ophthalmologist (was: Dip-thong)

[Mark_Mandel at DRAGONSYS.COM]

David Bowie <db.list at PMPKN.NET> writes:

>>>>>
From:    Kim & Rima McKinzey <rkm at SLIP.NET>

<snip>

: And no one has brought up ophthalmologist.  Not only is the ph an
: issue, but how many of you actually pronounce that first l?

<David timidly raises his hand>

Um, well, like, i do. At least variably.
<<<<<

Me, too. Consistently.

But I'm one of those weirdos who practically learned to read before learning to
talk. (Maybe a lot of us here are?)

When this question came up I said the word a few times while paying attention
to* what was happening in my mouth. If I'm not pronouncing it with care and
precision, during the second vowel (which becoms schwa rather than ash) the tip
of the tongue barely loses contact with the back of the upper incisors and the
alveolar ridge, or maintains contact. So the theta and the l actually give each
other some coarticulatory support.

* (This calls for a verb we don't have unambiguously in English:
     listen : hearing :: X : touch
  Does *any* language have it, besides maybe Lojban?)


>>>>>
Of course, just to prove i'm not *entirely* bizarre, i pronounce the ph
in ophthalmologist as a p.

One more thought on diphthong--might the dipfthong pronunciation (the
one i think, but am not sure, that i use) be a simple case of timing?
That is, for some people the ph gets pronounced as a p (simple
dissimilation--fricative-fricative becomes stop-fricative), but the
manner changes slightly before the place does, giving what sounds like
affricate-fricative.

I bring up the possibility from the case of Thomson/Thompson--both the
same word and pronounced the same way (with the p) because voicing cuts
out before place and manner are over with.
<<<<<

I don't think the cases are parallel. What we're calling "manner" here is not a
global characteristic of the speech organs except by abstraction -- unlike
voicing and nasality, whose values are each effected in the same way(s) for
every phone, including the m(p)s cluster of Thom(p)son. The stop/fricative
dimension is implemented at each particular point of articulation by the
articulators of each particular phone:
     lower lip - edge of upper front teeth for [f]
     tongue-tip - back of upper front teeth for [th]

But, now, some people pronounce [th] apico-interdentally, which is mechanically
incompatible with the labiodental articulation of [f]. Even with an apicodental
articulation such as mine, where the two mobile articulators are not competing
for the same piece of stationary real estate, the constricted airstream presses
them apart, extending the "zone of contention" between them. This could well, I
guess, cause speakers to tend to avoid the difficult juxtaposition by changing
one phone (o[p]thalmologist) or deleting one (fi[]th).


-- Mark

   Mark A. Mandel : Senior Linguist and Manager of Acoustic Data
         Mark_Mandel at dragonsys.com : Dragon Systems, Inc.
 320 Nevada St., Newton, MA 02460, USA : http://www.dragonsys.com