Rosa's (was "Monday")

[Geoff Nathan]

When I heard Gleason pronounce these (he was my Intro to Linguistics prof--I'm almost as old as Larry) I could not only hear the contrast between Rosa's and roses, I thought I made it too. But I tend to be chameleon-like in my speech, and suspect I've lost the contrast (which was, as Wilson mentioned, between barred-i and schwa--a height contrast). At least off the cuff they seem identical to me now. Lately I've noticed my speech developing Northern Cities-like vowels. In particular I've been producing open-o's with a schwa offglide, which I never had before. But I have them in 'short-o' contexts like 'lot', which for me has always been a rounded vowel (British parents, born in England, moved to Toronto when very young, but not young enough...). Weird. Geoffrey S. Nathan Faculty Liaison, C&IT and Professor, Linguistics Program http://blogs.wayne.edu/proftech/ +1 (313) 577-1259 (C&IT) +1 (313) 577-8621 (English/Linguistics) ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Laurence Horn" <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Sent: Monday, July 30, 2012 9:52:41 AM
> Subject: Re: "Monday"
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> Subject: Re: "Monday"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> On Jul 30, 2012, at 5:20 AM, Tom Zurinskas wrote:
> > Where is the allophone in the room? For me "Rosa's roses" would be
> > ~~Roezuz roeziz~~. Two phonemes. No allophone.
> I agree with the last claim; I never said they were allophones for me,
> or for anyone else. I said they were identical. WB characterized the
> raising of [@] to barred-i in "Leominster" as allophonic (conditioned
> by the /n/), but that wouldn't apply to "Rosa's" and "roses", since
> there's no difference in conditioning factors. I'm aware that others
> (not just Gleason) claim to distinguish "Rosa's" and "roses", I just
> can't hear it myself (when they're both unstressed in the final
> syllable, as is usually the case). No doubt a genetic flaw.
> LH
> > ...
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >> Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2012 22:13:33 -0400
> >> From: Berson at ATT.NET
> >> Subject: Re: "Monday"
> >> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> >>
> >> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> >> -----------------------
> >> Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> >> Poster: "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> >> Subject: Re: "Monday"
> >> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>
> >> At 7/29/2012 11:15 AM, Laurence Horn wrote:
> >>> On Jul 29, 2012, at 10:54 AM, W Brewer wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> Laurence Horn wrote: <<< I'd have used a barred-i if I knew the
> >>>> ascii for
> >>>> it, but for me, unstressed barred-i and unstressed schwa are
> >>>> basically indistinguishable.>>>
> >>>> WB: Barred-eye should be an allophone of schwa before [n].
> >>> Alveolar raising.
> >>>>
> >>> But in other environments they supposedly contrast. In Gleason's
> >>> old _Intro to Descriptive Linguistics_ that I was weaned on in the
> >>> early 60s, there was a purported minimal pair, "Rosa's" (with
> >>> schwa)
> >>> vs. "roses" (with barred-i). They always sounded like homophones
> >>> to
> >>> me, probably because they're both totally unstressed, although I
> >>> certainly contrast them in the Bolinger way: "No, I said
> >>> "ros-uhz",
> >>> not "rose-izz". (Or George-uhz vs. Georg-izz, for "Georgia's" vs.
> >>> "George's", which did come up when I was hanging out with both G.
> >>> Lakoff and G. Green; if you cited a sentence from "Georg{e/ia}'s
> >>> paper", I'd have had to ask whether you meant Georgia or
> >>> George.) For me, these are just spelling pronunciations.
> >>
> >> If I knew what allophone was, I'd probably disagree. :-) Yes, no,
> >> they're two phonemes for me. I distinguish "Rosa's"and "roses", and
> >> "Georgia's" and George's" -- and I swear the former was a minimal
> >> pair in a linguistics course I took centuries ago, and was called
> >> "Descriptive Linguistics", and probably used the same book that
> >> Larry
> >> cites, and nyah! nyah! was at Harvard,* I distinguish "minster" and
> >> "Munster". Or are the vowels there both stressed, and everyone
> >> distinguishes?
> >>
> >> * But then, I've been accused heretofore of being pretentious.
> >>
> >> Joel
> >>
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> >
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