deaccenting

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Aug 22, 2008, at 8:13 AM, Herb Stahlke wrote:

> Arnold,
>
> Does the /d/ lax as well?
>
> Herb
>
> On Fri, Aug 22, 2008 at 9:38 AM, Arnold M. Zwicky
> <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu> wrote:
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       "Arnold M. Zwicky" <zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU>
>> Subject:      deaccenting
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> occasionally we've commented here on the deaccenting of secondarily
>> accented syllables in words that  are familiar and frequently used by
>> some group of people: the last syllable of "Oregon" for most
>> Oregonians, for instance.
>>
>> now i've been hearing an ad on tv for low-dose aspirin in which "low-
>> dose" has a deaccented second element, so that it sounds, at first
>> hearing, like "lodose", some technical term with the learned suffix
>> "-
>> ose".

i just heard it again (the ad is for Bayer aspirin), and yes, of
course, the d is laxed; that follows from the deaccenting of the
second syllable.  in general, when you have deaccenting, you get all
the automatic consequences of the new prosody.

arnold

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