Fricative voicing . . .

[Wilson Gray]

For me, the final vowel is [i] when I'm "talking proper." Otherwise, I use
[I]. Mark, I'm surprised that you're surprised WRT English English. Did you
read Peter Ladefoged's obit in the Times? It claimed that this surname is
pronounced something like, IIRC, "LAD-eh-fo-gid." And so it is. By
Americans. But anyone who's heard Peter himself speak knows that *he*
pronounced his name a lot closer to "LADDY-fo-gid." What I'm getting at is
that the Brits have a rule that is something like a mirror image of ours.
E.g., Peter would have pronounced "laddy" as "ladd[I]," a la American BE and
SE, and not as "ladd[i]," as he pronounced the first two syllables of his
name. I'm not trying to down ("down someone" appears to be regaining all the
ground that it had lost to "put someone down," even among white speakers,
judging by what I hear from the hoi-polloi on trash TV) anyone, but it's
really obvious. Indian English also follows the British rule, Cf., e.g., the
speech of K.P. Mohanan.

-Wilson

On 5/12/06, Mark A. Mandel <mamandel at ldc.upenn.edu> wrote:
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Mark A. Mandel" <mamandel at LDC.UPENN.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Fricative voicing . . .
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Beverly Flanigan <flanigan at OHIO.EDU> writes:
>     >>>>>
>
> The laxing of the vowel [in "lousy" /-zI/ vs. /-sI/] is interesting here
> too.  I know it's happening, but I'm not sure of its distribution. Anyone?
> <<<<<
>
> Are we talking about a pronunciation here or a notational variant? I
> always
> hear the final vowel written "-y" as a short [i], but I learned to write
> it
> phonemically as /I/. I was actually surprised when English (UK) linguists
> informed me that over yonder it's a phonetic [I].
>
> -- Mark
> [This text prepared with Dragon NaturallySpeaking.]
>
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