Re: Beijing, Zhongguo, etc.

YAEPT alert!

On Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 4:31 AM, Eugene Oh <un.doing@...> wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 1:28 AM, Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...> wrote:
>>
>> > /E/ does not occur before /n/
>>
>> It does in my 'lect; "hen", "pen", etc. have no diphthongalization...
>>
>> Where [E] can't occur for me is before /g/ or /N/.
>>
>
> So what happens to words like "peg" or "length"?
Diphthongalized in the direction of [ej].  The word "peg" rhymes with
"Haig" for me in casual speech, although when speaking carefully I
reduce it back to [E].

> Additionally I don't understand Jim's comment about the prohibition of /E/
> before /n/: "pen", "men", "glen", "fen", "when"...?
In some dialects, appaently including Jim's, the above
diphthongalization applies before /n/ as well.

I think Jim's description and use of phonemic notation might be
confusing; this "prohibition" is really a sound change, where a bunch
of words that are historically in DRESS have moved over to FACE in
some lects.  I imagine Jim used slashes instead of brackets to
indicate that he was talking broadly about the English "short E" sound
that characterizes DRESS rather than narrowly about the particular
realization of that sound.

The whole effect would be just an allophonic variation - /E/ gets
realized as [ej] before (/n/ and) /g/ and /N/ - if not for the fact
that /ej/ is otherwise a separate phoneme, with many minimal pairs
such as "wreck"/"rake" (which example indicates that velarity is not
the important thing about the /g/ and /N/ environments).

--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

Reply