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Editor for this issue: Brett Churchill <brettlinguistlist.org>
victoria.tc.ca>In reference to the many comments on the pronunciation of "egg", etc.: The dialect spoken on the Chesapeake peninsula (Maryland/Virginia) seems worth considering in this context: I have met speakers there who use some vowels that are monophthongs in standard English as triphthongs of sorts (and others as diphthongs, similar to other dialects). Examples: (1) /e/: "bed" or "bad" - /beye:d/ or /beye:d/ (2) "dog" - /doug~/ (the "~" denotes a clearly audible shwa here) Since I haven't heard this for a while perhaps someone else would correct or supplement my scant data here...? (perhaps Keith Goeringer?) MagdaMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue
worldnet.att.net>Marc Picard asked: > Now who > can tell me how long the following exchange has been going on: > > A: Hey, how are you today? > B: I'm good. How are you? One of the regular language commentators on Leonard Lopate's WNYC talk show (I think Richard Lederer) said not long ago that if you're over 34 you say well, under 35 you say good. Ballpark? Exact? Nonsense? *** On NBC's hit sitcom *Working* this week, a character took a vacation in Canada and came back saying "aboot"--and "b[y]k"! Meaning that prevelar Canadian fronting, recently mentioned in this thread, has entered L.A. folklore!! - Peter T. Daniels grammatimMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue
MUW.Edu>Marc: I've been hearing it all my life since my family is from Appalachia. It's been around as a non-standard form probably dozens, if not hundreds of years back. But, as far as I remember, it's only been in the 10 or 15 years that "educated" people have been using it. It's definitely a "gen X" tag >Date: Tue, 12 May 1998 21:03:15 -0400 >From: MARC PICARD <picardMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue
FHI-Berlin.MPG.DE>I have received several direct responses to my previous input in this discussion (Re 9.682#1), for which I want to say thank you. many have indicated to me that the city name _Albuquerque_ is not of French, but of Spanish origin, which I knew of course. To avoid misunderstanding: I was refering to the "French" (in quotes, because it isn't really French) former pronunciation as [0lbukMail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue
HUMnet.UCLA.EDU>Lance Nathan makes some interesting observations in the passage: "The poor cat. I don't know who she'll jump on and purr after I leave." It took a few moments after saying it before I realized that "who she'll jump on and purr" was probably "ungrammatical," since "purr" isn't transitive, but at the time it sounded natural, nor did my host bat an eye at it. Now I'm not sure if this is a trend in language, a trend in my speech that I've never noticed before, or just a single lapse. The analysis is not quite right. What is disturbing (if anything) about "and purr" is that it represents a clause which does not have "who" is an antecedent, not simply that it's not transitive. The strategy itself is transparent enough. It is to take the TWO clauses "she'll jump (on them) and purr" as a UNIT. As a unit, they are constitute the relative clause together. My guess would be that this is not a "syntactic change" sweeping English (or some variety of it), but a grammatical strategy which might be perceived as relatively unusual simply because single clause restrictive relative clauses are much more frequent, since a single clause is most often sufficient to characterise the antecedent . In that case, the oddity felt is not a matter of "grammaticality" but of pragmatics. A test might be made by comparing "who she'll jump on and purr" with "who she'll purr and jump on". Personally, I prefer the latter where the referent to the antecedent (understood as object of "on") comes at in the final clause (independent of the change in meaning, of course). However, this could be a processing matter. I prefer the strategy in which any number of clauses can constitute a relative clause, but that the clause chain *ends* when the *last clause which has a reference to the antecedent* is reached. (Hence, no problem with "...who she'll jump on, purr and then scratch", but perhaps some readers bridle at the "and purr" even so; they seem to want all clauses to have a referent for the antecedent.) Leaving the issue of pragmatics vs. grammar moot, I don't think any kind of change is reflected in the problem construction. It remains a matter of individual choice in applying the option, and people will apply it when they feel the entire clause chain is called for as a relative clause, even though the last clause does not contain a referent for the antecedent. The option is so automatic when the clause chain functions as a unit that the reactions are as Lance described, and we are fortunate, in the absence of recorded speech data, that he was able to recognise what he had done -- uh, said. Some simpler matters, Jakob Dempsey writes: I also add a palatal off-glide in trash' and 'cash', but not in 'cache' which I learned as an adult. Anybody else do this? I also add a palatal off-glide in trash' and 'cash', but not in 'cache' which I learned as an adult. Anybody else do this? I make a distinction between "cash" and "cache" for the same reason, but it is a different distinction. In most NYC varieties common words like "cash" tend to have a very tense front vowel, at the level of /ey/ as in "day" or even higher. However, the phoneme represented by "cash" also has a low front variant, always before a voiceless stop, e.g., as in "cat", and the raising often does not apply to words learned later in life, like "cache". Conceivably "cash" could also the pronounced with a low front vowel, but I almost never do that, nor do most NYers in their more spontaneous speech. Jacob is referring to a dialect with a different kind of tensing, the development of a palatal glide, specific to pre-palatal consonant position. The dialects I am familiar with like that do not have that palatal glide before most other consonants, e.g., in "cat". Evidently words learned later in life escape the formation of the palatal glide in some (maybe most?) of those dialects too. It is interesting that the appearance of a classical (biunique) phonemic distinction (cash vs. cache) arise from inhibiting a sound change which conditions the phonetic realisation of a single phoneme with a phonetic range wide enough to encompass clearly perceptually distinct pronunciations. It is NOT a *random* lexical diffusion of a sound change, but demonstrates a principle upon which some words are able to escape sound changes Jacob continues: On the theory side: This 'leg'/'egg' raising, plus the historical development of words such as 'day', make me wonder if "non-palatal" is a good characterisation of velarity in consonants I think the point is that tensing of vowels occurs before both palatal and velar consonants, as if they were a "natural class" (vs. apicals and labials). I'm not sure if Jacob means to acknowledge that the tensing before palatals and before velars occur independently and in different but partially overlapping sets of dialects. (They are both broadly "Southern", but extend differentially into Midwestern and Western dialects, as well as in various Southern dialects). Overlap is in dialects where, for example, "measure" etc has the same vowel as "major", and "beize", and "leg"etc rhymes with "plague".Mail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue