[Ads-l] _beyond_

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Tue May 31 01:56:19 UTC 2016


> On May 30, 2016, at 9:23 PM, Herb Stahlke <hfwstahlke at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> 
> And there's the Sanders staffer on MSNBC who regularly says "clin?in, where
> the vowels are lax, as expected, and nasalized, as expected, but I don't
> hear an /n/ in either syllable.

Well, I don't know about the lack of a final [n], but the rest of it seems consistent with what in these parts is sometimes called a "New Bri?in" (or occasionally just "Connecticut") accent, in which such names and words like "kitten" and "mitten" (ki?in, mi?in) involve a glottal stop and no [t] closure.  Such speakers also have an [I] vowel (or maybe barred-i) and not a schwa in the unstressed syllable, where I have a schwa.  If there's an -n in the first syllable, e.g. "Brinton" instead of "Britain", I'd expect something very much as you describe, but maybe with an actual -n at the end.  (I just noticed I can pronounce "Clinton" two ways, one what I assume is the usual U.S pronunciation, /'klInt at n/, and the other definitely glottalized--impressionistically, I have both glottal stop and alveolar closure following a nasalized vowel, whereas the "New Bri?in" version I mentioned above has only the glottal stop (and a different unstressed vowel, as noted).

LH

P.S.  If you're familiar with the "No you di?int" meme, the "New Britain" pronunciation is similar except it's just the voiceless intervocalics that go full-glottal. As verification, there's always the ever-reliable urban dictionary, s.v. "Oh no you didn't":

(Pronounced: o no you dit-ten) A colloquial expression of incredulity, voiced upon witnessing another's action or statement... 
> 
> On Mon, May 30, 2016 at 2:02 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> On Sun, May 29, 2016 at 9:29 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
>> wrote:
>> 
>>> Mebbe so, but do you pronounce "uh-oh" or "unh-unh" (the negative one,
>> not
>>> to be confused with the glottal-stopless "uh-huh") without one?  Or do
>> you
>>> just avoid both?  (I don't have one in "beyond" and don't recall hearing
>> it
>>> from others, but I might have missed it.)
>> 
>> 
>> I had real words in mind, like bo?le, bu?on, no?in', etc. used by
>> hip-hoppers, rappers, and random people on reality shows. However, it seems
>> to be falling out of fashion. A friend, he of "up the skreek" fame has
>> glo?al stops as a native feature of his speech, though he claims that he
>> "don't use no glo?al stop!" In his case, I find it interesting.
>> 
>> IME, very few people use "be?ond. I first heard it used by a single girl
>> down home in Texas, ca. 1947. So, I figured it for a local thing. but over
>> the dekkids, I've heard it random instances of it in the wild from everyone
>> everywhere. A couple of sites transcribe the word as approx. "be-ond"
>> preceding "be-yond." But every site that has audio gives "be-yond."
>> 
>> Have you ever heard BE [CjV-] > [CrV-]: beautiful, Buick > b[ru]tiful,
>> B[r]uick? It's *far* more common than be?ond. How about BE intrusive r in I
>> am, Buick > I ram, Burick? Also more common than be?ond, even though, IME,
>> there is no restriction of be?ond to any particular subset of speakers that
>> I have noticed.
>> 
>> I've heard be?ond once, so far, this year, promptingmotivating me to wonder
>> what other people's experience might be. I can't recall when the last time
>> was that I heard it before this year.
>> --
>> -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
>> 
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.americandialect.org&d=AwIBaQ&c=-dg2m7zWuuDZ0MUcV7Sdqw&r=wFp3X4Mu39hB2bf13gtz0ZpW1TsSxPIWYiZRsMFFaLQ&m=bcx_DKlOeCIDQ0wtK7_aVNtufUUB-KPrSEBt_hl6Hk4&s=XKb3faJEb_IthvfncF8kJGjhAFJ232KQSJOkUaQHw1k&e= 
>> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.americandialect.org&d=AwIBaQ&c=-dg2m7zWuuDZ0MUcV7Sdqw&r=wFp3X4Mu39hB2bf13gtz0ZpW1TsSxPIWYiZRsMFFaLQ&m=bcx_DKlOeCIDQ0wtK7_aVNtufUUB-KPrSEBt_hl6Hk4&s=XKb3faJEb_IthvfncF8kJGjhAFJ232KQSJOkUaQHw1k&e= 

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



More information about the Ads-l mailing list