'popline' was Re: boom

[Wilson Gray]

Thanks! I had heard the location as "Kleberg." I couldn't see the TV
screen from where I was standing.

What about those parts of East Texas and those speakers of BE in which
the /ai/-diphthong in "pipeline" sounds a lot more like [p&:pl&:n]
with aesc and not "ah"? BE-speakers do say something along the lines
of "popline," but [&] is much more common [English translation: it's
the sound used in *my* idiolect and in those of the people that *I* am
accustomed to listening to and speaking with.;-)]. Anyone who'd like
to hear exactly what I'm talking about can listen to the first version
of "Testify" (1967) by The Parliaments, before they >
Parliament-Funkadelic > P-Funk, on YouTube. The very first word heard
is "I" [&]:

I
Just want to
Testify
...

Actually, IMO, the vowel isn't aesc. E.g., the (long) vowels of
"bide," "bad," and "bod" are each distinct, one from another and
"Bide" and "bad" don't fall together.

FWIW, using myself as my informant, /&/ > ordinary [&]. But /ai/ > a
vowel that is still front, but noticeably lower than /&/, judging by
the movement of my "bottom jaw" (as we say for "lower jaw" in the
'hood) with a slight forward movement of my tongue with a slight
rounding of the lips. W/o the lip-rounding, what I hear is a sound
virtually non-distinct from ordinary [a], much to my surprise! (I'd
never tried to make the sound in a way fifferent from the way that I
normally do, till a minute ago.)

-Wilson

On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 10:38 AM, 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:      'popline' was Re: boom
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Assuming what you're referring to is monophthongal [a] for diphthongal /ai/, which would make 'pipe' sound like 'pop,' then yes, this is typical for that part of Texas. Glide deletion before voiceless segments (like /p/) is less widespread than before voiced segments, which is common across the South, but Labov's Atlas of North American English found it in north central and west Texas (fr. DFW to Odessa and Lubbock).
>
> Matt Gordon
>
>
> On 6/8/10 9:20 AM, "Bill Palmer" <w_a_palmer at BELLSOUTH.NET> wrote:
>
> ...
> On an oil-related note, the fire chief in Cleburne TX, being interviewed on
> CNN yesterday concerning the well fire there, referred many times to the gas
> that was coming from the "popline"...typical of W Tx?
>
>
> Bill P
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
-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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