18.2240, Sum: Stephen King's Uvular Nasal Tap

Wed Jul 25 20:22:37 UTC 2007

LINGUIST List: Vol-18-2240. Wed Jul 25 2007. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 18.2240, Sum: Stephen King's Uvular Nasal Tap

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1)
Date: 18-Jul-2007
From: Karen Chung < karchung at ntu.edu.tw >
Subject: Stephen King's Uvular Nasal Tap

-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2007 16:21:28
From: Karen Chung [karchung at ntu.edu.tw]
Subject: Stephen King's Uvular Nasal Tap
E-mail this message to a friend:
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Query for this summary posted in LINGUIST Issue: 17.230                                                                                                                                                

Here is the long-overdue summary of the responses I received to the
following post, dated 24 Jan 2006, regarding author Stephen King's uvular
nasal tap:

http://linguistlist.org/issues/17/17-230.html#1

	I cross-posted the message to two other lists, the Phonetics list and the
Teaching of Phonetics list, so some of the responses came over these two
channels:

http://lists.topica.com/lists/phonetics/read/message.html?mid=811814417&sort=d&start=697
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind0601&L=phonet&T=0&P=388

	The new link to the video of the interview with Stephen King is:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/entertainment/fishbowl//ref=amb_link_3442122_2/103-3793378-7820618?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-1&pf_rd_r=0H7R6BF3X3ZHAF69P1CG&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=234084701&pf_rd_i=16305491

	Or go to the Amazon homepage:

http://www.amazon.com/

then to ''For the Community'', and click on ''Amazon Fishbowl''; from the
new page, click on ''Stephen King''.

	Here are a few more links to audio files of Stephen King talking, for
comparison:

http://www.stephenkingshop.com/interviews.htm
http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=13&prgDate=6-May-94
http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=13&prgDate=10-Oct-00
http://town.hall.org/Archives/radio/IMS/Club/102993_club_ITH.html

	Eric Bakovic posted a blog entry with further insights into the phenomenon
here:

http://camba.ucsd.edu/phonoloblog/index.php/2006/01/24/253/

	With warm thanks to the following LINGUISTs for your responses:

George Allen  alleng at msu.edu
Eric Armstrong  earmstro at yorku.ca
Roy Becker  roybecker at humnet.ucla.edu
Jennifer Cornish  jennifer.cornish at gmail.com
Andy Elliott  aelliott at chicagonet.net
Larry Horn  laurence.horn at yale.edu
Paul Johnston  paul.johnston at wmich.edu
Bob Knippen  knippen at brandeis.edu
Christina Kuo  scullyxfox at yahoo.com.tw
Mark Mandel  mamandel at ldc.upenn.edu
Nick Pharris  npharris at umich.edu
Steven Schaefer  steven.schaefer at libertysurf.fr
Jim Scobbie  JScobbie at QMUC.ac.uk
Gary Taylor  gary_taylor_98 at yahoo.com
Rémy Viredaz  remy.viredaz at bluewin.ch
Yi Xu  yi at phon.ucl.ac.uk
Malcah Yaeger-Dror  malcah at email.arizona.edu

Summary:

	Stephen King apparently substitutes, fairly consistently, a uvular nasal
tap for /l/ only prevocalically, that is, in the position in which most
English speakers have an alveolar or ''clear /l/''. Various possible
explanations were offered to explain this substitution: 

	(1) Some suggested that it might be related to a horrific hit-and-run car
accident King was involved in many years ago; this, however, seems to be
highly unlikely. King's speech seems unremarkable in all other aspects.

	(2) One respondent thought it might be the velum closing and opening, not
the uvula, interpreted as a dark /l/ on a person with swollen adenoids or
some other factor that prevents the velum from staying closed; however, a
close listening to the interview reveals the sound to be unequivocally uvular.

	(3) Some respondents simply considered it a personal quirk of King's. One
noticed it in audio recordings of King's books in which he himself reads,
found it distracting, and he now avoids these recordings. Another
respondent called it ''a speech defect'' of King's. Another  suggests that
/l/ is a ''non-trivial'' sound for a child to acquire, and some do not
learn it well. Such children will find a substitution, e.g. /j/, will get
corrected by adults, then they may happen on a sound not in the system at
all but that is still somewhat similar to the target sound. They may get
less negative feedback on this sound, then end up sticking with it. This
sounds like a quite plausible explanation in King's case. 

	(4) Some pointed out that Americans have more dark /l/s, and probably
darker dark /l/s, than speakers of standard British English, and uvular
/l/s simply represent a pushing of this feature toward its natural limits.

	(5) Some suggested that it may possibly be a regional feature found in
certain speakers of New York/New Jersey/New England/East Coast US English.
Tom Brokaw, for example, has it for some of his /l/s: 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6531566/

	One respondent reported having this feature himself as a child growing up
on the East Coast, and says he received speech therapy to correct it after
the family moved to the Midwest (see also Bakovic's blog entry above).
Another respondent reported that his father, who grew up in rural New
England, also has this feature. 

	Ira Glass was mentioned by some respondents; however he seems to have a
uvular approximant or fricative /l/ in all positions; in initial positions
it sometimes sounds like a gurgle bubbling up, producing something close to
a rhotic uvular trill. With King, air ''bubbles up'' to separate the uvula
from the back of the tongue to form a *single* tap rather than a turbulent
fricative or a trill with regular free vibration. 

	Kevin Bacon was also mentioned as having a strongly uvular /l/. 

	One respondent claims that /l/ is sometimes even realized as a
pharyngeal/epiglottal fricative or approximant by many Americans,
especially Northeasterners and Midwesterners. 

	One respondent said that uvular /l/ is common among French speakers,
especially with ''u'' and ''eu''.

	Another respondent told of a female native speaker of Hebrew who
substituted a velar nasal for initial /l/, and something like the Hebrew
dorsal velo-uvular approximant rhotic for postvocalic /l/. He pointed out
that the Hebrew /l/ is invariably a lamino-/apico-alveolar. He said the
woman's pronunciation of /l/ was very odd, and that he'd never encountered
such before. He was also amused that the three other people, all musicians,
who were talking with this woman on the same occasion didn't seem to notice
the odd pronunciation at all. 

	One correspondent expressed delighted surprise that such an ''exotic''
sound should turn up in a phonetically garden-variety language like US
English, rather than in the Caucasus or Amazonia. 

	From the feedback received, I would tentatively conclude that the feature
is an idiosyncratic (i.e. found only in certain individuals) regional (i.e.
East coast) one; I received no reports of anyone from other parts of the
country exhibiting the feature.

	Stephen King's substitution of a uvular nasal tap for [l], and related
''l'' phenomena, such as Ira Glass's invariable uvular /l/
approximant/fricative, might be a fruitful area for further research
particularly for someone living on the US East coast, where one would be
closest to the data. I personally do not at present plan to do any
additional research on this; anybody interested is welcome to develop this
topic in further depth. 

Karen Chung
National Taiwan University
http://homepage.ntu.edu.tw/~karchung/
karchung at ntu.edu.tw 

Linguistic Field(s): Language Acquisition
                     Phonetics
                     Phonology
                     Sociolinguistics

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