Bad Taste Breakthrough! PLUS New Phoneme! (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Laurence Horn]

At 12:55 AM -0400 7/23/10, Eric Nielsen wrote:
>I would think the obnoxious buzzer sound used on game shows and the like to
>indicate a wrong answer may qualify as a morph/phoneme as well. It's often
>heard in conversation and on TV where a character will say something like: "
>"aaaaaa"  that's not the answer I want." or
>" "aaaaaa" you lose."

That buzzer sound was also incorporated (as a suprasegmental) into
the pronunciation of what I call "retro-NOT", which some will
remember from its apogee in the early 1990s (it was the ADS Word of
the Year for 1992), as discussed by me and especially by Jon and
Jesse in their 1993 _American Speech_ paper.  Many contributors to
the Linguist List and ADS-L threads on this back in that period
(1991-92) mentioned associating the production of "NOT!" with that
"wrong" buzzer (accomplished typically by the level prolonged tone
and the maintenance of nasalization throughout the syllable).  (While
Jesse and Jon tracked retro-NOT back to the late 19th century, we can
assume that the earlier occurrences did not feature the
game-show-buzzer suprasegemental.)

LH

>
>Language in the future may include more and more electronic sounds based on
>pitch (as in A 440) and timbre. These sounds could be understood universally
>and transcend present language barriers.
>
>Eric
>
>
>
>
>On Thu, Jul 22, 2010 at 3:58 PM, Jonathan Lighter
><wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>  -----------------------
>>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>  Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
>>  Subject:      Re: Bad Taste Breakthrough! PLUS New Phoneme! (UNCLASSIFIED)
>>
>>
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>
>>  ....A speech sound that carries a perceived meaning,  rather than exists
>>  simply
>>  as a part of the language's system of speech sounds, is traditionally
>>  called
>>  a morpheme.  So "eeeeeeee" would thus be both a phoneme and a morpheme
>>  (like
>>  / ^ /,  which allows one to pronounce the word "a.").  But unlike the word
>>  "a," it would have numerous meanings linked by the unusual feature
>>  [+thought
>>  naughty by unhip old people].
>>
>>  But perhaps the show will flop and Cap'n Kirk will go back to his great
>>  Priceline commercials. ("You win *this* time...good twin!!!!" [Cue sound
>>  effect of vanishing in smoke.])
>>
>>  Or perhaps we're making too much of this.
>>
>>  JL
>>
>>
>
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