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Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-ncis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!nosc!humu!uhccux!lee
From: lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Greg Lee)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next,comp.sys.mac,comp.cog-eng,sci.lang
Subject: Re: Sorry, no PDP (or any other) speech recognition yet
Message-ID: <2964@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
Date: 7 Jan 89 03:29:53 GMT
References: <600105990.19551@bucasb.bu.edu>
Followup-To: sci.lang
Organization: University of Hawaii
Lines: 31

From article <600105990.19551@bucasb.bu.edu>, by merrill@bucasb (John Merrill):
>In article <2934@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu> lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Greg Lee) writes:
" >>the diphthong of "new" is appreciably longer than that of "nu".
" >
" >Huh?  There *IS* *NO* dipthong in "new" or "nu", in any dialect of English
" >that I know.  Did you perhaps just mean vowel?
" 
" No, he meant dipthong.  There are dialects of English in which the
" word "new" is clearly pronounced "n[y]u", while the Greek letter "nu"
" is not.
" 
" I am not *aware* of a difference between the vowels in my own
" idiolect, and I percieve them both as pure---at least, insofar as any
" speaker of Midwestern American English can be said to have a pure
" vowel in any word she speaks.  Greg, is your claim based on phonetic
" measurements, and, if so, what dialect did the speaker(s) use?

I was referring to lax-u + w combination as a diphthong.  It is a plain
vowel for some people.  A in-glided version is another possibility.  The
matter seems completely tangential to the question of whether "nudist
play" and "new display" may be pronounced the same.  But I suppose I
could find some published measurements, if anybody really cares.  A
likely source would be the monograph on Am. English pronunciation by
Ilse Lehiste and Gordon Peterson (whose title I can't remember now).

" (Follow-ups to sci.lang, please; this is way far afield from NeXT
" boxes, or even cognitive engineering.)

Right, except I thought I ought to reply to your question, first.

		Greg, lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu