the good old days, and that pesky letter "shee" (formerly "shch")
Paul B. Gallagher
paulbg at PBG-TRANSLATIONS.COM
Fri Sep 18 20:30:30 UTC 2009
Katherine wrote:
> Thanks for your replies Paul, Will, and Susan!
>
> ...
>
> Paul, you're right that the British vowel change also has some
> centralization to it. It would be more accurate to say "lowering with
> some backing," I guess. But as you say, not to an actual back vowel
> like [ɑ]. The phenomenon you're referring to in American English is
> described in the literature as "BATH raising." If you search for that
> phrase in Google books, you can read a great description in vol. 3 of
> Wells's Accents of English. The British pronunciation of [pɑ:s] for
> "pass" can be similarly sought out in vol. 1 as "TRAP-BATH split".
> And as I understand it, for speakers with an advanced Northern Cities
> shift (i.e., where the sound change has "gotten further"), fronting
> of [ɑ] gives a new [æ], with [stæp] signs and dentists in nice white
> [smæks]. Finally, in case you're interested, the American speaker in
> Ladefoged's materials did grow up in Ithaca -- good call.
Wells' description of the phenomenon is excellent, and the words he says
are affected are exactly the right ones, all the way down to "badger"
(no) vs. "badges" (yes). However, he says we don't have what I've
denoted /ǣ/ before /l/; I would beg to differ. I agree that we don't
have /ǣ/ from /æ/ AKA "ă" in this context, but like Trager I do identify
/ǣ/ with the vowel in words like "pail/pale" and "fair/fare," which have
different etymologies (usually what is traditionally called "long a" or
"ā"). So essentially what we have is a lengthening in these contexts,
with the lengthened vowel identified with the existing "long" vowel. In
AE the lengthening must be ordered after fronting ("ă" > /æ/) to yield
/ǣ/ = [ɛə] etc., whereas in BE lengthening must be ordered before
fronting so as to eliminate words like "bath" from the pool (some "ă" =
[a] > [a:]); "ă" in the remaining words like "trap" can then be fronted
without affecting "bath."
I especially like the terminology "bath raising" and "trap/bath
raising," because "bath" is one of the affected words in both AE and BE,
and "trap" AFAIK is not affected in either (pace Woodward et al.).
A related lengthening of stressed lax ("short") vowels is underway in
many AE dialects before intervocalic /r/: "spear-it," "ear-itable" with
lengthening of /ɪ/ to /i/, "tear-ible," "Mary-ment" with lengthening of
/ɛ/ to /e/, "soar-y," "oar-ange," "Floor-ida" with lengthening of /ɔ/ to
/o/, etc. Personally, I still have /spɪrɪt/, /ɪrɪtəbl/, /tɛrəbl/,
/mɛrimɪnt/, /sari/ (like the dress), /arɪnǰ/, /flarɪdə/. Wells touches
on this in his following section 6.1.5, but not nearly as thoroughly and
systematically as for /ǣ/.
Finally, another AE allophonic variation may be of some interest to
Slavicists: schwa seems to be splitting into a back allophone [ə] like ъ
and a front allophone [ɪ] like ь. I haven't investigated this
thoroughly, but my first impression is that the split is governed by the
consonantal context: "sofa" [sofə], "sofas" [sofɪz].
--
War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left.
--
Paul B. Gallagher
pbg translations, inc.
"Russian Translations That Read Like Originals"
http://pbg-translations.com
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