bad phonetics makes the Style Invitational

[Dennis R. Preston]

If the general (even well-educated) public's ignorance of linguistics
resulted in no socially destructive behaviors, maybe we could lighten
up some. (Actually, I find us all pretty lightened up a lot of the
time anyhow.)

dInIs


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
>

--
Dennis R. Preston
Professor of Linguistics
Department of Linguistics & Germanic, Slavic,
      Asian & African Languages
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1027
e-mail: preston at msu.edu
phone: (517) 353-9290