Different dialects, same error

[Dennis R. Preston]

Of course since it ain't nobody (leastways nobody I ever knowed)
named "Windy," I never took it to be nothing but "Wendy," even in the
face of the pragmatic evidence of "stormy eyes."

The claim that contextual evidence will cause an outsider to
rearrange his or her phonemic interpretation is very interesting, but
not supported in empirical tests.

It's true of "insiders': in an interesting paper at last year's NWAV,
Rakerd and Plichta showed that the more context (i.e., phonetic
context, not pragmatic) Northern Cities shifters heard, the more
likely they were to tolerate a fronted /a/. That is, they continued
to hear "socks" rather than "sacks" at a much more fronted (i.e.,
higher F2) when they were given more phonetic evidence that the
speaker was a Northern Cities shifter. Non-shifters, put the /a/ ~
/ae/ boundary at the same place, regardless of the amount of phonetic
context.

It wouold be interesting to see what northerners would do with

/ay thingk jaek sEd pIn/

versus

/ay theyngk jaek seyd pIn/

with regard to the last item.

I'm takin bets they'd hear "pin" in both cases. Southerners would, I
reckon, be another matter.

dInIs




>At 1:58 PM -0400 9/4/04, Douglas G. Wilson wrote:
>>>As a New Yorker, I'm definitely in the group that
>>>distinguishes -in- from -en-, unlike you and dInIs, and like your
>>>friend, I was a bit puzzled about Windy as a name.  But that's
>>>definitely what I heard, and unlike what happens when I'm listening
>>>to those who neutralize, I really did hear it as Windy in the song
>>>and not Wendy.
>>
>>I distinguish /In/ from /En/ but many didn't where I grew up and I wouldn't
>>have any trouble understanding "pin" for "pen" etc. based on context. To
>>make this "Windy" into "Wendy" however never occurred to me for an instant:
>>I took the name in the song to be an odd nickname and I've never wondered
>>about it at all. Why? I suppose that those persons who would pronounce
>>"Wendy" the same as "windy" would (in my perhaps limited experience) have
>>other characteristic pronunciations which I didn't hear in this song.
>
>I agree with this diagnosis.
>
>>
>>I hear e.g. /wIndi h&z stOrmi ajz/.
>
>that, if memory serves, flash at the sound of lies.
>
>>If I heard something in the direction
>>of /wIndi hEj at z stO(r)mi az/ (more southern, I suppose) maybe I'd take the
>>first word as "Wendy". Or maybe I'm just imagining things.
>>
>>-- Doug Wilson


--
Dennis R. Preston
University Distinguished Professor
Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic,
        Asian and African Languages
Wells Hall A-740
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824-1027 USA
Office: (517) 353-0740
Fax: (517) 432-2736