pre-velar /ae/ raising (was: slang/slant)

Fri Nov 3 20:30:26 UTC 2006

Given that there is no officially-defined and governmentally specified
and sanctioned dialect of English in the United States, it's not
possible to speak of a correctly-spoken version of USA English. The
sounds of American English as specified by m-w.com are mrely a
reflection of the personal opinions of the staff of m-w.com, nothing
more. Therefore, the sounds of spoken English as defined by m-w.com
can not be used to refute anyone else's personal opinion or any other
definition of what the sounds of spoken English are.

Needless to say, my own pronunciation of "slang" does not correspond
to that described by m-w.com. Rather, I pronounce "slang" with the
twang (stereo)typical of most Southern speakers.

-Wilson

On 11/1/06, Tom Zurinskas <truespel at hotmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Tom Zurinskas <truespel at HOTMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: pre-velar /ae/ raising (was: slang/slant)
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Thanks Joe,
>
> Interesting approach.  Or we can just trust our own hearing to hear that the
> vowel in "slang" and "slant" are different enough to be different phonemes.
>
> It would be great if you use the actual words of m-w.com.  Say "slaying"
> then eliminte the "i" vowel so you get "slayng."  Basically that's what the
> speaker in m-w.com is saying and that speaker is saying it correctly as is
> spoken in USA English.
>
> Words like "anger" and "anchor" start with a long a, but in m-w.com I think
> that speaker doesn't say that vowel all the way to long a.  Basically as I
> hear it in TV and radio media, ang/ank are typically long a.
>
> Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL4+
> See truespel.com and the 4 truespel books at authorhouse.com.
>
>
>
>
>
> >From: Joseph Salmons <jsalmons at WISC.EDU>
> >Reply-To: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> >To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> >Subject: pre-velar /ae/ raising (was: slang/slant)
> >Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2006 13:30:45 -0600
> >
> >---------------------- Information from the mail header
> >-----------------------
> >Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> >Poster:       Joseph Salmons <jsalmons at WISC.EDU>
> >Subject:      pre-velar /ae/ raising (was: slang/slant)
> >-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> >Greetings. I've just rejoined ADS-list after being off it for a few
> >years, partly prompted by hearing about the interesting recent slang/
> >slant discussion. This 'pre-velar raising' is a topic a few of us
> >here in Wisconsin are starting to work on, especially Tom Purnell.  I
> >hope this message doesn't repeat earlier discussion (or steal Tom's
> >thunder), but here's basically how things are looking to us right now:
> >
> >/ae/ raising before g (and usually eng/angma and sometimes before k)
> >can sound like either /ej/ or /E/ to outsiders, and with considerable
> >variation across speakers. It is creeping into awareness here, in
> >particular with the word 'bag', which is pretty much a stereotype of
> >Wisconsin speech for some people. (In addition to the Zeller article,
> >Labov et al. discuss it at some length in the Atlas, showing the
> >pattern stretching beyond Wisconsin and Minnesota, but looking
> >particularly strong here.) One story (I've heard it told by a noted
> >member of this society, but independently from others too) involves a
> >newcomer going into a grocery store to buy a loaf of bread and some
> >milk; he hears the cashier ask "Wanna beg for that?" The newcomer
> >wonders, "I have to beg? I just paid for it." (The Wisconsin-oriented
> >language blogger Mr. Verb, http://mr-verb.blogspot.com/, recently
> >made a pretty obscure allusion to this pattern in a post, in fact.)
> >We get /ae/ merging with /ej/ (the vowel of 'bay') for some speakers,
> >which is what Zeller reports. Still it looks like not all raisers
> >merge these sounds: Some seem to have the raised /ae/ coming out
> >close to (maybe identical with) [E], as the perceptual bag/beg
> >confusion would suggest. (But some people with a good ear vehemently
> >deny that it ever yields [E].) Some speakers with this pattern also
> >show really clear lowering of /ej/ before g, including in
> >disyllabics:  vague, bagel, Reagan, segue, etc. For some, v[ae]gue in
> >particular is not variable -- it's just how they say that word. My
> >sense is that this has to be hypercorrection, but we haven't done
> >much on this yet, or gathered much data (though Tom's doing the
> >latter right now.)
> >
> >Matt Gordon raises a number of really good questions about this
> >process which we have just started to look at data on: Is it related
> >to NCS? From what we've seen so far, the answer is maybe. Note that
> >the NCS isn't found as far west as Minnesota, or even western
> >Wisconsin, where pre-velar raising is widespread. That suggests that
> >it's a different deal.  Is it phonetically different from NCS? It is
> >most definitely. Is it older than NCS?  We've looked at /ae/ before /
> >g/ and alveolars in some DARE recordings from southeast Wisconsin and
> >the oldest speakers show no raising in either environment. With a few
> >speakers born somewhat later, we get some suggestive patterns before
> >alveolars, like NCS (but notably too early for the usual chronology
> >of that shift), and none before /g/. Later, but still before NCS
> >should be showing up, we start seeing pre-velar raising. (For the
> >phonetically inclined: Tom's working out a way of calculating /ae/
> >raising that gets away from the simple 700 hz threshold that's been
> >criterial for NCS to date, but that's a topic for a paper by him, not
> >an ADS-list post. I suspect that Tom's approach allows us to see
> >earlier stirrings of NCS than the 700 hz measure.) But note that
> >these historical recordings are from southeastern Wisconsin -- Tom
> >has suggested in conversation that pre-velar raising could also have
> >started elsewhere (say, Minnesota) and spread down to meet NCS. If
> >that's so, it could be older, but then from outside of NCS territory.
> >
> >We will be working on this for some time to come and hope we'll know
> >more before too long. Concretely, we should soon have some audio
> >samples of these patterns on the Wisconsin Englishes Project page,
> >http://csumc.wisc.edu:16080/wep/.
> >
> >Oh, finally, Paul Johnston mentioned a possible correlation with
> >'pop' vs. 'soda', but that line cuts north/south through eastern
> >Wisconsin, so that we get this 'bag' pattern with 'soda' and 'pop'
> >speakers up here.
> >
> >Onward,
> >Joe
> >Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures
> >901 University Bay Drive
> >University of Wisconsin
> >Madison, WI 53705
> >http://csumc.wisc.edu/
> >
> >http://german.lss.wisc.edu/homes/jsalmons/
> >
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