USAGE: YAEPT (was Re: Ba'l-a-i-bal-an)
| From: | Philip Newton <philip.newton@...> |
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| Date: | Tuesday, May 23, 2006, 13:13 |
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On 5/21/06, John Vertical <johnvertical@...> wrote:
[> Jim Henry wrote:]
> >* worlang /w@`leIN/ [ < "wor(ship) lang(uage)"]
>
> OK, I'll bite. Why the /eI/?
I suspect this is actually /&/ phonemically, but [eI] phonetically for
Jim Henry.
Nasals, especially the velar nasal, tend to change the quality of
vowels -- for example, the vowel sound in |sing| is, to me, about
half-way between that in |sin| and that in |seen|. (And trying to
pronounce |sing| with the vowel in |sin| makes it sound more like
*/s@N/ than /sIN/!)
I presume the [eI] involves not only the effect of the velar nasal but
also æ-tensing (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_English_short_A#.C3.A6-tensing
).
Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
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