polka(dot) pronunciation?: /l/ deletion

[Dennis R. Preston]

You betcha; just like my momma's 'raspberry' with /sp/. In all three
of the items you mention, since the /l/ is also in a cluster (as I
mentioned in my last note on this), I have no trace of it.

On the other hand, vowel height and frontness is also at play.
Although I have no trce of /l/ in "psalm," some vocalized residue is
there in, for example "elm" which, for me, is not /Em/, but /Ewm/. Of
course, here there may be a strange interplay in all this between an
inability to use compensatory lengthening on "true" short (lax)
vowels, whereas the /a/ in "calm," for example, although usually lax
in my dialect is "tensable"; not surprising considering its complex
history in English.

dInIs

>In a /l/ deletion dialect, then, could the full /l/ in "palm" and "psalm"
>(and maybe "folk") be hypercorrection?
>
>-dsb
>Douglas S. Bigham
>Southern Illinois University - Carbondale

--
Dennis R. Preston
Department of Linguistics and Languages
Michigan State University
East Lansing MI 48824-1027 USA
preston at pilot.msu.edu
Office: (517)353-0740
Fax: (517)432-2736