Labov

[Tom Zurinskas]

As a coworker you should know how he says Labov's name as well as anyone.  When I see notation [l at .bov], I glaze over.  Schwa can stand for many sounds.  There is no stress mark (assuming the . is a syllable marker).  The "o" can stand for many sounds in USA English (go,off,on,or,to,pilot) so I don't use it alone in truespel.  My data in truespel book 4 shows that the most common sound for "o" alone in running text is short u, ~u (uh).  Is /o/ "uh" or "ah" ~aa.  The IPA I checked don't have /o/.

At least it's clear that the commentator was incorrect in pronouncing the "v" other than ~v.

For Bowie, you say /bu.i/ which I assume is ~Bue'ee, BOO-ee.  But I can't say that without a "w" glide, and tradspel has a "w" in it.  Why not ~Buewee, BOO-we.  Just saying ~ee without the "w" makes for a stop between vowels.


Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
see truespel.com



----------------------------------------
> Date: Wed, 1 Apr 2009 09:15:15 -0400
> From: db.list at PMPKN.NET
> Subject: Re: Labov
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: David Bowie
> Subject: Re: Labov
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> From: RonButters at AOL.COM
>> At 12:43 PM -0500 3/31/09, Matthew Gordon wrote:
>
>>> I wanted to add a couple of points to what others have responded:
>
>>> 1. The man's name is Labov, and he pronounces it /l at bov/ (i.e. to rhyme
>>> with 'stove').
>
>> This has alwas seemed most unnatural to me. I've always assumed that the -ov
>> is a Slavic ending, and as such it would rhyme more with with "Dog" than
>> "stove." tNo one would pronounce "Romanov" or "Chekov" and rhyme the last
>> syllable rhyme with "hove" or the past tense of "dive."
>
> Well, i was one of his grad students, and i worked under him on the
> Atlas of North American English project (back before that was its name)
> for a year, and i can say that he pronounces it [l at .bov], stress on the
> final syllable, with very, very little variation.
>
> And as for the unnaturalness of name pronunciations, consider that i
> pronounce *my* last name [bu.i] (initial-syllable stress), not [bo.i].
> Since my pronunciation of my last name goes back a good while (that's
> the way my great-grandfather pronounced it, i can attest firsthand), and
> the other pronunciation is used by other families (and not just the
> rather more famous person who changed his name to look like mine), and
> i've also heard the pronunciation [baU.i] from people whose name is
> spelled that way, who's to say what's "natural"?
>
> In my observation, "natural pronunciation" usually means "the way *i*'d
> intuit it".
>
> --
> David Bowie University of Central Florida
> Jeanne's Two Laws of Chocolate: If there is no chocolate in the
> house, there is too little; some must be purchased. If there is
> chocolate in the house, there is too much; it must be consumed.
>
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