SoCal vowels (was Re: sending mail to the list)
| From: | J Matthew Pearson <pearson@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Thursday, May 3, 2001, 16:51 |
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Steg Belsky wrote:
> On Wed, 2 May 2001 18:22:57 EDT David Peterson <DigitalScream@...>
> writes:
>
> > I realized at the time that it was kind of a joke, yet...as I
> > sounded it out and did over and over again, I found I do have two
> different
> > vowels in "put" and "book": my lips are rounded with "put" and they
> definitely
> > are not with "book". Did I just invent this when I saw that? Does any
> > other native English speaker have this? Any native Southern California
> English
> > speaker?
>
> I have it too... it seems to be connected to the aspiration on the /p/ of
> "put". So it's more a feature of the preceding consonant than anything
> tied to the vowel.
This is an interesting hypothesis. So do you have the same contrast between
"could" (more rounded) and "good" (less rounded)? We should test this
systematically:
If Steg's guess is right, then the vowels in column A should all sound the
same, and the vowels in column B should all sound the same, and the vowels in
column A should sound different from the vowels in column B...
A B
put book
took look
could good
soot rook
foot crook
should
shook
cook
hook
What do you think?
Matt.
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