Labov

[Herb Stahlke]

Check the Kirshenbaum ASCII IPA http://www.blahedo.org/ascii-ipa.html
and you'll see that [@] represents IPA schwa, a mid central vowel.
That's not a variant of some other vowel.  It's a specific vowel
sound.  I don't know which IPA you checked, but the one I've taught
for years, using sources like The IPA Handbook and Peter Ladefoged's A
Course in Phonetics (Ladefoged was one of the contributors to the
latest versions of the IPA), IPA has an [o], which represents the
vowel sound in the first syllable of "sofa," at least for a Northern
speaker like me.  When you say that "o" can stand for many sounds,
you're talking about the letter <o> as used in English orthography,
not the phonetic symbol [o] as used in the IPA.  We have to be careful
that we're talking about the same things, and in this case we're not.

Rather than glazing over, why not spend a little time learning the
IPA.  Then at least you'll know what most of us are talking about.

Herb

On Wed, Apr 1, 2009 at 4:30 PM, Tom Zurinskas <truespel at hotmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Tom Zurinskas <truespel at HOTMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Labov
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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.
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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