`bast'

[Richard Coates]

_Bast_ and so on:

For the little that it's worth, I am a native speaker of an English that has
/&/ in _past_, _laugh_, and so on, but heavily overlaid with the /A:/ type
which I now use in practically all circumstances. My childhood home was
biaccentual in this respect.

I learned the word _bast_ long after the overlay was complete, but
nevertheless pronounce it /b&st/, possibly analogically through early
knowledge of the place-name _Woodbastwick_ (Norfolk), /wud'b&stik/. I
therefore have a near-minimal pair /b&st/, /'bA:st(@d)/; except that I have an
occasional tendency to use /&/ in the latter in its earlier historical sense
(i.e. not as an insult). I have a quasi-minimal pair also in /mA:st/ `fruit of
the beech', learned relatively late in my development, vs. /m at st/ `pole for
sails, etc.'. This latter was a familiar word from my earliest childhood as I
was brought up in a port town. I still have quite serious difficulty in
pronouncing it /mA:st/ in most contexts, and it's clear to me that to
pronounce /mA:st/ I have to more or less consciously apply a phonological
transformation. (I don't appear to have the same difficulty with other words
of the same lexical set.) I sometimes have a fudged pronunciation /mast/.

Just a reminder that real phonology shouldn't be easy - and possibly that I
have a screwed-up idiolect.

Richard

Richard Coates
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

> I have no intuitive knowledge of the pronunciation of this word, but as
> a native speaker of RP I observe that <-astin a final syllable under
> primary stress always has /A:st/ for me: cast, last, mast, aghast,
> repast, etc/. Not necessarily secondary stressed, however: gymnast,
> pederast, bombast have /&/.

> Max W. Wheeler <maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk>

[ moderator snip ]

Richard Coates

School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex, Brighton BN1 9QH, UK

Tel.: +44 (0)1273 678030 (secretary Jackie Gains)
Fax:  +44 (0)1273 671320
Email: richardc at cogs.susx.ac.uk