postvocalic /l/

Fri Mar 5 19:46:36 UTC 2010

Also, my suggestion that in most of North America 'on' and 'off' have the same vowel phoneme is only partially related to the low-back vowel merger (awe-dropping). In many areas that have a difference between 'Don' and 'dawn,' 'on' is pronounced to rhyme with 'dawn' not with 'Don.' Thus most dialects have been using the same vowel in 'on' and 'off' for a long while.

On 3/5/10 1:35 PM, "ronbutters at AOL.COM" <ronbutters at AOL.COM> wrote:

The speakers AND hearers in question were almost certainly NOT "awe droppers" (as has been pointed out here several times). Merger had nothing to do with the supposed misunderstanding. Most likely this was just some 7-year-olds pretending to have misunderstood so they could giggle. Once again Mr. Z's ignorance and obsession leads to a stupid conclusion.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

-----Original Message-----
From: Tom Zurinskas <truespel at HOTMAIL.COM>
Date:         Fri, 5 Mar 2010 16:26:15
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Subject:      Re: [ADS-L] postvocalic /l/

If the fear is irrational, why do we have a clear example that "awe-dropping" leads to miscommunication?  Apparantly when the "l" was not heard for the word "brawl" and it was pronounced "braal", it was taken to be "bra".  So in a workplace where "off" and "on" are spoken frequently, it should be obvious that there is an increasing danger of miscommunication if "off" is pronounced with the "ah" phoneme.

As for how "Most of N America" say "cot/caught", 61% say these words differently and 39% say them the same.  Dialect Survey - http://www3.uwm.edu/Dept/FLL/linguistics/dialect/maps.html
Are there any other data on this.

IMHO awe-dropping is a change to the traditional pronunciation of English words that goes against the basic principle of alphabetic writing and increases miscommunication, and deviates from the other Englishes of the world hurting standardized pronunciation.  No good comes from awe-dropping.  Dropping "awe-dropping" is worth having a "bra" over.

Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL7+
see truespel.com phonetic spelling

>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: "Gordon, Matthew J."
> Subject: Re: postvocalic /l/
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Because it's been several months since Tom shared this particular irrational fear, I'd like to offer some perspective for anyone who might have missed the responses to his earlier posts on this.
>
> 1. In most of North America, 'on' and 'off' are pronounced with the same phoneme. This includes those areas where the low back vowel merger is found (i.e. where 'cot' and 'caught' come to be homophones) but also the traditional South and Midland regions of the US. It's only in the traditional North that 'on' is pronounced with an unrounded vowel and 'off' with a rounded one, and guess which region Tom represents.
>
> 2. Even for those dialects that use the same phoneme in 'on' and 'off' there would normally be strong allophonic differences between the vowels involving nasalization (with 'on') and shortening (for 'off'). For non-linguists, this means that the vowels are not pronounced the same and therefore a distinction could be detected even if (for some reason) the final consonants in the words were inaudible.
>
> 3. /l/ vocalization and deletion is an extremely common phenomenon found to varying degrees in many (perhaps most or even all) varieties of English around the world. There is no such tendency, as far as I know, for similar deletion of either /n/ or /f/ at the end of words except maybe in consonant clusters.
>
> 4. "steward", really????
>
>
> -Matt Gordon
>
>________________________________________
> From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Tom Zurinskas [truespel at HOTMAIL.COM]
> Sent: Thursday, March 04, 2010 7:19 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: postvocalic /l/
>
> If an "awe-dropper" mispronounces the word "brawl" as ~braal (with "ah" instead of "awe" as the vowel) it's easy to hear "bra" (if the "l" is not said strongly).
>
> My big worry is that "off" when said with the "awe-dropped" becomes ~aaf and sounds like "on" if the last phoneme is dropped, which, as we see, can happen. In fact on an airplane I heard the steward say "Turn all electronic devices ah". He clipped the last phoneme, which was "f", for "off" I suppose, not "n" for "on". But the "ah" might make one suppose "on". Not good in critical applications to confuse "off" and "on".
>
>
> Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL7+
> see truespel.com phonetic spelling
>
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