the good old days, and that pesky letter "shee" (formerly "shch")

[Paul B. Gallagher]

Katherine wrote:

> Thanks for your replies Paul, Will, and Susan!
> 
> ...
> 
> Paul, you're right that the British vowel change also has some 
> centralization to it. It would be more accurate to say "lowering with
>  some backing," I guess. But as you say, not to an actual back vowel
> like [ɑ]. The phenomenon you're referring to in American English is
> described in the literature as "BATH raising." If you search for that
> phrase in Google books, you can read a great description in vol. 3 of
> Wells's Accents of English. The British pronunciation of [pɑ:s] for
> "pass" can be similarly sought out in vol. 1 as "TRAP-BATH split".
> And as I understand it, for speakers with an advanced Northern Cities
> shift (i.e., where the sound change has "gotten further"), fronting
> of [ɑ] gives a new [æ], with [stæp] signs and dentists in nice white
> [smæks]. Finally, in case you're interested, the American speaker in
> Ladefoged's materials did grow up in Ithaca -- good call.

Wells' description of the phenomenon is excellent, and the words he says 
are affected are exactly the right ones, all the way down to "badger" 
(no) vs. "badges" (yes). However, he says we don't have what I've 
denoted /ǣ/ before /l/; I would beg to differ. I agree that we don't 
have /ǣ/ from /æ/ AKA "ă" in this context, but like Trager I do identify 
/ǣ/ with the vowel in words like "pail/pale" and "fair/fare," which have 
different etymologies (usually what is traditionally called "long a" or 
"ā"). So essentially what we have is a lengthening in these contexts, 
with the lengthened vowel identified with the existing "long" vowel. In 
AE the lengthening must be ordered after fronting ("ă" > /æ/) to yield 
/ǣ/ = [ɛə] etc., whereas in BE lengthening must be ordered before 
fronting so as to eliminate words like "bath" from the pool (some "ă" = 
[a] > [a:]); "ă" in the remaining words like "trap" can then be fronted 
without affecting "bath."

I especially like the terminology "bath raising" and "trap/bath 
raising," because "bath" is one of the affected words in both AE and BE, 
and "trap" AFAIK is not affected in either (pace Woodward et al.).

A related lengthening of stressed lax ("short") vowels is underway in 
many AE dialects before intervocalic /r/: "spear-it," "ear-itable" with 
lengthening of /ɪ/ to /i/, "tear-ible," "Mary-ment" with lengthening of 
/ɛ/ to /e/, "soar-y," "oar-ange," "Floor-ida" with lengthening of /ɔ/ to 
/o/, etc. Personally, I still have /spɪrɪt/, /ɪrɪtəbl/, /tɛrəbl/, 
/mɛrimɪnt/, /sari/ (like the dress), /arɪnǰ/, /flarɪdə/. Wells touches 
on this in his following section 6.1.5, but not nearly as thoroughly and 
systematically as for /ǣ/.

Finally, another AE allophonic variation may be of some interest to 
Slavicists: schwa seems to be splitting into a back allophone [ə] like ъ 
and a front allophone [ɪ] like ь. I haven't investigated this 
thoroughly, but my first impression is that the split is governed by the 
consonantal context: "sofa" [sofə], "sofas" [sofɪz].

-- 
War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
--
Paul B. Gallagher
pbg translations, inc.
"Russian Translations That Read Like Originals"
http://pbg-translations.com

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