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Here is the long-overdue summary of the responses I received to the 
following post, dated 24 Jan 2006, regarding author Stephen King's uvular 
nasal tap: 
 
http://linguistlist.org/issues/17/17-230.html#1 
 
I cross-posted the message to two other lists, the Phonetics list and the 
Teaching of Phonetics list, so some of the responses came over these two 
channels: 
 
http://lists.topica.com/lists/phonetics/read/message.html?mid=811814417&sort=d&start=697 
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind0601&L=phonet&T=0&P=388 

Click here to visit the new link to the video of the interview with Stephen King. 

Or go to the Amazon homepage: http://www.amazon.com/ then to ''For the Community'', 
and click on ''Amazon Fishbowl''; from the new page, click on ''Stephen King''. 
 
Here are a few more links to audio files of Stephen King talking, for 
comparison: 
 
http://www.stephenkingshop.com/interviews.htm 
http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=13&prgDate=6-May-94 
http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=13&prgDate=10-Oct-00 
http://town.hall.org/Archives/radio/IMS/Club/102993_club_ITH.html 
 
Eric Bakovic posted a blog entry with further insights into the phenomenon 
here: 
 
http://camba.ucsd.edu/phonoloblog/index.php/2006/01/24/253/ 
 
 
With warm thanks to the following LINGUISTs for your responses: 
 
George Allen allengmsu.edu 
Eric Armstrong earmstroyorku.ca 
Roy Becker roybeckerhumnet.ucla.edu 
Jennifer Cornish jennifer.cornishgmail.com 
Andy Elliott aelliottchicagonet.net 
Larry Horn laurence.hornyale.edu 
Paul Johnston paul.johnstonwmich.edu 
Bob Knippen knippenbrandeis.edu 
Christina Kuo scullyxfoxyahoo.com.tw 
Mark Mandel mamandelldc.upenn.edu 
Nick Pharris npharrisumich.edu 
Steven Schaefer steven.schaeferlibertysurf.fr 
Jim Scobbie JScobbieQMUC.ac.uk 
Gary Taylor gary_taylor_98yahoo.com 
Rémy Viredaz remy.viredazbluewin.ch 
Yi Xu yiphon.ucl.ac.uk 
Malcah Yaeger-Dror malcahemail.arizona.edu 
 
 
Summary: 
 
Stephen King apparently substitutes, fairly consistently, a uvular nasal 
tap for /l/ only prevocalically, that is, in the position in which most 
English speakers have an alveolar or ''clear /l/''. Various possible 
explanations were offered to explain this substitution: 
 
(1) Some suggested that it might be related to a horrific hit-and-run car 
accident King was involved in many years ago; this, however, seems to be 
highly unlikely. King's speech seems unremarkable in all other aspects. 
 
(2) One respondent thought it might be the velum closing and opening, not 
the uvula, interpreted as a dark /l/ on a person with swollen adenoids or 
some other factor that prevents the velum from staying closed; however, a 
close listening to the interview reveals the sound to be unequivocally uvular. 
 
(3) Some respondents simply considered it a personal quirk of King's. One 
noticed it in audio recordings of King's books in which he himself reads, 
found it distracting, and he now avoids these recordings. Another 
respondent called it ''a speech defect'' of King's. Another suggests that 
/l/ is a ''non-trivial'' sound for a child to acquire, and some do not 
learn it well. Such children will find a substitution, e.g. /j/, will get 
corrected by adults, then they may happen on a sound not in the system at 
all but that is still somewhat similar to the target sound. They may get 
less negative feedback on this sound, then end up sticking with it. This 
sounds like a quite plausible explanation in King's case. 
 
(4) Some pointed out that Americans have more dark /l/s, and probably 
darker dark /l/s, than speakers of standard British English, and uvular 
/l/s simply represent a pushing of this feature toward its natural limits. 
 
(5) Some suggested that it may possibly be a regional feature found in 
certain speakers of New York/New Jersey/New England/East Coast US English. 
Tom Brokaw, for example, has it for some of his /l/s: 
 
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6531566/ 
 
One respondent reported having this feature himself as a child growing up 
on the East Coast, and says he received speech therapy to correct it after 
the family moved to the Midwest (see also Bakovic's blog entry above). 
Another respondent reported that his father, who grew up in rural New 
England, also has this feature. 
 
Ira Glass was mentioned by some respondents; however he seems to have a 
uvular approximant or fricative /l/ in all positions; in initial positions 
it sometimes sounds like a gurgle bubbling up, producing something close to 
a rhotic uvular trill. With King, air ''bubbles up'' to separate the uvula 
from the back of the tongue to form a *single* tap rather than a turbulent 
fricative or a trill with regular free vibration. 
 
Kevin Bacon was also mentioned as having a strongly uvular /l/. 
 
One respondent claims that /l/ is sometimes even realized as a 
pharyngeal/epiglottal fricative or approximant by many Americans, 
especially Northeasterners and Midwesterners. 
 
One respondent said that uvular /l/ is common among French speakers, 
especially with ''u'' and ''eu''. 
 
Another respondent told of a female native speaker of Hebrew who 
substituted a velar nasal for initial /l/, and something like the Hebrew 
dorsal velo-uvular approximant rhotic for postvocalic /l/. He pointed out 
that the Hebrew /l/ is invariably a lamino-/apico-alveolar. He said the 
woman's pronunciation of /l/ was very odd, and that he'd never encountered 
such before. He was also amused that the three other people, all musicians, 
who were talking with this woman on the same occasion didn't seem to notice 
the odd pronunciation at all. 
 
One correspondent expressed delighted surprise that such an ''exotic'' 
sound should turn up in a phonetically garden-variety language like US 
English, rather than in the Caucasus or Amazonia. 
 
From the feedback received, I would tentatively conclude that the feature 
is an idiosyncratic (i.e. found only in certain individuals) regional (i.e. 
East coast) one; I received no reports of anyone from other parts of the 
country exhibiting the feature. 
 
Stephen King's substitution of a uvular nasal tap for [l], and related 
''l'' phenomena, such as Ira Glass's invariable uvular /l/ 
approximant/fricative, might be a fruitful area for further research 
particularly for someone living on the US East coast, where one would be 
closest to the data. I personally do not at present plan to do any 
additional research on this; anybody interested is welcome to develop this 
topic in further depth. 
 
 
Karen Chung 
National Taiwan University 
http://homepage.ntu.edu.tw/~karchung/ 
karchungntu.edu.tw