Re: THEORY: Ray on ambisyllabicity

At 9:48 pm -0400 15/10/00, Nik Taylor wrote:
>And Rosta wrote:
>> Yeah. We need to ask Dirk how he accounts for:
>>
>>   Sal   [saw]
>>   Sally [sali]
>>
>> in demotic SE Insular English, if /l/ isn't in an onset in "Sally".
>> Also:
>
>I've noticed that all these different arguments are using different
>dialects.
Yes - but /l/ is something needs to be addressed in this argument.  In most
English dialects that I know of (only Irish English comes immediately to
mind as an exception), /l/ as an onset is 'light' (i.e. not velarized) and
'dark' (i.e. velarized) as syllabic coda.  Thus English 'Sal' and French
'sal' sound quite different.

In London and, as and says, much of the SE of England the "dark l" has
become simply [w].  But 'Sally' is never pronounced with either a velarized
_l_ or with [w].  It is always IMR the regular alveolar lateral one finds
in initial onset.

[snip]
>yet it seems that in this dialect it is an onset.  I wonder, does that
>dialect have evidence supporting /l/ as being a coda at all in Sally?
Nope.
---------------
And Rosta also wrote:
[...]
>Also:
>
>  hoe          [h@w]
>  holy         [h@wli]   (/l/ only in 2nd syllable)
>  whole, hole  [hOw]
>  wholly       [hOwli]   (/l/ ambisyllabic, triggering vowel
>                          allophone in 1st syllable)
Very true.  _holy_ and _wholly_ are certain not homohones in SE English,
whether 'demotic' or 'learned'.  Although I'm very familiar with the
'demotic' [w], and here it mny times every day, I (and my wife) use a
velarized _l_ (SAMPA [5]); thus _holy_ is ['h@w.li], whereas _wholly_ is
['hO5.li].  I think the apparent 'ambisyllacity' of the _ll_ in the latter
word (demotic [wl], 'learned' [5l]) is due to the bimorphemic nature of the
word which, despite the conventional spelling, is being treated as
"whole-ly" (indeed, the spelling _wholely_ in not unknown in 'substandard'
writing).

Ray.

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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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