Re: USAGE: YAEPT: Re: Diversity and uniformity AND No rants! (USAGE: di"f"thong) -- responses to Andreas and Ray.

Mark J. Reed wrote:
> And I don't need to know how you pronounce "grass" to know what you
> mean by it, but I nevertheless find it interesting that you pronounce
> it differently from me.  Hey, I'm human. And thus the YAEPT's.

From: Joe
"Southeastern dialects (and RP) of English tend to have [A:] instead of [&]
in a variety of odd places, generally before fricatives, but fairly
arbitrarily.  Hence 'grass', 'bath', 'path', 'laugh' are [grA:s], [bA:T],
[pA:T] and [lA:f].  It's inconsistent though, and I don't know why."


Joe,
Southern English lengthening of low front and back vowels before voiceless
fricatives happened in the course of the 17th century:

[&] > [&:] => ME staff [st&f] > [st&:f] (further development in the 18th
century > [sta:f]), similarly: glass, ask, path, laugh;

[A] > [A:] => ME soft [sAft] > [sA:ft] (further development in the 18th
century > [sO:ft]), likewise: off, cross, frost, cough, wrath,

While length in 'staff'-words is standardised in southern BE and RP, the
short vowel has been taught in the 'soft'-words, though dialects and
sociolects retain length, as in <officer> (dial.spel. <orf'cer> ['O:fs@])

Intervocalic voiceless fricatives didn't usually trigger lengthening, thus
we have got <pass> [pA:s] ~ <passage> ['p&sIdZ], also: chaffer, classic,
gossip, coffin, profit;

Some newer and so called "book-words" are not affected by this change, such
as: <aftermath> [-m&T], <chastity>, <plastic>, <aspect>.

[A:] in <father> ['fA:D@] and <rather> ['rA:D@] can only be explained by
mixed formes:
ME father [a:] with long vowel > 1.st vowel shift (15th c.) > [E:]
alternating with
ME father [a] with short vowel > 2.nd vowel shift (16th/17th c.) > [&]

Result:
['fE:D@r] (quantity) + ['f&D@r] (quality) = [f&:D@r] (3. vowel shift 2nd
half of 18th c. > ['fa:D@(r)])

Dan

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