vowels

[Mark_Mandel at DRAGONSYS.COM]

Mai Kuha <mkuha at ALTAVISTA.COM> writes:

>>>>>
Great! This is an example of Southern Vowel Shift, right? What I can't figure
out is how to deliver this story verbally (to students in class). Can anyone
help?  The forms spelled as "hell" and "hail" in the story should both be
pronounced the way "hell" is pronounced by people NOT participating in the
Southern Vowel Shift, right?
<<<<<

Well, my wife read it aloud to me pronouncing both close to the way that we (New
Yorkers) say "hail", not "hell". ("Close to" rather than "exactly as" because
she was applying an accent to all the dialogue. "Head" came out as ~~ "haid", or
['hey- at d] (@=schwa).)

>>>>>
But does the punchline really disambiguate the word, if the story is heard,
rather than read?

     [...]

> "No, Mrs. H., REALLY, my brother hit me with a piece of
> ice in the head and it hurt like *hail* falling on my head."
<<<<<


Try treating the last clause ("*hail* falling on my head") more distinctly as a
clause. (Pause to try it out and listen to myself.) Stress timing on "HURT LIKE
HAIL FALLing ON my HEAD"; stress on "hail", "fall-", "on" (tone descending
through these three local peaks), and "head" (high tone again); the timing
leaves breaks between the successive stressed syllables HURT, LIKE, HAIL, and
then the unstressed syllables string the final clause together as a unit.


   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/
                     (speaking for myself)