stars and ours

[Michael H Covarrubias]

I imagine the pronunciation of 'my' would be different from 'eye' in some
situations.

In an unstressed position such as 'my best friend' or 'my only friend' the vowel
in 'my' could be similar to 'fight' or 'bike' especially in fast speech. Before
the consonant in 'my best' it could be reduced to a schwa and lose the diphthong
contour, but before a vowel in 'my only' it would always be a diphthong.

In no environment would I would pronounce 'eye' with anything less than the full
[aI] diphthong.

Michael

Quoting "Dennis R. Preston" <preston at MSU.EDU>:

> Seems very unlikely since Canadian raising is limited to closed
> syllables before voiceless consonants.
>
> And poets do not use spectrograms.
>
> >
> >I believe I raise "eye." (Though now that I've said them 5 billion
> >times . . . .)
> >
> >(Sorry, perhaps it was poets nitpicking over how they rhymed:
> >Atlanta, GA vs Edmonton, AB.)
> >
> >S.
> >
> >On May 31, 2007, at 9:43 AM, Dennis R. Preston wrote:
> >
> >>
> >>  Help? What Canadian practice cause "my" and "eye" to not rhyme?
> >>  Neither is a candidate for so-called "Canadian raising."
> >>
> >>  dInIs
> >>
> >>>
> >>>  I can just give a cheers to the W. CND. pronunciation. That is how I
> >>>  would say it. (I'm still happy I don't consider "my" and "eye" to
> >>>  rhyme though--Brown's MFA poetry program was a very interesting study
> >>>  in pronunciation.)
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>  S.
> >>>
> >>>  On May 31, 2007, at 8:09 AM, Wilson Gray wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>   It sounds like Philadelphian to me. It's a feature of Chomsky's
> >>>>   speech.
> >>>>
> >>>>   -Wilson
> >>>>
> >>>>   On 5/30/07, James Harbeck <jharbeck at sympatico.ca> wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>   Just read a poem by a high school student from western Canada that
> >>>>>   illustrates a standard Canadian pronunciation rather well: it
> >>>>>  rhymes
> >>>>>   "stars" with "ours" -- quite reasonably, though I'm not used to
> >>>>>   seeing those two words matched, perhaps because at least in my
> >>>>>   generation and earlier ones, we were taught that "ours" was
> >>>>>  properly
> >>>>>   pronounced like "hours," even if it almost never really was by us.
> >>>>>   Evidently even that awareness of [aUrz] as a citation form is
> >>>>>   disappearing. (This is from a well-educated kid, too -- a gifted
> >>>>>   student, graduating high school at 16.)
> >>>>>
> >>>>>   That one's also common in much of the US, no?
> >>>>>
> >>>>>   James Harbeck.
> >>>>>





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   English Language & Linguistics
   Purdue University
   mcovarru at purdue.edu

   web.ics.purdue.edu/~mcovarru
  <http://wishydig.blogspot.com>

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