Re: YAEPT (was Re: Stress and consonants)

Eric wrote:
<<
Really? Do tell! If there is a voicing difference, I can't perceive
it -- although my dialect has some Canadian raising tendencies, so it
distinguishes "rider" from "writer" by the quality of the /ai/
diphthong.
 >>

This phenomenon is known as the near merger: sounds that
almost merge, but which, technically, remain distinct.  The Canadian
case doesn't count, as I think it's treated as a true distinction,
based on vowel length.  There have been several studies in recent
years on different phenomena that have been classically described
as mergers which suggest that the sounds have not, in fact, merged.
One was the tap in English (varieties without a vowel length
distinction, e.g. "madder" and "matter"), as mentioned earlier.
Two others are word-final obstruent devoicing in both Russian
and German.  Several tests were run, and the facts are different for
each case (I think there's a bit more length on a final voiced obstruent
for German, and in Russian the voiced one is only half-devoiced,
etc.), but the idea is that these are cases where a native speaker
can't tell the difference, but they *produce* the difference,
consistently.
So, even if it seems like one word is totally interchangeable with
another, speakers pick up on subtle cues that keep the pairs
distinct, and produce the difference, so that, later on, the two
sounds that "merged" can, in fact, become more distinct.

The phonetics professor down at UCSD has actually picked up
on the idea, and has been running some tests on a couple English
phenomena.  She's worked a bit with the tap/flap, and also words
like "prince"/"prints"; "mints"/"mince", etc.  Some people say the
pairs of words are identical; some say they're totally different;
some confuse the two...  I think preliminary results are showing
that the two are, in fact, pronounced differently, both by those
who claim they're identical, and those who say they're different.

The idea is a neat one, though.  Essentially, it suggests that part of
the history of a language is retained in the language itself, even if
speakers aren't consciously aware of it.  If you want to read some
more about it, check out the stuff by William Labov, and then
reference hop.

-David
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"A male love inevivi i'ala'i oku i ue pokulu'ume o heki a."
"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."

-Jim Morrison

http://dedalvs.free.fr/

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