Not *that* vowel again! (was: Personal adjectives (was:Fruitful typos...)

BP Jonsson wrote:

> At 21:30 -0500 22.1.2000, Steg Belsky wrote:
> >
> >Not *that* vowel again!
> >Most American dialects seem to limit it to an allophone of /&/ before
> >liquids:
> >"care", "bail".
> >The dialect of the NYC Metro Area extends it to other words like "grass",
> >"crash", "bad".
> >
> >I've seen it represented as /E@/, but i've always felt that it starts a
> >little bit higher, somewhere probably between /e/ and /E/.
>
> It sounds as [e@] to my foreign ear.  I've seen it represented by American
> linguists as [I@], but I think that may be because there is no
> monophthongal [e] sound in their speech.
Well, maybe, but even linguists of great reknown often make pronouncements
about language that are just flat wrong.  Chomsky, for example AFAIK still
insists that no English dialects have [i] before velar nasal [N], but this is
clearly
incorrect -- everyone I know, or have ever met, uses will say /pleiiN/, not
/pleiIN/, for <playing>.

> I know one person who pronounces the land of his birth as ['ke@n@d@],
I suspect, though obviously cannot prove, in this case that he has
[k_h&^n@d@] -- where [&^] represents a raised vowel somewhat
closer to [E] found in many Western and Southern dialects (which
applies to Western Canada, as well).

> What strikes me with NYC speech is that /&/ seems to be nasalized in all
> positions.
This is actually a common feature of many North American dialects.


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Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
ICQ#: 4315704   AIM: Deuterotom
Website: <http://www.angelfire.com/tx/eclectorium/>
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."
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