Re: USAGE: front vowel tensing [was: English notation]

Lars Henrik Mathiesen sikayal:

> I have a related question here. According to some authorities (hi And
> and Ray), <pays> is /pEiz/ but <says> is /sEz/ in normal British
> pronunciation.
>
> However, with some speakers I'm sure I hear a different continuant
> sound after the /E/ in the latter form. To my Danish ears, it sounds
> like my own postalveolar /D/. Can anyone else hear it, or am I crazy?
I think this may be native language interference.  When approaching the
alveolar ridge for a fricative, the tongue must necessarily pass through
the region for an approximant.  Since your native language includes such
an alveolar approximant, you perceive that sound even though there isn't
any separate articulatory gesture to create it.

A similar thing happened to me with the Spanish /ñ/, which a native
speaker in my phonetics class pronounces as a pure palatal nasal.  I could
accept that the sound included a palatal nasal, but I insisted on hearing
a palatal off-glide, too.  After a lot of articulating and careful
listening I finally conceded that the off-glide was a figment of my
English-speaking imagination.  I think that something similar may have
happened to you.

Not that I'm an expert on this variety of English or on Dutch--just
offering a suggestion.


Jesse S. Bangs jaspax@u.washington.edu

"If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are
perfectly safe; if you look at it the thousandth time, you are in
frightful danger of seeing it for the first time."
--G.K. Chesterton