postvocalic /l/

Mon Mar 8 23:00:58 UTC 2010

To me the trend of awe-dropping is a disturbing trend.  There are folks who are dropping the "awe" phoneme out of existance in their personal lect, and it's caught on to whole regions.

Question.  Is it an improvemnent of English.  Even if it's just a whimsical change, is it for the better?

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

>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Paul Johnston
> Subject: Re: postvocalic /l/
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Tom,
> I'm sure someone said the same thing about "ea-dropping" and the
> confusion of beat/beet about 1700, and I know they did about rose/
> rows and mane/main about 1620. English survived. It will here too.
>
> Paul
> On Mar 5, 2010, at 11:26 AM, Tom Zurinskas wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender: American Dialect Society
>> Poster: Tom Zurinskas
>> Subject: Re: 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
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>> _________________________________________________________________
>> Hotmail: Trusted email with powerful SPAM protection.
>> http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/201469227/direct/01/
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
_________________________________________________________________
Your E-mail and More On-the-Go. Get Windows Live Hotmail Free.
http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/201469229/direct/01/

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