laxing of high front vowel before /g/ and in quiche

[Beverly Flanigan]

We have a Meigs County in SE Ohio, but whether it refers to the same family
name or not I don't know (our Meigs was an army general--Revolution? Civil
War?).  In any case, here it's pronounced [mEgz].  Assuming it's an
American name, I wouldn't posit [maIgz] or [migz], but [mIgz] seems
possible, esp. considering the [gEt/gIt] alternation common in the
Midland.  Besides, I don't think Chicago falls into the area of /i/
laxing.  See Labov's Phonological Atlas maps on his website.

At 12:41 PM 10/24/00 -0400, you wrote:
>Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> writes:
>
> >>>>>
>Right; that was me--and, as noted in the dissertation I cited, it's
>somewhat more general in Pittsburgh and, I assume, Southern Ohio
>(which, as Beverly pointed out, also shares the "Pittsburghese"
>monophthongization feature yielding "dahntahn").  The laxing rule
>applies before /l/ as well as /g/, and to a range of non-low tense
>vowels:  /i/ laxes to [I], /e/ to [E], and /u/ and /o/ both to [U].
><<<<<
>
>This is way out of range, but how about Chicago? I learned a song called
>"The Lincoln Park Pirates" from a tape, including a reference to /mIgz/
>Field. Not until this summer, visiting Chicago for the ALA convention and
>staying a couple of blocks from Lincoln Park, did I learn that it is
>spelled "Meigs".* I would have read the "ei" as /aI/ but I can easily see
>it being /i:/. But not /I/, without such laxing as you describe.
>
>* (Checking on the spelling just now, I found http://friendsofmeigs.org/ ,
>which includes a live camera view. Apparently the field is threatened. But
>this is OT.)
>
>-- Mark


_____________________________________________
Beverly Olson Flanigan         Department of Linguistics
Ohio University                     Athens, OH  45701
Ph.: (740) 593-4568              Fax: (740) 593-2967
http://www.cats.ohiou.edu/linguistics/dept/flanigan.htm