I'm rephrasing my question after (very helpful) comments to my initial version:
- What are the differences between the [i] produced by French speakers (in French) and English speakers (in English)?
- Does the English [i] ever occur in a context such as C_C i.e: [ʃi:p] where minimal pairs are possible without the lengthening? Is this a redundancy built into the language so [i]~[ɪ] can be discriminated?
Previous title: [ɪ]~[i] production by native French speakers of English - why is [ɪ] the 'default'?
My assumption is that the vowel [ɪ] does not exist in (standard) French even as an allophone. When (mis)pronouncing sheet/shit, beach/bitch, etc, anecdotal tellings of this particular error seems to favour the [ɪ] in terms of occurrence (if someone can point to an actual study that would be appreciated).
Is the French [i] of 'livre' /livʁ/ known to be far shorter in duration than the English [i] in 'leave' /li:v/? When 'leave' is pronounced by a French speaker as /liv/ (note: correct vowel, but not lengthened) is this being perceived by native English speakers as an occurrence of 'live' /lɪv/?
[ɪ]
and[iː]
differ in two ways, vowel quality and vowel length. In some transcription schemes the length mark is omitted. To speakers of other langauges learning English their native language may have only one "i" sound so to them it may sound closer to one or the other of ours, or they may not hear a difference between our two sounds. Conversely, the sound they use, us native English speakers will perceive as one or the other sound even if it lies somewhere between. The actual sound may be something like a short i, a long ɪ, or something else in that general range.[ɪ]
as in "hit",[iː]
as in "heat" and[i]
for the final "-y" as in "meaty" and "pretty". English "short" vowels cannot occur in open syllables. The "long" "i" can as in both vowels in "teepee"/"tipi". The best minimal pair I can come up with is "goaty" (goat-like) vs "goatee" (tuft of beard on the chin). Sorry @musicallinguist but not everybody agrees.[iː]
but -y has various realizations including[iː]
and[ɪ]
. Anyway this is drifting off-topic. I would ask a new devoted question but I don't follow your point.