ah/ awe

[Alice Faber]

Tom Zurinskas wrote:
>> From: RonButters at AOL.COM
>>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       RonButters at AOL.COM
>> Subject:
>> =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Re:=20=A0=20=A0=20=A0=20Re:=20[ADS-L]=20ah/=20awe?
>>               =
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>
>> > Green PEAS??
>> >
>>
>> Sorry, I should have said, "the opinion that normal people from
>> Connecticut
>> have a monophthongal vowel in the word 'right' has the scientific
>> status of
>> a
>> theory that the moon is made of green CHIVES."
>>
>
>
> I'd say the folks in CN say long i as in "right" just as the lady in
> m-w.com
> does.
> But then thats all we're talking about hear.  Does she say it as a
> diphthong
> or two phthongs.

I just listened. It's an unambiguous diphthong, just as we've described
it. The /y/ offglide is clearly audible. The onset is a scosh higher
than the onset in RIDE, but not enough to call it Canadian Raising. As
would be expected, there is no hiatus (break) between the two vowel
sounds, just a continuous movement.

>
> We should get a sprectrographs on this.  Grab the words from m-w.com of
> "sight" "sot" and "seat".  Then see if the graph of those vowel sounds are
> in the word "right."  I would venture they are not there.

Every spectrograph I have ever seen of words (produced by non-southern
speakers) like this shows diphthongal formant movement.

--
 =============================================================================
Alice Faber                                    faber at haskins.yale.edu
Haskins Laboratories                           tel: (203) 865-6163 x258
New Haven, CT 06511 USA                        fax (203) 865-8963

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