bad phonetics makes the Style Invitational

[George Thompson]

Aren't you'uns getting a bit grim about this?  I think it's pretty funny.  A "dental fricative" ought to sound obscene, even if in the prosy world of philology it doesn't.  And perhaps the author chose "velar" because it called to mind a morsel of genital anatomy?

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998.

----- Original Message -----
From: Mark A Mandel <mam at THEWORLD.COM>
Date: Wednesday, May 21, 2003 4:05 pm
Subject: Re: bad phonetics makes the Style Invitational

> On Wed, 21 May 2003, Gordon, Matthew J. wrote:
>
> #It's bad phonologically too assuming the 'she' is an English
> speaker -
> #aren't alveolar nasals unlikely before velar stops given nasal
> #assimilation? And when was the last time Chomsky wrote anything about
> #phonetics?
> #
> # >>> >>>She moaned. It was a low, yearnful moan. Not a moan that
> Chomsky#would describe as a dental fricative, but more as an
> alveolar nasal
> #followed by a velar stop.
> #(Toby Hansen, Lyndhurst, Ohio)
>
> Yes, but I figured most readers of this list would recognize that.
> Here's how I originally replied to the sender, with cc to my family:
>
>        >>>>>
>
> Oh my god! The horror! the horror!
>
> Even beyond that:
>
> 1. Chomsky is the linguist everyone has heard of. He's not
> particularlya phoneticist, which this calls for.
>
> 2. Dental fricative: In English, "th" of "think" or "this",
> neither of
> which is anything like a moan.
>
> 3. "Alveolar nasal followed by a velar stop": n + k, or n + g. But not
> as in "think" or "finger", because the n is explicitly
> ("alveolar") not
> the velar sound you get there. In English you can hear this in "Be
> careful wheN Crossing the street" or "A maN Gets tired of that."
> And not
> much more like a moan than a dental fricative is, much less a
> "yearnful"one.
>
>        <<<<<
>
> -- Dr. Whom, Consulting Linguist, Grammarian, Orthoepist, and
>   Philological Busybody
>   a.k.a. Mark A. Mandel
>