USAGE: THEORY/USAGE: RE: Not *that* vowel again! (was: Personaladjectives (was:Fruitful typos...)

And Rosta wrote:

> Tom:
> > Well, maybe, but even linguists of great reknown often make pronouncements
> > about language that are just flat wrong.  Chomsky, for example AFAIK still
> > insists
>
> I'm not aware of him having said anything about English phonology for
> the last 30 years.
FWIW, my professor mentioned that to me about two years ago.

> > that no English dialects have [i] before velar nasal [N], but this
> > is clearly incorrect -- everyone I know, or have ever met, uses will say
> > /pleiiN/, not /pleiIN/, for <playing>.
>
> A strange example of Chomsky's fallibility. I take your word for it that
> the people in your vicinity say [pleiiN], but the norm is [pleI(j)IN].
> I say [pleIN] and [pleI@N].
Oh no -- I didn't mean to say that we use the allomorph with [N] all the
time; far from it.  I was just using that as an example of the phonetic string
<-ing>.   The same goes for <king> [k_hiN] and <wing> [wiN].  (In fact, in my
dialect at least, it is quite impossible for any lax vowel to show up before
[N] -- no [I] or [E]).

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Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
ICQ#: 4315704   AIM: Deuterotom
Website: <http://www.angelfire.com/tx/eclectorium/>
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."
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