This means that in order for me to help my clients understand this nonsense, I have to peg it as nonsense, and then people think I’m bitchy and stuff.
But neither Kelli nor Gail study with me at all, and Rebecca rarely does. Why does this bother me? Because my clients bring me this garbage as though it has any value and want me to help them understand it. This book is just one more example of people who don’t really know what a phoneme is coming up with one more bogus list. You can tell if you study the word finger or distinguish., or, you know, if you pull your head out of your phonics ass. They also list */ŋ/ as a phoneme, which is a pretty common misconception, but it’s really just a velarized allophone of /n/, which I explain in some class or other. They also ignore the /ʍ/ - the voiceless glide - that many English speakers have in Cool Whip or wh ack job. In addition, all three women (Sandman-Hurley, Venable, and Loveless) are Californians, so they’re apparently ignorant of the /ɔ/ phoneme that most English speakers have in caught or law, as they don’t list it at all. If you’re going to list allophones in your phonemic inventory, then you’d also have to list the */ʔ/ in kien and the */ç/ in uman and the */æ̃/ in cn. It’s an allophone of /t/ and /d/ in North American English, and of /ɹ/ in Received Pronunciation in the UK (as in, I’m so vey, vey pleased to meet you). This is especially infuriating, because the whole point of understanding a flap is understanding that it’s NOT A GODDAMN PHONEME in English. But for the love of all that is holy, there is no /ɾ/ phoneme in English. On the next page, Sandman-Hurley’s chart includes */ɾ/ in li ttle and la dder. With bear, you can claim an /ɛ/ phoneme if you want, but an /e/ also works, as the phoneme relaxes into an phoneme when it rhotacizes. When a vowel rhotacizes, it becomes more lax, which is another concept that is probably beyond Sandman-Hurley, Venable, and possibly even Loveless. That spells /ɪ/, because that’s a phoneme that an can spell. In fear and sheer, however, the and are spelling /iː/. So clearly there’s more going on here than Sandman-Hurley’s facile list can offer.Īnother problem is that an and an cannot spell /ɪ/, even when they spell. A stressed can also sound like, as in singularity. ɔɹ/ and /ɑɹ/ are stressed when they’re not stressed, the vowel either zeroes (as in history or boundary) or it’s rhotacized to as in doctor or familiar. Note that all the other rhotic vowels are stressed.
It makes some sense to represent /ɚ/ with just the schwar, because it’s unstressed, but there’s no reason to differentiate /ɝ/ from all the other stressed forms. One problem in this analysis is the symbolology: she offers no reason why /ɝ/ is one symbol but /ɑɹ/ is two. Rhotic vowels may be represented as a single IPA character or with the vowel and the rhoticity differentiated: Sandman-Hurley offers the following: Worse yet, they offer no consistency in how they represent rhotic vowels.Īcross linguistics, there is considerable debate about the nature of rhotic vowels, which do not occur in all dialects of English. In English, our liquid phonemes are /l/ and /ɹ/, but Sandman-Hurley includes rhotacized vowels as “liquids.” I don’t know if this error is Kelli’s or Rebecca and Gail’s, but an error it is. Note that the vertical brackets are lexicographic, not phonological nor phonetic.Īnother problem is in the list that they call “liquids.” In linguistics, a liquid is a consonant that has vocalic qualities. My Mactionary hedges its bets, as it frequently does, by offering | ˈæŋ(k)ʃəs |. Then you get to anxious, in which there may not even be a velar stop at all. Moreover, if you’re going to posit a */gz/ phoneme, then you’ll also have to posit a */kʃ/ phoneme and a */gʒ/ phoneme for words like luxury, which can be pronounced with either the voiceless or voiced cluster. In the word execute, the spells, but in the word executive, it spells.
The problem is that apparently, neither Gail nor Rebecca (nor apparently Kelli) understand the difference between phonemes and allophones, and that means their inventory is deeply flawed. For example, they list */gz/ as a separate phoneme than /ks/, but it’s not those patterns are allophonic and they are driven by place value and stress. On pages 105-106, in her “glossary,” Kelly gives an inventory of 49 “phonemes” and credits the inventory to “Gail Venable and Rebecca Loveless,” but doesn’t offer any actual source for that. In her book, Dyslexia & Spelling: Making Sense of it All, businesswoman and linguist wannabe Kelli Sandman-Hurley fails to make sense of English phonology.
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