener than in StP, becoming ɛ, æ, a, or even ɑ, thus dɛi, dæi, dai, dɑi. In L e sometimes occurs instead of ʌ 

Note the faulty pronunciation of aerate (StP eiəreit or eəreit) as ɛəreit or iəreit. The words again, always are often pronounced agen, ɔ:lwiz, ɔ:lwəz, but the forms agein, ɔ:lweiz are preferable.

Half-open front unrounded. This sound only occurs in StP in the diphthong ɛə. Examples there, their, ðɛə. See also the previous section. In the pronunciation of many S.Eng. speakers, the first element of this diphthong is more open than ɛ, being in fact practically æ (ðæə). The form ɛə is preferable. In L the first element of this diphthong is the half-closed tense vowel e: (ðeə)“The standard lexical set DRESS is defined as comprising those words whose citation form in RP has the stressed vowel /e/ and in GenAm /ɛ/” -Wellsstep, bet, neck, fetch, Jeff, mess, mesh, ebb, bed, egg, edge, rev, fez, hem, pen, bell, shelf, hemp, tent, theft, best, sex, next, effort, method, terror, tenor, jelly, centre/center, pester, threat, sweat, deaf, death, bread, dead, head, health, realm, meant, breast, ready, jealous, pleasant, weather, treacherous, any, many, Thames, friend, says, said, Leicester, bury.These words are mostly spelled with “e” or “ea”. These two spellings represent two sources in Middle English: “short e” and “long ɛ” Those spelled with “e” have stayed somewhere close to [ɛ] while those spelled “ea” were originally pronounced [e]. – Falstaff, for example, rhymes “raisins” with “reasons”.
This pronunciation remains in some accents.

Breaking and shading effects are possible with DRESS as they are with KIT. In some accents the vowel is raised toward /ɪ/ in environments where it is followed by a nasal, making the words “pin” and “pen” homophones.Breaking is the diphthongization of monophthongs. Shading is the development of different allophones conditioned by the place of articulation of the following consonant. With DRESS in the South, shading seems to occur in Southern American accents when /ɛ/ is followed by /d/, /m/, /l/ or /ʤ/. When followed by /ɡ/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, or /ʒ/, the effect can be so strong as to shift the vowel all the way to the diphthong /eɪ /.SQUARE and MERRY/MARRY/MARY in a future show!Swedish makes a distinction between monophthongal /eː/ /ɛː/ and /ɛ/but when I listen to the samples there is more of a difference in quality than quantityhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_phonology#Vowels French contrasts /eː/ /ɛː/ /ɛ/  and /ɛ̃/                So saith Wikipedia. Is that really true? Sort of...                 German seems to exhibit a 4 way contrast of /eː/ /e/  /ɛː/ and /ɛ/But the Wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_phonology also expresses some doubts about the factuality of this distinction.Further Notes from various blogs etc.
Jack Windsor Lewis: 'When it comes to a snappy name for [ɛ] I shd prefer 'Greek e' to epsilon (whether as /ep`saɪlən/ or /`epsɪlən/). 'ɛə becominɡ monophthonɡal ɛː— JWL: All three of the GB centring diphthongs are very commonly he·rd with monophthongal allophones. Traditionally these wd not be used before breaks ie at the ends of rhythm units. However, the case of /ɛə/ is different. The use of a strest unit-final [ɛː] wd indicate that the speaker must be categorised as possessing a phoneme /ɛː/ replacing the traditional /ɛə/. This was at one time distinctly a minority usage: Daniel Jones in 1958 only sed "[o]ccasionally one hears [it]". However, it's now for sev·ral decades become less and less so. John Wells: A Red Dress -- Northern Cities Shift, DRESS is mid-centralizing ɛ → ɐIn Canada, it's just becoming more open: DRESS is shifting ɛ → æJohn Wells: Antipodean (i.e. Australian vs. New Zealand) "While both Australians and New Zealanders — but particularly the latter — can give the rest of us the impression that they are pronouncing DRESS words with the KIT vowel (Rebekah → Ribikah) and TRAP words with the DRESS vowel (shag → sheg), it is only New Zealanders whose KIT vowel is so centralized as to lead us to perceive it as the STRUT vowel. Australians, on the other hand, make it closer and fronter than in many other accents, nearer to [i]. "Wells, in response to Upton's changes for OED:Bet. In some languages, notably French and German, one needs to distinguish two e-type vowels, a closer one (IPA [e]) and an opener one (IPA [ɛ]). The English bet vowel lies between them, but is more similar to [ɛ], which is why Upton prefers that symbol. However, from the point of view of an EFL learner whose native language is, say, Japanese or Greek -- languages that have no such distinction -- it is quite unnecessary to distinguish the "[e]" at the starting point of the face diphthong from the "[ɛ]" of bet. And following IPA principles, if we are to choose just one of the two symbols we should prefer the simpler one.http://phonetic-blog.blogspot.com/2009/03/e-and.html1. Although I usually use e for the English vowel of DRESS, there is nothing incorrect or unscientific about using ɛ instead. This is the symbol used in the Kenyon-Knott system, still in use among American dialectologists and speech people (who just call this notation “IPA”), and also for EFL in Taiwan (but as far as I know, virtually only in Taiwan). Ladefoged used it in earlier editions of his Course in Phonetics, before switching to e.2. An important principle of good phonetic transcription is simplicity. As Ladefoged formulates it,"A simple phonemic transcription uses the smallest possible number of different letters." [D. Abercrombie, 1964, English Phonetic Texts, London: Faber & Faber, page 19.]Since the DRESS vowel can be unambiguously written e, an English transcription with the symbol e is simpler than one with ɛ. The same applies in those languages that have just five vowels (or just five peripheral vowels), e.g. Modern Greek, Serbian, Polish, Czech, Japanese. In these languages the mid front vowel is best, and most simply, written e. Whether its quality is closer to that of cardinal 2 [e] or cardinal 3 [ɛ] is irrelevant. On the other hand, in languages that have a close-mid front vowel in contrast to an open-mid one (e.g. French, German, a Scottish accent of English), the two symbols e and ɛ must both be used; and that means ɛ for French même, German Bett, and Scottish dress.http://phonetic-blog.blogspot.com/2009/03/more-about-e-and.html3. The vowel of English DRESS varies considerably. A former RP quality, now obsolete, was very close to cardinal 2 [e]: a similarly close-mid quality is to be heard in Australian English, and in New Zealand it is often even closer. The current British average quality is somewhere between cardinal 2 [e] and cardinal 3 [ɛ]. There are also local varieties in which it is fully open-mid. In American English it can be open-mid and considerably centred. If we want to symbolize all of these possibilities in a single symbol, the phonetic case for [e] is not much different from the case for [ɛ]. 4. The choice of symbol for DRESS is bound up with the question of the choice of symbol for FACE. In accents where the FACE vowel is monophthongal and not distinctively long (e.g. Scottish English, perhaps some northern AmE) we must write face as fes and dress as drɛs. In all other varieties of English, where FACE is either a long monophthong or a diphthong, there will be no confusion in writing DRESS with e as long as FACE is written correspondingly as eː or eɪ (or, with Trager and Smith, as ey, or with Chomsky and Halle as ēy). 5. Furthermore, there are many accents in which the diphthong of FACE starts more open than the height of DRESS: for example, popular London and SE England (“Estuary English”) and Australian and New Zealand speech. (It was phonetically perverse of the Macquarie dictionary of Australian English to write FACE as eɪ and DRESS as ɛ.) 6. Consider now the position, say, of Japanese learners of English. In their own language they have just a single mid front vowel, ェ e. It i