~Feenlend

[Dennis Preston]

James,

You are right when you say that final [ng] 
dramatically influence preceding vowels, but not 
exactly for the reasons you say. When [ng] is 
pronounced, the dorsal part of the tongue is 
considerably raised (enough to make phoneticians 
assign the feature +high to this sound). I 
believe it is this dorsal raising that causes a 
preceding /I/ to sound tenser since it causes the 
end of the /I/ to be higher than the onset, and 
that diphthongal quality is what we often use to 
distinguish the tense form lax vowels in English. 
I checked my wife's (Milwaukee) speech to make 
sure that I wasn't southernizing the acoustic 
measurements I reported earlier. Her vowel in 
"sing" was no longer than "sin" nor did its onset 
have formant characteristics that would suggest a 
higher or fronter vowel, but the following [ng] 
did indeed influence the end of the sound, giving 
it a slight diphthongal character (though not 
nearly as great as her vowel in "seen," for 
example), and that is what we are apparently 
hearing when we suggest that the /I/ in such 
words is like an /i/.

What they are phonologically, of course, is not 
important since /I/ and /i/ are neutralized in 
that position. Maybe I'll just type ARCHIPHONEME 
here since I haven't for many years.

Finnish, by the way, has both long and short i, neither diphthongal.

dInIs

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>Subject:      Re: ~Feenlend
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>
>I think I know where Tom Zurinskas is coming 
>from on the pronunciation of ’Äúsing’Äù and 
>where he went astray.
>
>In English (I have no idea whether it happens in 
>other languages) the presence of the /ng/ or 
>/nk/ phoneme alters the sound of the preceding 
>vowel, an effect most notable in some of the 
>so-called ’Äúshort vowels’Äù such as ’Äúi’Äù of 
>’Äúhit’Äù, ’Äúa’Äù of ’Äúhat’Äù, ’Äúe’Äù of 
>’Äúhet’Äù, and ’Äúu’Äù of ’Äúhut’Äù.
>
>My usual example is ’ÄúLancaster’Äù.  The 
>’Äúa’Äù is noticeably different if you say /lan 
>kas t at r/ rather than /lank kas t at r/ or /lank as 
>t at r/ or even /lang kas t at r/.
>
>Why is this?  Hopefully the phoneticians on the 
>list will correct me if I’Äôm wrong, but it 
>appears to me that the tip of the tongue is 
>raised for English /n/ but dropped for English 
>/ng/ or /nk/.  The movement of the tongue is 
>enough to change the sound of the preceding 
>vowel.
>
>In the case of short i, the difference in sound 
>is enough to make the vowel in /ing/ or /ink/ 
>different enough from /in/ that it sounds like a 
>different vowel, one somewhat closer to /ee/. 
>But it is not /ee/.  My former boss Tribhuvan 
>Singh did not pronounce his last name as /seeng/ 
>but as /sing/ (with aspirated /ng/, of course).
>
>^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>As for ’ÄúFeenlend’Äù, that is simple.  Finnish, 
>as far as I know, lacks the ’Äúshort i’Äù sound 
>and therefore someone from Finnland who has not 
>mastered English phonetics would be unable to 
>say ’ÄúFinnlend’Äù.
>
>^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>For those interested in collecting early citations for ’Äúsuperdelegate’Äù:
>
>http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/
>
><quote>
>We'll probably never know who first came up with 
>"superdelegates", but press and politicians both 
>started using it in 1982, after a Democratic 
>party commission voted to add hundreds of 
>uncommitted delegates to the rolls. From the 
>Associated Press, January 15th, 1982:
>
>The major question worked out in the 
>negotiations between the Mondale and Kennedy 
>factions was how many of the elected officials 
>should be uncommitted. The Kennedy people wanted 
>as few as possible. The Mondale forces wanted 
>the uncommitteds to be about 30 percent of the 
>total.
>
>The figure finally agreed upon would be 14.2 percent.
>
>Once that deal was struck and the compromise was 
>presented to the commission by Rep. Geraldine 
>Ferraro of New York, the major issue during a 
>long night of debate was whether what Mrs. 
>Ferraro called a "super delegate category" 
>should be evenly split between men and women.
></quote>
>
>Also, somebody (I don’Äôt know if it was the 
>Clinton campaign) decided recently to refer to 
>superdelegates as ’Äúautomatic delegates’Äù.
>
>            James A. Landau
>            test engineer
>            Northrop-Grumman Information Technology
>            8025 Black Horse Pike, Suite 300
>            West Atlantic City NJ 08232 USA
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--
Dennis R. Preston
University Distinguished Professor
Department of English
Morrill Hall 15-C
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48864 USA

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