Re: Lax counterpart of [&]?

In a message dated 9/14/2003 6:51:14 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
isidora@ZAMORA.COM writes:


>Somewhere in this thread someone (but I'll never find it in my mailbox now)
>asserted that there was no lax version of [&] (presumably he was talkning
>about ash.)  It seems to me, though, that I could swear that I remember one
>professor actually demonstrating tense and lax versions of ash.  IIRC, one
>of them was a variation used in stressed syllables in certain dialects of
>American English.  I don't recall any notation for it (other than
>diacritics, perhaps.)  The difference was fairly slight, but perceptible.

In his book _Principles of Linguistic Change: Social Factors_ (and in other
publications) William Labov of the U of PA discusses tense vs lax varieties of
"short a" (ie, IPA ash, CXS [ & ] ) in Philadelphia and elsewhere.

Doug