dialectology in linguistics

[Wilson Gray]

Thank you, Matt. So, it's the case that, in some parts of the North
where the merger hasn't occurred, some point out the merger as worthy
of stigmatization when they hear it in the speech of those from areas
of the country - not all located in the South, e.g. California - where
the merger has occurred.

When I lived in Saint Louis during the '40's, '50's, and '60's, the
merger was pretty much, if not entirely, confined to the local BE.

I've read comment about the merger for dekkids, but, I've personally
never felt any pressure, real or imagined, to do anything about it.
Ahra-lessness and "gon' " in place of "gunna"? "There's the rub," to
coin a phrase.

OTOH, I once heard a story from an Angelena having to do with her
having been a figure of fun among her local-yokel housemates when she
was living in Somerville, MA.

-Wilson


On Sat, Jul 31, 2010 at 9:54 PM, Gordon, Matthew J.
<GordonMJ at missouri.edu> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Gordon, Matthew J." <GordonMJ at MISSOURI.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: dialectology in linguistics
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I read Kirk's comment as pointing out a contrast to the story that inspired Liberman's original post: the Texan whose pronunciation of 'pen' was derided in the North. Thus the pen/pin merger (or rather some pronunciations stemming from it) ARE sometimes stigmatized in the North. FWIW, I've heard similar comments from non-merged people in Missouri about how some people say 'pen' etc. wrong.
>
> -Matt Gordon
> ________________________________________
> From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Wilson Gray [hwgray at GMAIL.COM]
> Sent: Saturday, July 31, 2010 8:39 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: dialectology in linguistics
>
> In a post WRT Mark Liberman's _Pen_ or _pin_ post on LanguageLog,
>
> Kirk Hazen wrote,
>
> "Socially in the US South, the pin/pen merger often goes
> unstigmatized, except by occasional outsiders. What does appear on the
> social radar, and can be concurrent with "the pin/pen merger, is the
> movement of the Southern Vowel Shift for these two vowels. In the
> Southern Vowel Shift, consider both vowels moving towards the front of
> the "mouth and gaining an offglide to become a diphthong. So that
> [bit] may sound more like [bee-it] and [bet] may sound more like
> [bait] or [baa-it]."
>
> I've googled Prof. Hazen, so I'm fully aware that he's no random
> poster and I'm truly sorry that I'm not in a position to discover what
> beef Smitherman and that asshole - my opinion of him as a person and
> not as a scholar - Spearman have with him.
>
> Nevertheless, I'm flummoxed by this paragraph. Does he *really* mean
> to say that the pin/pen merger "*often* goes unstigmatized," thereby
> implying that this merger sometimes *is* stigmatized "behind the sun,"
> as the colored say, though perhaps only by occasional outsiders? And
> Southerners ordinarily notice the (relatively-recent?!) Southern Vowel
> Shift?! To quote Richard Pryor, "Is the boy crazy?!"
>
> Maybe because, like Smitherman and [insulting reference] Spearman, I'm
> colored, I'm genetically predisposed to be unable to understand WTF
> his underlying thought is. Or something, such as a difference in
> Weltanschauung, trivial. Or maybe WV and TN are just different from E
> TX.
>
> -Wilson
>
> On Thu, Jul 29, 2010 at 4:59 PM, Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at stanford.edu> wrote:
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Arnold Zwicky <zwicky at STANFORD.EDU>
>> Subject:      dialectology in linguistics
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> from Roger Shuy on Language Log recently, following up on a truly gigantic pin/pen thread:
>>
>> RS, 7/28/10: Language variability: pin vs pen and beyond:
>>
>>  http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2493
>>
>> NOTE: ROGER HASN'T READ OR POSTED TO THIS LIST IN QUITE SOME TIME.  NOTHING YOU SAY HERE WILL GET TO HIM.
>>
>> arnold
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> -Wilson
> –––
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"––a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> –Mark Twain
>
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--
-Wilson
–––
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"––a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
–Mark Twain

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org