Re: Idiolect Sound Change, or Broader Usage? n# > m#
| From: | Patrick Littell <puchitao@...> |
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| Date: | Tuesday, October 18, 2005, 3:18 |
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On 10/17/05, Arthaey Angosii <arthaey@...> wrote:
> I've noticed an unusual sound change, which I *think* is a personal
> sound change. Sometimes -- not all the time, but enough that I will
> notice it -- I change word-final /n/ into /m/. Actually, I believe
> it's specifically utterance-final /n/ that gets changed.
>
> Thus, I have heard myself say <button> ['bV?m=] and <-ing> [im]. (Now
> that I'm trying to come up with real examples, of course I can't think
> of any! *grin*) My dialect is Californian American English,
> specifically from the SF Bay Area, and I'm 21.
>
> My question is whether anyone else has heard of such a sound change,
> or whether it's me being strange and unique. :)
>
>
My guess is that it's probably an artifact of your closing your lips
utterance-finally. Compare it to "Yep" and "Nope", which likely arose
from the same process. If you cut off an emphatic "yeah" or "no"
sentence-finally, you get something like a final glottal stop, which
pretty naturally can become bilabial if you shut your mouth quickly.
Someone who speaks Portuguese might be able to comment. Consider the
alternation "homem" ~ "homens", in which the word-final /n/ in *homen
becomes [m] (I dunno whether synchronically or diachronically.)
(On a side note, I've been told that my final alveolars sometimes
become retroflex! I'm not sure what their exact point of articulation
is -- it might be alveopalatal instead -- but it's occasioned
comment.)
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