Re: USAGE: THEORY/USAGE: RE: [CONLANG] A discourse on

John Cowan:
> > madder (brown) : madder (more mad), gladden (iris) : gladden
> > (make glad), lagging (insulation) : lagging (dawdling), possibly
> > can (verb) : can (noun).
>
> None of these contrast for me.  How do you say "lagging" (being
> imprisoned)?
I don't have 'lag' as a verb in that sense in my lect, but a verb
derived from 'lag' (prison inmate) would, in a regular way, be
[l&:gIN], because derived from [l&:g].

> Not a GA word, of course.  The last example brings up
> the joke about "we eat all we [k&n], and what we [k&nt], we [k&n]",
> which the (archetypally stupid, as usually in jokes) Brit mangles
> into "We eat all we can, and what we can't, we put up in tins"!
An antique Brit, perhaps. Interestingly, btw, _can't_ is /kAnt/
for all British accents that have the /&/:/A/ contrast, afaik. I
wonder why that is.

--And.