Travis B. wrote: ↑Wed May 07, 2025 9:15 am
What about father though? Doesn't that have a long vowel even though it would be silly to analyze it as having an underlying rhotic?
Given that words like "spa" and "bra" generate intrusive /r/, it doesn't seem like much of a stretch to analyse "father" as /farðə/. In fact analysing BAD as TRAP + /r/ would neaten up the vowel system a lot, there's just no evidence in the form of intrusive /r/ for it.
Of course there's other problems in analysing AusEng as such; namely the merry/Mary distinction, which you'd have to analyse as /merəj/ ~ /merrəj/.
Apart from this, it works surprisingly well. Stressed syllables can be analysed as obligatorily /i ʊ e ɵ æ a ɒ/ + consonant and unstressed syllables as /ə/ + consonant. Long vowels are V + r (except /ɒ/ can't be followed by /r[C,#]/, and /ɵ/ must be followed by /r[C,#]/, so if you were very keen you could analyse them both as allophones of /ɔ/). Diphthongs you could probably call /ij ʊw æj aw aj æw/ (size=80]FLEECE GOOSE FACE GOAT PRICE MOUTH[/size]). Unstressed syllables get schwa plus /əj əw ər əl ən/ = happY follOW commA/lettER bottLE happEN. Thus I can claim that AusEng is a VC language rather than a CV one. It's genuinely not a bad analysis.
Travis B. wrote: ↑Wed May 07, 2025 9:15 am
What about father though? Doesn't that have a long vowel even though it would be silly to analyze it as having an underlying rhotic?
Given that words like "spa" and "bra" generate intrusive /r/, it doesn't seem like much of a stretch to analyse "father" as /farðə/. In fact analysing BAD as TRAP + /r/ would neaten up the vowel system a lot, there's just no evidence in the form of intrusive /r/ for it.
Of course there's other problems in analysing AusEng as such; namely the merry/Mary distinction, which you'd have to analyse as /merəj/ ~ /merrəj/.
Apart from this, it works surprisingly well. Stressed syllables can be analysed as obligatorily /i ʊ e ɵ æ a ɒ/ + consonant and unstressed syllables as /ə/ + consonant. Long vowels are V + r (except /ɒ/ can't be followed by /r[C,#]/, and /ɵ/ must be followed by /r[C,#]/, so if you were very keen you could analyse them both as allophones of /ɔ/). Diphthongs you could probably call /ij ʊw æj aw aj æw/ (size=80]FLEECE GOOSE FACE GOAT PRICE MOUTH[/size]). Unstressed syllables get schwa plus /əj əw ər əl ən/ = happY follOW commA/lettER bottLE happEN. Thus I can claim that AusEng is a VC language rather than a CV one. It's genuinely not a bad analysis.
This feels a bit forced to me, to be honest, though, and I'm not comfortable with phonemic analyses that are radically different for language varieties that are fundamentally crossintelligible. (For instance, I have no problem understanding AusE.) E.g. I could come up with a 'reasonable' analysis of my own dialect with phonemic vowel length for all vowels, phonemic vowel nasality, and phonemic consonant length, but the matter is I have no reason to believe that my dialect isn't crossintelligible with most other English varieties from other parts of the world, and far less radical analyses that position my own dialect much closer to other English varieties are just as viable. (However, I don't think my dialect can be analyzed without phonemic gemination, as shown by pairs like pizza [ˈpʰiʔtːsə(ː)] versus Nazi [ˈnatsi(ː)].)
Travis B. wrote: ↑Wed May 07, 2025 8:28 pmThis feels a bit forced to me, to be honest, though, and I'm not comfortable with phonemic analyses that are radically different for language varieties that are fundamentally crossintelligible.
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