No subject

[Damien Hall]

dInIs,

"You mean to say you would drop /h/ prevocalically BEFORE you would
drop in pre /y/? I find this counterintuitive."

Yes, I think so.  But it's difficult for me to tell from my own dialect,
obviously.  I think the reason for that might be that most of the frames that I
can think of off the top of my head to say to myself and listen to have the /h/
preceded by an /s/:

"It's here"

etc.  That creates the difficulty of not knowing whether any aspiration that's
present is the /h/ of 'here' or a reduction of the /s/.  But I really do think
I say "'ere" (in particular) quite often.

If it's counterintuitive that I should drop the prevocalic /h/ but not the
pre-/y/ one, maybe it has something to do with salience?  Maybe,
subconsciously, I (and any others who might have this feature in common with
me, I suppose) perceive h-dropping in 'huge' much more readily than we do in
words that have the /h/ followed by a vowel?  Maybe that has to do with the
fact that

'huge' - /h/ = /hyuwdj/ - /h/ = /yuwdj/

and /yu/ is a relatively uncommon onset in English compared to /?V/ which you
get in

'here' - /h/ = /hI:/ or /hi@/ - /h/ = /(?)I:/ or /(?)i@/ (for me!)

I don't know the stats for that.

On the other hand, Michael Friesner points out that it may be more likely to be
a stress effect, since 'huge' is stressed for effect the majority of the time.
He pointed out to me that I couldn't delete the /h/ in

It's my HOUSE
/Its may 'haws/

but I could in

It's MY house
/Its 'ma yaws/

So, yes, I think I *do* drop /h/ prevocalically before I'll do it pre-/y/, and
maybe it's a stress effect, with a possible contribution from frequency as
well.  Does that make sense?

Damien Hall
University of Pennsylvania