ah/ awe

[Beverly Flanigan]

At 09:33 PM 10/1/2006, you wrote:
>>From: Beverly Flanigan <flanigan at OHIO.EDU>
>
>>Give it up, Tom--it won't work!  The scholarly research by linguists on all
>>this is very clear and has been cited by many of us.
>
>I'm sorry.  Don't know what I should be giving up.  Is it the quest to have
>linguists unite in trying to get folks to say "awe" for forms "au" and "aw"
>which in recent tradition were spoken "awe"?  Basically it's a quest to
>retain what we can of the alphabetic principal.  This is important for
>language learners.  Studies have been interpreted to show that it's the
>deviation from the alphabetic principal that is "causing" 50% of the
>dyslexia in Englsih.
>
>>However, I might use your poem as a diagnostic test, if I may, to see who
>>merges and in which words; for the same speaker, some of these words may go
>>to the "ah" sound and others may not.  For example, in another test I use,
>>"balk" may have 'aw' while "balm" has 'ah', for the same speaker (myself
>>included).  Go figure.
>>
>>Beverly
>
>Enjoy using the poem, Beverly,  Try out this test for me.
>
>For a person that says "ah" for "awe" for a particular word ask him/her if
>he/she can hear the difference when you say that word both ways.  I predict
>for native USA speakers brought up on TV and radio, that they will say yes,
>they hear the difference.  Then ask them to speak the word using both ways.
>I'll bet they can do that too.  Then ask them why they use "ah" and they'll
>say That's the way we say it around their neck of the woods.  You might want
>to use the same word each time and a recording to standardize the stimulus.
>
>
>Tom Z
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

I'll get you a couple of citations when I'm back in my office
tomorrow.  But you must also give us citations.  What are these dyslexia
studies you're referencing?  I don't think dyslexia has anything to do with
the "alphabetic principal" (and I assume you mean principle?).  Similarly,
the 60% awe-usage you cite is from the Vaux web survey, I assume?  Not a
scientific study, by a long shot!  As for the studies you want me to do, I
assure you that linguists have done many such studies, and they
consistently show that ah/awe mergers _can't_ hear the difference and can
produce (i.e., imitate) a difference only with difficulty.  And for
heaven's sake, top of the line recording and analyzing equipment has been
standard in our field for a long long time!  (What field are you in, by the
way???)

As for uniting linguists in any kind of quest to "perfect" the language,
fuhgetaboudit!  Unlike English teachers and speech therapists, we're not in
the business of telling people how to speak or write or spell.  As someone
else suggested, you might want to take a linguistics course sometime; even
an introductory undergraduate course would clear up a lot of your
misconceptions about what language is and what linguists do.

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org