LINGUIST List 10.217

Wed Feb 10 1999

Sum: English /(s)tr/ Clusters

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  • shelly harrison, Summary: English /(s)tr/ clusters

    Message 1: Summary: English /(s)tr/ clusters

     Date: Wed, 10 Feb 1999 08:12:55 +0800
    From: shelly harrison <shellycyllene.uwa.edu.au>
    Subject: Summary: English /(s)tr/ clusters


    On February 4 I posted the following query to LINGUIST:

    Palatalisation in /(s)tr/ clusters

    One of the first things I noticed when I lived in Hawaii in the early seventies was the strong palatalisation of /(s)tr/ clusters e.g. street = [shchreet], tree = [chree]. I've recently observed a similar phenomenon in some thirty-something speakers from the northeast of the US, at least in the /str/ clusters. How widespread is this?

    Since the initial flood of responses (I received nineteen in total) has now dwindled to a trickle, the time has perhaps come to post a summary.

    The replies highlighted three issues regarding the phenomenon in question:

    1. its phonetic/phonological range 2. its phonetic nature and/or motivation 3. its geographic and sociolinguistic distribution

    Most of the responses involved /tr/ clusters in words like 'train' and 'tree'. Many of those responses referred to: Read, Charles [1971] "Pre-School Children's Knowledge of English Orthography." Harvard Educational Review 41(1)(February):1-34) who reports (according to those respondents) spellings like: chrie (try), cwnchre (country). Others report their own children's spellings -- chrain (train).

    Some of the respondents reported having been told in phonetics class ( or themselves otherwise believed it to be the case) that palatalisation in /tr/ clusters was widespread in American English. Poor Aussie, some of them seemed to be saying, how could you not know that? I myself am a baby-boomer born and raised in Toronto. Though I've lived in Australia for twenty-five years, I am definitely an American dialect speaker, and I don't say [chrain] -- forgive the contortions I'm forced into to render phonetics. (I'll return to what I believe I do say below.)

    James Myers reports a psycholinguistic experiment conducted in Buffalo, in which the subjects were asked to respond SAME-DIFFERENT for pairs presented to them. Response time was considerably slower for the pair truck/chuck than for truck/tuck. Alice Faber reports a student at the University of Florida who transcribed /tr/ clusters as [ch], and Larry Trask reports a student London who claimed that 'train' and 'chain' are homophones in his dialect. (A number of replies reported palatalisation of /tr/ in SE England, so the phenomenon is not restricted to American English.)

    Kimary Shahin and Rob Hagiwara stress, quite correctly I think, that the phonetic issue in /tr/ clusters is affrication and retraction, rather than alveopalatal articulation per se. Since /r/ involves tongue retraction (Hagiwara notes that not all speakers of American English actually have retroflection), it is only natural that the preceding /t/ is itself retracted from its usual alveolar articulation. In my own speech, as best as I am able to monitor these things, /tr/ clusters involve post-alveolar closure and some affrication, but are nowhere near as affricated as /ch/. (There is, of course, an affricated pronunciation of initial [tj], as in words like 'tune' or 'tube'. It's not my normal pronunciation of such forms, but I do have it as a variant, and it is, I think, [ch].) Full affrication of /tr/ clusters is perhaps a reanalysis of the retracted [t] in these clusters as instances of the phoneme /ch/ (as Rob Hagiwara suggested to me, if I've interpreted his remarks correctly).

    Identical phonetic considerations must be at work in the regressive spread of retraction to the sibilant in /str/ clusters, though far fewer respondents seemed to be familiar with [shchr] than with simple [chr]. (Stefan Ploch observes the absence of [sr], as opposed to [shr] clusters, a further indication perhaps of the retracting influence of /r/ in English.) Donn Bayard and Hal Schiffman point out that Labov has reported [shtr] as characteristic of Philadelphia English, and believe it to be particularly prevelant among Italian-Americans. (One of the people I've observed here in Perth who has the feature is male, mid-thirties, Jewish, from Philadelphia.) Keira Ballantyne (an Australian English speaker currently resident in Hawaii) reports having heard [shtr] in informal register here in Australia. Donn Bayard reports it in New Zealand too. I would not have mentioned this had Keira and Donn not raised it, but I have made similar observations for some Australian speakers. One person with whom I have quite regular contact (female, forties, from Sydney) seems to do it almost consistently.

    In a detailed reply Dan Alford reports that he has made similar sightings of [shtr] in American English over the years, and sent a posting about it to LINGUIST some time ago. (I thought I remembered seeing something.) Among his television observations are:

    Straight (Bryant Gumble) ekStra (Pam Moore, Bay Area newscaster) reStrain (Lt. Worf, Star Trek: Next Generation) Strong(er), Stripe, moonStruck (Jay Leno) (S = [sh]). Martin Ball reports it increasingly in SE England.

    Retraction of /s/ in clusters is not restricted to /str/, number of respondents note. Peter Tan pointed out the emphatic [shtupid], as in: 'Don't be so SHTUPID.' That observation made me ponder the [(s)tju:] environment (as noted above) as a retraction-conditioning one. So obvious I hadn't thought of it, but I'm sure I do it variably: astute, Stewart, steward ...)

    A number of people (Alice Faber, Dan Alford, Hal Schiffman) report what I take to be retraction of /s/ in clusters with no obvious retracting environment: 'shtate department', 'reshpect'. Hal Schiffman and Jerry Neufeld-Kaiser suggest there may be a general retraction of /s/ underway in some parts of North America. I can't comment on that.

    Just one final observation. For many years I've been puzzled about the palatalisation/retraction of the sibilant in /sC/ clusters in Standard High German and other German dialects, a number of Slavic languages, peninsular and carioca Portuguese, Navarre/Asturias Spanish (for some speakers at least, by my observation), and probably numerous other languages I've left out. I can understand the phonetic motivation of retraction/palatalisation/affrication in the [(s)tr] and [(s)tj] environments I've considered here. But why in the absence of [r] or [j]? Is it just a matter of lenition in clusters?

    Thanks to those who responded to my original query: Dan Alford, Martin Ball, Keira Ballantyne, Donn Bayard, Peter Daniels, Alice Faber, Rob Hagiwara, Richard Laurent, Jerry Neufeld-Kaiser, Bart Mathias, Gerald Mathias, James Myers, Stefan Ploch, Kimary Shahin, Hal Schiffman, Peter Tan, Bob Trammell, Larry Trask, Dovie Wylie

    Apologies if I've left anyone out, and deep apologies if I've misrepresented anyone's views.

    shelly harrison centre for linguistics university of western australia nedlands, w.a. 6907 australia

    email: shellycyllene.uwa.edu.au fax: +61-8-9380-1154 phone: +61-8-9380-2859 web: http://www.general.uwa.edu.au/~shelly/