ah = ar, aw = or, aw =/= ah / ar
Matt Davis
However, when chatting on IRC to an American about language, he found it
hard to understand why I said aw = or, and kept saying to me "No, aw =
ah". I insisted that that was incorrect. I cannot see how aw = ah, as it
is firmly ingrained in my head that aw = or, e.g. Law & Order
(pronounced Lore and Order using the Intrusive R, dealt with in my other
topic). Can someone who understands aw = ah explain to me how s/he sees
it, as it is hard for me to realise it. Thanks a lot!
Cheers,
Matt
Peter Moylan
Heads down, everyone; here comes another CINC thread.
--
Peter Moylan Peter....@newcastle.edu.au
http://eepjm.newcastle.edu.au (OS/2 and eCS information and software)
Raymond S. Wise
news:bmdd3l$66s$1...@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk...
This is a case where ASCII IPA might prove useful:
See
http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Evan_Kirshenbaum/IPA/
and
http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Evan_Kirshenbaum/IPA/english.html
Your post gives me a headache, to tell you the truth. It needs rewriting
before I would be willing to tackle it.
Forgetting ASCII IPA for the moment, one convention that's useful is to
surround a sound or group of sounds as they might be found in actual English
text with angled brackets, like so: "The syllable 'shun' in English is
sometimes spelled <shun>, sometimes <sion>, sometimes <tion>."
--
Raymond S. Wise
Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
E-mail: mplsray @ yahoo . com
Matt Davis
news:vokhq4p...@corp.supernews.com...
> "Matt Davis" <ma...@avengah.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:bmdd3l$66s$1...@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk...
> > Where I come from, good old England (north), these equalities hold.
> > However, when chatting on IRC to an American about language, he
found it
> > hard to understand why I said aw = or, and kept saying to me "No, aw
=
> > ah". I insisted that that was incorrect. I cannot see how aw = ah,
as it
> > is firmly ingrained in my head that aw = or, e.g. Law & Order
> > (pronounced Lore and Order using the Intrusive R, dealt with in my
other
> > topic). Can someone who understands aw = ah explain to me how s/he
sees
> > it, as it is hard for me to realise it. Thanks a lot!
>
>
> This is a case where ASCII IPA might prove useful:
>
> See
> http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Evan_Kirshenbaum/IPA/
>
> and
>
> http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Evan_Kirshenbaum/IPA/english.html
>
>
> Your post gives me a headache, to tell you the truth. It needs
rewriting
> before I would be willing to tackle it.
OK - I realise it is quite messy. What I was trying to say, but worded
rather badly, was this.
I have always thought, and grown up thinking, that the sounds
represented by the following pairs of letters are the same, as listed
here:
ah = ar
aw = or
Hence aw =/= ah and aw =/= ar. However, during a chat about
pronunciation with an American on IRC, when I said aw = or, he replied
firmly in the negative, with the following:
aw = ah!
I do not understand how he can think that, as to me "aw" looks like "or"
to my northern English eyes and ears. I would assume the reverse is true
for my correspondent; I guess "aw" looks like "ah" to him, and he
probably can't see how I can think what I do. I was just hoping for
someone who understands the full picture to explain to me how "aw" can
be seen as "ah", when it is firmly ingrained in my head that "aw" is
"or".
I hope I have clarified the situation for you, and apologies for writing
it rather clumsily in the first place.
Cheers,
Matt
Aaron J. Dinkin
As I'm sure you're aware, people speaking English in different parts of
the world have different pronunciations for the same words. However, what
is less well-known is that this is true not only on the level of
individual words. In fact different regional variants of English even
disagree with each other on the question of which words have the same
vowel sounds as other words.
At a certain leven of abstraction, English has several of what we might
call, for the nonce, systematic "vowel classes". The point is that, with
certain sporadic exceptions, any given speaker of English will pronounce
all the words in a single vowel class with the same vowel: that is, you
will pronounce any word in the "ah" class with the same vowel as any other
word in the "ah" class, and so will I. However, every speaker also
_merges_ certain vowel classes, while keeping others distinct, and which
vowel classes you merge depend on your regional dialect. By "merging" two
vowel classes, I mean pronouncing words of one vowel class with the same
vowel as words in another vowel class.
Here are some of the English vowel classes that pattern differently in
different regional dialects:
the "short a" class - in words like "cat", "hat", "rack"
the "ah" class - in words like "spa" and "father"
the "ar" class - in words like "part", "card", and "harm"
the "short o" class - in words like "pot" and "knock"
the "tense o" class - in words like "boss" and "soft"
the "aw" class - in words like "law" and "caught"
the "or" class - in words like "order" and "port"
the "ore" class - in words like "hoarse" and "bore"
In standard British English, the "ah" and "ar" classes are merged, the
"short o" and "tense o" classes are merged, and the "aw", "or", and "ore"
classes are merged. In the English of the Western United States, the "ah",
"short o", "tense o", and "aw" classes are all merged, and the "or" and
"ore" classes are merged. In some old-fashioned Boston English, the "ah"
and "ar" classes are merged, and the "short o", "tense o", "aw", and "or"
classes are merged, but the "ore" class remains distince. In New York, the
"ah" and "short o" classes are merged, but the "tense o" class remains
distinct. And so on: almost every dialect has a different pattern of
mergers and distinctions.
Keep in mind that these vowel classes are only an approximation, and
although they work for many discussions, there are cases where they break
down, and specific words may have to be considered as being in different
classes in different dialects. For instance, "clerk" is in the "er" class
in the United States, but in the "ar" class in Britain. For a more
complicated example, there is a "tense a" class that's parallel to the
"tense o" class I mentioned above; it contains words like "pass" and
"dance". In standard British English, the "tense a" class is merged with
the "ah" class; in the Western United States, it's merged with the "short
a" class; and in New York and Philadelphia, it remains distinct from both
of those. But different dialects often disagree on which words are part of
the "tense a" class: for instance, "glad" is part of the "tense a" class
in Philadelphia but not in New York or Britain.
I hope this attempt at an explanation is helpful. If I've been unclear,
or you think I've got something wrong, I hope the group will set me
straight, and of course don't hesitate to ask more.
-Aaron J. Dinkin
Dr. Whom
Jonathan Jordan
news:vokhq4p...@corp.supernews.com...
<snip>
> Forgetting ASCII IPA for the moment, one convention that's useful is
to
> surround a sound or group of sounds as they might be found in actual
English
> text with angled brackets, like so: "The syllable 'shun' in English
is
> sometimes spelled <shun>, sometimes <sion>, sometimes <tion>."
That sentence seems to me to be assuming that schwa (as in most words
spelt <tion>) can be identified with /V/ (as in <shun>), which I find
counter-intuitive.
Jonathan
Jonathan Jordan
news:bmdlrj$1m0l$1...@netnews.upenn.edu...
<snip>
>
> Here are some of the English vowel classes that pattern differently
in
> different regional dialects:
>
> the "short a" class - in words like "cat", "hat", "rack"
> the "ah" class - in words like "spa" and "father"
> the "ar" class - in words like "part", "card", and "harm"
> the "short o" class - in words like "pot" and "knock"
> the "tense o" class - in words like "boss" and "soft"
> the "aw" class - in words like "law" and "caught"
> the "or" class - in words like "order" and "port"
> the "ore" class - in words like "hoarse" and "bore"
Actually, "port" is in the "ore" class for me, and this is supported
by Chambers and OED 2nd edition. So are most <por> words, for that
matter.
Just that I'd prefer you didn't use the term "standard British
English" when you mean modern RP.
Jonathan
Jonathan Jordan
news:bmdd3l$66s$1...@newsg1.svr.pol.co.uk...
Two points, both of which affect me:
Not all northern English speakers are non-rhotic. Have you been to
Accrington? I think my rhoticity came from Ireland, though.
Even in non-rhotic areas, "law" is often not the same as "lore". I
think a non-rhotic Sheffield accent would have "lore" rhyming with
"more", "four", "door", but not with "law", "for", "nor", "tor". In
terms of Aaron's word classes, the "ore" and "or" classes are not
merged.
Jonathan
Donna Richoux
> I have always thought, and grown up thinking, that the sounds
> represented by the following pairs of letters are the same, as listed
> here:
>
> ah = ar
> aw = or
>
> Hence aw =/= ah and aw =/= ar. However, during a chat about
> pronunciation with an American on IRC, when I said aw = or, he replied
> firmly in the negative, with the following:
>
> aw = ah!
>
> I do not understand how he can think that, as to me "aw" looks like "or"
> to my northern English eyes and ears. I would assume the reverse is true
> for my correspondent; I guess "aw" looks like "ah" to him, and he
> probably can't see how I can think what I do. I was just hoping for
> someone who understands the full picture to explain to me how "aw" can
> be seen as "ah", when it is firmly ingrained in my head that "aw" is
> "or".
>
> I hope I have clarified the situation for you, and apologies for writing
> it rather clumsily in the first place.
It depends a lot on what part of America you're from. We have regional
accents, too, you know. I'm from California, myself. In the western part
of the US, the vowel categories merged together long ago.
A few years ago, I recorded myself saying
father, bother, on, swan, all, sorry, wash, saw, pop, caught
and put it at
http://www.euronet.nl/users/trio/father.wav
You may have to try a couple of times to get it to play.
To me, those are all the same vowel, although the following L and R in
"all" and "sorry" affect the color slightly.
The last word could be spelled "caught" or "cot," I pronounce them the
same. That's what Richard Fontana's CIC and CINC are about, "caught is
cot" and "caught is not cot."
Your friend is obviously a "caught is cot" person, like me.
If you start listening carefully to American accents on TV, you will be
able to pick this feature out.
--
Best -- Donna Richoux
R F
On Mon, 13 Oct 2003, Donna Richoux wrote:
> A few years ago, I recorded myself saying
>
> father, bother, on, swan, all, sorry, wash, saw, pop, caught
>
> and put it at
>
> http://www.euronet.nl/users/trio/father.wav
>
> You may have to try a couple of times to get it to play.
>
> To me, those are all the same vowel, although the following L and R in
> "all" and "sorry" affect the color slightly.
My recollection is that there were at least a couple of distinct
allophones there. My conclusion, and I think R J Valentine shared it, was
that, despite your CICness, you are "one of us".
Donna Richoux
What the darn tootin' are you talking about? What club are you trying to
make me a member of?
I think I remember you spinning some wild yarn last time, but that
doesn't mean I believed it.
--
Leery -- Donna Richoux
Michael Hamm
<din...@babel.ling.upenn.edu> wrote, in part:
Thanks for the illuminating exposition.
I, a New Yorker, distinguish your "ah" and "short o" classes, and I think
other New Yorkers do, too: 'father', et al., are with /A/, whereas 'pot',
at al., are with /a/. See article
<76af5277.03051...@posting.google.com>, reproduced at
<URL:http://tinyurl.com/qqm8>.
As late as, er, approximately 1990, my sister, a New Yorker, had to take a
speech-correction class (in New York) because she "mispronounced" "Nancy
thanked the man for the candy." with the tense a instead of the short a.
Michael Hamm Since mid-September of 2003,
BA scl Math, PBK, NYU I've been erasing too much UBE.
msh...@math.wustl.edu Of a reply, then, if you have been cheated,
http://math.wustl.edu/~msh210/ Likely your mail's by mistake been deleted.
Sebastian Hew
> > in different regional dialects:
> >
> > the "short a" class - in words like "cat", "hat", "rack"
> > the "ah" class - in words like "spa" and "father"
> > the "ar" class - in words like "part", "card", and "harm"
> > the "short o" class - in words like "pot" and "knock"
> > the "tense o" class - in words like "boss" and "soft"
> > the "aw" class - in words like "law" and "caught"
> > the "or" class - in words like "order" and "port"
> > the "ore" class - in words like "hoarse" and "bore"
>
> Actually, "port" is in the "ore" class for me, and this is supported
> by Chambers and OED 2nd edition. So are most <por> words, for that
> matter.
I'm not sure that I can detect the difference between the 'or' and the
'ore' classes. They both sound the same to me. Could you perhaps
elaborate on this?
Sebastian.
Raymond S. Wise
news:bmdmb4$lcep6$1...@ID-162222.news.uni-berlin.de...
This subject has been discussed previously in this group. When the schwa
sign is used for /V/ as well as the unstressed vowel, the two are considered
to be two allophones of the same phoneme. This is how Evan Kirschenbaum sees
it, and how the *Merriam-Webster* dictionaries treat it.
*Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary,* 11th ed., uses the schwa in the
following ways. The following is a paraphrase, as it looked messy when I
tried to represent the text as written.
What follows is based upon the short version on page 40a. There is a longer
discussion on page 35a.
@ is used for the first and last <a>s in <banana>, the <o> in <collide>, the
<a> in <abut>.
'@ and ,@ are used for the <u>s in <humdrum> and <abut>.
superscript @ is used immediately preceding /l/, /n/, /m/, /N/, as in the
last syllables of <battle>, <mitten>, <eaten>, and sometimes <open>. Here
the 11th Collegiate represents <open> as /'oUp[superscript @]m/. I thought
this was a misprint until I looked up the entry <open> in the dictionary
itself. It is shown with two pronunciation variants: /'oUp@n/ and
/'oUp[superscript @]m/. An example of the superscript @ before /N/ is the
middle vowel in <lock and key>. Superscript @ is also used immediately
following /l/, /m/, and /r/, as in the last syllables of French "table,"
"prisme," and "titre." The superscript @ thus appears to be what in ASCII
IPA would be a marker for syllabic consonants. In ASCII IPA that marker is a
hyphen which follows the consonant, so that <battle> is represented as
/'b@tl->.
@r is used for the <ur> and <er> in "further," the <er>s in <merger> and the
<ir> in <bird>.
'@r- and '@-r are used in the two different pronunciations of <hurry>. The
hyphen is not used in this fashion in either IPA or ASCII IPA. I don't see
how both pronunciations could be ordinarily represented in ASCII IPA except
by those who use /V/ instead of /@/: They would be able to distinguish
/'h@ri/ from /'hVri/. However, I could make an *ad hoc* use of the space to
distinguish /'h@ri/ from /h@ ri/.
Jonathan Jordan
Yes, I know that. But what I said still stands - for some English
speakers this is counterintuitive, so your sentence was potentially
confusing, because we just don't think of the /S@n/ spelt <tion> and
the /SVn/ spelt "shun" as being the same syllable.
It is quite clear that M-W pronunciations do not attempt to represent
non-US varieties of English.
Jonathan
Jonathan Jordan
news:3f8abfdf$0$28119$afc3...@news.optusnet.com.au...
Aaron can almost certainly describe the history better than I can, but
here goes:
"or" class: mostly words derived from Middle English short vowels, and
hence spelt with <or> followed by a consonant or at the end of a word,
also <ar> after <w> or <qu>, also <aur>. Examples: sort, forty,
morning, horse, for (stressed), tor, war, warn, swarm, quarter,
dinosaur, Laura, aural.
"ore" class: mostly words derived from ME long vowels, and hence spelt
with <or> followed by a vowel (including silent <e> and <y> as a
vowel), <oar>, <our> or <oor>, but also including a few words spelt
with plain <or>+consonant. Examples: more, wore, oral, story, boar,
board, four, mourning, door, floor, port, pork, sport, report,
support, worn, torn, force.
Some minimal pairs:
morning/mourning
horse/hoarse
war/wore
warn/worn
aural/oral
tor/tore
for/four (and "forty-four" has three different vowels)
Old-fashioned RP, as represented in the OED 1st and 2nd editions, had
the distinction, but modern RP seems to have lost it, and it's now
best preserved in Scotland, Ireland and some parts of England and
Wales. (I'm from Sheffield, with some northern Irish influence.) For
me the distinction is [O:] in "or" as against a diphthong [o@] in
"ore". Others do it differently.
Jonathan
Adrian Bailey
> I hope this attempt at an explanation is helpful. If I've been unclear,
> or you think I've got something wrong, I hope the group will set me
> straight, and of course don't hesitate to ask more.
You deserve the aue stipend, sir, for your clear and sensible contributions.
Adrian
Aaron J. Dinkin
> "Sebastian Hew" <rada...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:3f8abfdf$0$28119$afc3...@news.optusnet.com.au...
>>
>> I'm not sure that I can detect the difference between the 'or' and
>> the 'ore' classes. They both sound the same to me. Could you perhaps
>> elaborate on this?
>
> Aaron can almost certainly describe the history better than I can, but
> here goes:
You've got it about right, as far as I can tell. I'd just like to add one
thing about mergers:
> "or" class: mostly words derived from Middle English short vowels, and
> hence spelt with <or> followed by a consonant or at the end of a word,
> also <ar> after <w> or <qu>, also <aur>. Examples: sort, forty,
> morning, horse, for (stressed), tor, war, warn, swarm, quarter,
> dinosaur, Laura, aural.
I don't think <aur> is in the "or" class; rather, it's in the "aw" class
followed by /r/ - or, if you prefer, the "awr" class. You apparently merge
these two classes, but I keep them distinct: I pronounce "Laura" with my
merged "aw"/"short o" vowel, not with my merged "or"/"ore" vowel. (I'm
hesitant to call "awr" a class in its own right because in my own dialect
it can't occur syllable-finally; but see below regarding Appalachia. I may
need to rethink the way my quick-and-dirty analysis into classes treats
the difference between rhotic and non-rhotic pronunciations; as is it
can't quite describe rhotic dialects in which, for instance, "or" is
distinct from "aw", but not from "aw" followed by /r/.)
"Dinosaur" may be a sporadic exception; it's in the "or" class for me,
but I believe there are dialects that maintain an "or"/"awr" distinction
in which it's not in the "or" class. I understand that there are dialects
in the central western Eastern U.S., in and near the Appalachian
mountains - West Virginia, western Virginia, western North Carolina - in
which "aw" remains a diphthong with an [U] offglide. In these dialects, I
think "dinosaur" would end in [sAUr], not [sOr].
Evan Kirshenbaum
> This is a case where ASCII IPA might prove useful:
>
> See
> http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Evan_Kirshenbaum/IPA/
>
> and
>
> http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Evan_Kirshenbaum/IPA/english.html
Ray, if you're going to point people to those documents, could you
point them to
http://www.kirshenbaum.net/IPA/index.htm
and
http://www.kirshenbaum.net/IPA/english.html
The others are still there because there are a lot of pages pointing
to them on the web, but I don't maintain them anymore. One of these
days I should find out if there's now a way to get the old URLs to
actually forward to my site.
--
Evan Kirshenbaum +------------------------------------
HP Laboratories |There is something fascinating
1501 Page Mill Road, 1U, MS 1141 |about science. One gets such
Palo Alto, CA 94304 |wholesale returns of conjecture out
|of such a trifling investment of
kirsh...@hpl.hp.com |fact.
(650)857-7572 | Mark Twain
Raymond S. Wise
news:fzhx2e...@hpl.hp.com...
> "Raymond S. Wise" <illinoi...@mninter.net> writes:
>
> > This is a case where ASCII IPA might prove useful:
> >
> > See
> > http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Evan_Kirshenbaum/IPA/
> >
> > and
> >
> > http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Evan_Kirshenbaum/IPA/english.html
>
> Ray, if you're going to point people to those documents, could you
> point them to
>
> http://www.kirshenbaum.net/IPA/index.htm
>
> and
>
> http://www.kirshenbaum.net/IPA/english.html
>
> The others are still there because there are a lot of pages pointing
> to them on the web, but I don't maintain them anymore. One of these
> days I should find out if there's now a way to get the old URLs to
> actually forward to my site.
I've made a note of it, Evan. However, that first URL should be
http://www.kirshenbaum.net/IPA/index.html
R J Valentine
I only vaguely recall what I might've said last time, but listening to
this again now brought the joy of clicking back. What you've got there is
one of the finest sets of vowels I've put my ears to in a long time. The
ah's are ah's and the aw's are aw's. Hang on a second.
Okay, I listened to it again. There are clear aw's in "all" "saw" "wash",
and "caught", and there are clear ah's in the rest -- impressively so in
"sorry". If you can't hear the difference, you're really missing
something. I don't know what you mean by "color", but your "all" and
"sorry" are on opposite sides of the fence. This is not the stuff of
Sparky in his "hot coffee" recording, where you're stuck in [A]-ville.
This is more like his 'People call me "Bob"' recording, where aw's are
aw's and ah's are ah's, and there's no beating around the bush about it.
I'm starting to wake people up around here, and I'm sorely tempted to go
get the headphones from the other computer and crank up the volume to
where it almost hurts. If you want to contrast your recording with
something, take a listen to Sparky's "Arthur the Rat" recording in his
NUPE mode, nicely enough done, but plainly CIC and MINIM. He kindly
provided a TUP URL, so I could refresh my memory on that. If you've got
any other recordings sitting around the Web (or that could be made to be
without much trouble (an "Arthur the Rat" reading might be too much to
hope for), I'd gladly give that a listen, too, to see if maybe I just got
the wrong impression with the isolated words in this recording.
Who knows, maybe Sparky will be independently moved (and I hope that
mentioning the possibility doesn't discourage him) to hook up his Praat
program to your recording above and see if there isn't something common to
the "aw" words listed above that isn't common to the rest (especially
"sorry", where a lot of people otherwise in CINC might stick an "aw").
But you're certainly not as CIC as you seem to claim.
--
R. J. Valentine <mailto:r...@smart.net>
Donna Richoux
[discussing http://www.euronet.nl/users/trio/father.wav ]
> But you're certainly not as CIC as you seem to claim.
But am I saying "cot" or "caught" at the end, then? Because if CINC,
then I can't be saying both, I only utter one word. To me, they are the
same, CIC.
R F
On Tue, 14 Oct 2003, R J Valentine wrote:
[to Donna Richoux]
> But you're certainly not as CIC as you seem to claim.
What he said. I've been toying around with this theory for a long time,
that basically goes like this: A lot of American speakers who *think*
they merge cot and caught, and who are even *heard* by other speakers (CIC
or even CINC) as merging cot and caught, do *not*, in *reality*, merge cot
and caught. I'd ask Aaron Dinkin to look into this, but I don't want to
put his advisor out of business. We're sacrificing a lot to send young
Aaron to grad school.
Donna Richoux may be evidence of what I'm talking about. She's really
CINC, only she *thinks* she's CIC. Why else do we like her vowels so
much? With Sparky it's a whole nother matter, and I haven't heard that
latest recording.
Note that Donna Richoux has, in the past, alluded to an upbringing in the
San Francisco Bay Area (often known, today, as "the Bay Area" as if there
were no other bays). Young Dinkin's advisor himself has presented data
suggesting that the San Francisco Bay Area may be a hotbed of CINCism amid
the vast Californian CIC desert.
What I don't get is, how can someone *really* be CINC, but *think* they're
CIC in the face of all the social pressures out there making one want to
think they're CINC? Take English spelling, one. I'll bet that
supposedly-CIC composers of verse and dawgerel will prefer to distinguish
a caught/fraught rhyme from a cot/dot rhyme even if they *think* these all
rhyme with one another. How about phonics and early child readin' and
ritin' education in the Western US, or Eastern Mass.? Surely CIC
Americans are aware of pressures out there inclining them to be CINC.
They may resist those pressures, yes, or they may think they're resisting
them, but they still have to be aware of them. CICs like Donna, Bawb,
Aaron ... these are intelligent people, people who weren't barn in a born,
as they say in non-NUPE regions of Utah.
Does anyone understand what I'm talking about here?
Donna Richoux
> On Tue, 14 Oct 2003, R J Valentine wrote:
>
> [to Donna Richoux]
> > But you're certainly not as CIC as you seem to claim.
>
> What he said. I've been toying around with this theory for a long time,
> that basically goes like this: A lot of American speakers who *think*
> they merge cot and caught, and who are even *heard* by other speakers (CIC
> or even CINC) as merging cot and caught, do *not*, in *reality*, merge cot
> and caught. I'd ask Aaron Dinkin to look into this, but I don't want to
> put his advisor out of business. We're sacrificing a lot to send young
> Aaron to grad school.
>
> Donna Richoux may be evidence of what I'm talking about. She's really
> CINC, only she *thinks* she's CIC. Why else do we like her vowels so
> much?
Who ever said you hated CIC voices? Tons of famous people talk this way.
> With Sparky it's a whole nother matter, and I haven't heard that
> latest recording.
>
> Note that Donna Richoux has, in the past, alluded to an upbringing in the
> San Francisco Bay Area (often known, today, as "the Bay Area" as if there
> were no other bays). Young Dinkin's advisor himself has presented data
> suggesting that the San Francisco Bay Area may be a hotbed of CINCism amid
> the vast Californian CIC desert.
>
> What I don't get is, how can someone *really* be CINC, but *think* they're
> CIC in the face of all the social pressures out there making one want to
> think they're CINC? Take English spelling, one. I'll bet that
> supposedly-CIC composers of verse and dawgerel will prefer to distinguish
> a caught/fraught rhyme from a cot/dot rhyme even if they *think* these all
> rhyme with one another. How about phonics and early child readin' and
> ritin' education in the Western US, or Eastern Mass.? Surely CIC
> Americans are aware of pressures out there inclining them to be CINC.
> They may resist those pressures, yes, or they may think they're resisting
> them, but they still have to be aware of them. CICs like Donna, Bawb,
> Aaron ... these are intelligent people, people who weren't barn in a born,
> as they say in non-NUPE regions of Utah.
>
> Does anyone understand what I'm talking about here?
I ask you the same question I asked RJ. Was my last word "caught" or
"cot"? Answer: since I pronounce them exactly the same, there is no way
you can tell. Therefore, all the rest of this speculation is sheer
fantasy.
Imagine I recorded a random string of "caught, cot, cot, cot, caught..."
up to, say, twenty times, and asked you to write down your guess of
which I was saying each time. I am certain you would come out around 50%
correct -- i.e., no better than random chance.
I would do that if I thought it was simple to make a sound file, but my
recollection is that it was not.
Jerry Friedman
Sounds familiar. *googles* Ah, <http://tinyurl.com/qwkk> or
<http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&threadm=96efe132.0204091329.6e9e0767%40posting.google.com&rnum=1&prev=/groups%3Fhl%3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DISO-8859-1%26q%3Dalt.usage.english%2BMatt%2BDavis%2BJerry%2BFriedman%2Byaw%26meta%3D>.
Of course, if you hadn't asked again, we wouldn't have gotten Aaron's
post on vowel classes, among other things.
--
Jerry Friedman
rzed
> R F <rfon...@mail.wesleyan.edu> wrote:
>
>> On Tue, 14 Oct 2003, R J Valentine wrote:
>>
>> [to Donna Richoux]
>>> But you're certainly not as CIC as you seem to claim.
>
> I ask you the same question I asked RJ. Was my last word "caught" or
> "cot"? Answer: since I pronounce them exactly the same, there is no
> way you can tell. Therefore, all the rest of this speculation is
> sheer fantasy.
It was "caught".
At least as someone posting under the name "Donna Richoux" said,
<quote>
A few years ago, I recorded myself saying
father, bother, on, swan, all, sorry, wash, saw, pop, caught
and put it at
http://www.euronet.nl/users/trio/father.wav
</quote>
>
> Imagine I recorded a random string of "caught, cot, cot, cot,
> caught..." up to, say, twenty times, and asked you to write down
> your guess of which I was saying each time. I am certain you would
> come out around 50% correct -- i.e., no better than random chance.
>
> I would do that if I thought it was simple to make a sound file,
> but my recollection is that it was not.
But in the spirit of scientific inquiry ...
--
rzed
Valencia Tzing
>On Tue, 14 Oct 2003, R J Valentine wrote:
>
>[to Donna Richoux]
>> But you're certainly not as CIC as you seem to claim.
>
>What he said. I've been toying around with this theory for a long time,
>that basically goes like this: A lot of American speakers who *think*
>they merge cot and caught, and who are even *heard* by other speakers (CIC
>or even CINC) as merging cot and caught, do *not*, in *reality*, merge cot
>and caught.
If in reality they do *not* really merge cot and caught how, then, does your
theory account for their actually being "*heard by other speakers (CIC or even
CINC) as merging cot and caught"?
A countervailing theory: A lot of American speakers who do not *think* they
merge cot and caught, and who are even *heard* by other speakers (CIC or even
CINC) as not merging cot and caught, *do*, in *reality*, merge cot and caught.
:) (I hope you don't frown on smileys.)
<rest of post snipped>
Valenzia
R F
On Tue, 14 Oct 2003, Valencia Tzing wrote:
> R F rfontana wrote:
>
> >On Tue, 14 Oct 2003, R J Valentine wrote:
> >
> >[to Donna Richoux]
> >> But you're certainly not as CIC as you seem to claim.
> >
> >What he said. I've been toying around with this theory for a long time,
> >that basically goes like this: A lot of American speakers who *think*
> >they merge cot and caught, and who are even *heard* by other speakers (CIC
> >or even CINC) as merging cot and caught, do *not*, in *reality*, merge cot
> >and caught.
>
> If in reality they do *not* really merge cot and caught how, then, does your
> theory account for their actually being "*heard by other speakers (CIC or even
> CINC) as merging cot and caught"?
Easy-peasy, as Sir Paul McCartney might say. We mishear Bob (Doyen of
English Usage) Cunningham as CIC because his cot and caught vowels *are*
awfully close together, as befits a speaker of NUPE (Northern Utah
Prestige English). Occasionally he slips up, though, as perhaps in this
recent "Call me Bob" recording that I've heard so much about. With Donna
("Dawna") Richoux, cot and caught vowels are further apart, so it's
easier for us to recognize that she isn't really as CIC as she claims to be.
As a wise man once said, "It's all Praatable".
R F
On Tue, 14 Oct 2003, Donna Richoux wrote:
> R F <rfon...@mail.wesleyan.edu> wrote:
>
> > On Tue, 14 Oct 2003, R J Valentine wrote:
> >
> > [to Donna Richoux]
> > > But you're certainly not as CIC as you seem to claim.
> >
> > What he said. I've been toying around with this theory for a long time,
> > that basically goes like this: A lot of American speakers who *think*
> > they merge cot and caught, and who are even *heard* by other speakers (CIC
> > or even CINC) as merging cot and caught, do *not*, in *reality*, merge cot
> > and caught. I'd ask Aaron Dinkin to look into this, but I don't want to
> > put his advisor out of business. We're sacrificing a lot to send young
> > Aaron to grad school.
> >
> > Donna Richoux may be evidence of what I'm talking about. She's really
> > CINC, only she *thinks* she's CIC. Why else do we like her vowels so
> > much?
>
> Who ever said you hated CIC voices? Tons of famous people talk this way.
It's not just the *sound* of your voice, though that's part of it. You're
One of Us. Now Sparky Cunningham, we like the sound of his voice too, but
he isn't One of Us. He speaks NUPE (Northern Utah Prestige English).
> > What I don't get is, how can someone *really* be CINC, but *think* they're
> > CIC in the face of all the social pressures out there making one want to
> > think they're CINC? Take English spelling, one. I'll bet that
> > supposedly-CIC composers of verse and dawgerel will prefer to distinguish
> > a caught/fraught rhyme from a cot/dot rhyme even if they *think* these all
> > rhyme with one another. How about phonics and early child readin' and
> > ritin' education in the Western US, or Eastern Mass.? Surely CIC
> > Americans are aware of pressures out there inclining them to be CINC.
> > They may resist those pressures, yes, or they may think they're resisting
> > them, but they still have to be aware of them. CICs like Donna, Bawb,
> > Aaron ... these are intelligent people, people who weren't barn in a born,
> > as they say in non-NUPE regions of Utah.
> >
> > Does anyone understand what I'm talking about here?
>
> I ask you the same question I asked RJ. Was my last word "caught" or
> "cot"? Answer: since I pronounce them exactly the same, there is no way
> you can tell. Therefore, all the rest of this speculation is sheer
> fantasy.
I dunno if it matters whether *I* can tell what the last word was (it was
"caught", though). What matters is whether you, in fact, do say "cot"
differently from "caught" in a way that, as Minneapolis Ray Wise might put
it, is, in principle, testable (perhaps in a Praatable fashion). You
might be distinguishing systematically between "cot" and "caught" and just
not realizing it.
> Imagine I recorded a random string of "caught, cot, cot, cot, caught..."
> up to, say, twenty times, and asked you to write down your guess of
> which I was saying each time. I am certain you would come out around 50%
> correct -- i.e., no better than random chance.
Maybe so, but that's irrelevant. What would Praat say?
R J Valentine
...
} Easy-peasy, as Sir Paul McCartney might say. We mishear Bob (Doyen of
} English Usage) Cunningham as CIC because his cot and caught vowels *are*
} awfully close together, as befits a speaker of NUPE (Northern Utah
} Prestige English). Occasionally he slips up, though, as perhaps in this
} recent "Call me Bob" recording that I've heard so much about.
The URL as reported in another thread started by someone claiming to be
the aue webmaster is:
http://alt-usage-english.org/audio_gallery/
The one to look for is Bob Cunningham's, wherein he says something along
the lines of "My name is Robert Elwood Cunningham. People call me
Bob." And then there's something about "Sparky". But it's the "People
call me Bob" part that's interesting to me, because the "aw" in call and
the "ah" in "Bob" are distinctly different, and exactly as I hope that I
pronounce them. I couldn't do the difference between "aw" and "ah" better
than he did here if you paid me. It's outstanding.
But the bulk of the recordings I've heard from Bob Cunningham are less
distinct cot-versus-caught-wise, as he himself has said for years and as I
believed for sure after hearing his "hot coffee" recording. I'm beginning
to think that the script for the "hot coffee" is (no-doubt unconsciously)
biased toward CICness, and somewhere recently I suggested another one, but
I forget how it goes, but it had a "Bob" in it. Even "Call Bob!" three
times fast would be a start.
} With Donna
} ("Dawna") Richoux, cot and caught vowels are further apart, so it's
} easier for us to recognize that she isn't really as CIC as she claims to be.
I don't even know why she'd claim to be CIC after presenting that pair of
vowels for our attention. Can it be that she just can't hear it now, but
maybe in early childhood she could, and she can still produce them if not
hear them? Can Aaron detect the variety in that sample? (I don't have
the URL handy, but it's a little ways upthread from here.)
} As a wise man once said, "It's all Praatable".
But not just by anyone. It'd have to be done by someone trustworthy. Bob
Cunningham is the guy I trust, because he's got no particular reason to
agree with me, and he knows how to run the program, and he reports things
as he sees them.
R F
On Wed, 15 Oct 2003, R J Valentine wrote:
> The URL as reported in another thread started by someone claiming to be
> the aue webmaster is:
>
> http://alt-usage-english.org/audio_gallery/
>
> The one to look for is Bob Cunningham's, wherein he says something along
> the lines of "My name is Robert Elwood Cunningham. People call me
> Bob." And then there's something about "Sparky".
I've now found this page, and I've been listening to the recordings. One
that interests me is the one purporting to be from Robert Elwood
Cunningham. I do not believe that this is the same speaker as the Bob
Cunningham of "bother, father" and "Arthur the Rat" fame. Robert Elwood
speaks much more rapidly, and has a higher voice. The accent's different
too.
> But it's the "People
> call me Bob" part that's interesting to me, because the "aw" in call and
> the "ah" in "Bob" are distinctly different, and exactly as I hope that I
> pronounce them. I couldn't do the difference between "aw" and "ah" better
> than he did here if you paid me. It's outstanding.
By Jove, you're right. Robert Elwood Cunningham is CINC.
Did you hear Franke's recording? Heh! I think that bit of sarcasm at the
end may be a reference to Coop! Anyway, Franke's speech is highly East
Coast, TME.
> But the bulk of the recordings I've heard from Bob Cunningham are less
> distinct cot-versus-caught-wise, as he himself has said for years and as I
> believed for sure after hearing his "hot coffee" recording. I'm beginning
> to think that the script for the "hot coffee" is (no-doubt unconsciously)
> biased toward CICness, and somewhere recently I suggested another one, but
> I forget how it goes, but it had a "Bob" in it. Even "Call Bob!" three
> times fast would be a start.
This Robert Elwood fellow is not Bawb Cunningham. Which one of them is
the NUPE speaker?
> } As a wise man once said, "It's all Praatable".
>
> But not just by anyone. It'd have to be done by someone trustworthy. Bob
> Cunningham is the guy I trust, because he's got no particular reason to
> agree with me, and he knows how to run the program, and he reports things
> as he sees them.
You're talking about the "Bawb" Bob Cunningham. What if "Robert Elwood
Cunningham" has seized the Praat Machine?
Aaron J. Dinkin
> On Tue, 14 Oct 2003 16:46:51 -0400 R F <rfon...@mail.wesleyan.edu> wrote:
>
> } With Donna ("Dawna") Richoux, cot and caught vowels are further
> } apart, so it's easier for us to recognize that she isn't really as
> } CIC as she claims to be.
>
> I don't even know why she'd claim to be CIC after presenting that pair of
> vowels for our attention. Can it be that she just can't hear it now, but
> maybe in early childhood she could, and she can still produce them if not
> hear them? Can Aaron detect the variety in that sample?
Short answer is, no. And I'll call to your attention the fact that it's
easy to think someone's making a distinction that you make even if
they're not.
Oh, have I mentioned that Bill Labov claims that the "father" and
"bother" vowel classes are distinguished in New York?
Jonathan Jordan
news:1g2rlyf.1kcpnwm1sa9e3sN%tr...@euronet.nl...
> A few years ago, I recorded myself saying
>
> father, bother, on, swan, all, sorry, wash, saw, pop, caught
>
> and put it at
>
> http://www.euronet.nl/users/trio/father.wav
>
> You may have to try a couple of times to get it to play.
>
> To me, those are all the same vowel, although the following L and R
in
> "all" and "sorry" affect the color slightly.
I don't know what this says about mine and R J Valentine's perception
of vowels, but I heard them as all the same, and roughly [A], except
for "wash" and "sorry" where the vowels sounded more like my own
"short o", [A.].
In particular, the vowels of "pop" and "caught" sounded identical.
Jonathan
Woody Wordpecker
<rfon...@mail.wesleyan.edu> said:
> On Wed, 15 Oct 2003, R J Valentine wrote:
> > The URL [where Bob Cunningham pronounces his name] is:
> > http://alt-usage-english.org/audio_gallery/
[ . . . ]
> I've now found this page, and I've been listening to the recordings. One
> that interests me is the one purporting to be from Robert Elwood
> Cunningham. I do not believe that this is the same speaker as the Bob
> Cunningham of "bother, father" and "Arthur the Rat" fame.
It is.
> Robert Elwood speaks much more rapidly, and has a higher
> voice. The accent's different too.
We all speak more rapidly or more slowly and with a higher
or lower voice on different occasions, depending upon many
variables.
[ . . . ]
> By Jove, you're right. Robert Elwood Cunningham is CINC.
If you think such a slight difference can make someone CINC
rather than CIC, then this demonstrates that the concept has
no practical value.
And, again, the recording at the AUE Website is defective
(unless the webmaster has replaced it with the new one from
my Web site). If you could see the waveform, you'd know
that there's an extraneous glitch in the "call" utterance.
I've made a recording that doesn't have a glitch in any of
the relevant words, although there's one in "people". The
better recording is at http://tinyurl.com/mg5c , or
http://www.exw6sxq.com/sparky/aue_related/speech_examples/people_say_their_names.html
. `
Woody Wordpecker
<rfon...@mail.wesleyan.edu> said:
>
> On Tue, 14 Oct 2003, Donna Richoux wrote:
[ . . . ]
> > Imagine I recorded a random string of "caught, cot, cot, cot, caught..."
> > up to, say, twenty times, and asked you to write down your guess of
> > which I was saying each time. I am certain you would come out around 50%
> > correct -- i.e., no better than random chance.
> Maybe so, but that's irrelevant. What would [formant analysis] say?
Formant analysis would say that Donna was repeating the
identical pronunciation for the "caught"s and the "cot"s,
because, while she was speaking them, she would not be
mentally associating different pronunciations with them.
She would be conscious of saying the same thing for both
words, just as I would.
However, if she -- or I -- were to say, with an honest
effort to speak naturally, "After I bought some sod, caught
a cod, and ate an apricot, I caught a nap on a cot", then
formant analysis might find differences.
I have made that recording and have done some preliminary
analysis. I see interesting tendencies that could be
subject to different interpretations, but I'm not ready to
publish the results.
(I've substituted "formant analysis" for RFs "Praat",
because I'm reasonably certain that's what he meant. Praat
does a great many things other than formant analysis, and
Praat is not the only way to do formant analysis.)
Woody Wordpecker
<exw...@earthlink.net> said:
> (I've substituted "formant analysis" for [*]RFs[*] "Praat",
> because I'm reasonably certain that's what he meant. Praat
> does a great many things other than formant analysis, and
> Praat is not the only way to do formant analysis.)
"RF's".
Aaron J. Dinkin
> On Wed, 15 Oct 2003 01:21:12 -0400, R F
><rfon...@mail.wesleyan.edu> said:
>
>> By Jove, you're right. Robert Elwood Cunningham is CINC.
>
> If you think such a slight difference can make someone CINC
> rather than CIC, then this demonstrates that the concept has
> no practical value.
Not at all: it merely demonstrates that Richard's interpretation of the
concept has no practical value.
I'll add that I have no idea whether Richard actually thinks that; but if
he does, I don't think it's valid to reach a conclusion about whether a
concept has value based only on whether or not Richard thinks something
about it.
Woody Wordpecker
I guess we could talk about what "demonstrate" means, but
like many words it means various things. One definition is
to show evidence of something, to indicate. My remark was
probably okay under that definition.
Another definition is to prove beyond doubt. Your remarks
reflect that definition.
My intent would have been more accurately expressed with
"suggests" than with "demonstrates".
R F
On Wed, 15 Oct 2003, Aaron J. Dinkin wrote:
> On Wed, 15 Oct 2003 09:56:54 GMT, Woody Wordpecker <exw...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> > On Wed, 15 Oct 2003 01:21:12 -0400, R F
> ><rfon...@mail.wesleyan.edu> said:
> >
> >> By Jove, you're right. Robert Elwood Cunningham is CINC.
> >
> > If you think such a slight difference can make someone CINC
> > rather than CIC, then this demonstrates that the concept has
> > no practical value.
>
> Not at all: it merely demonstrates that Richard's interpretation of the
> concept has no practical value.
That sounds a bit cruel and uncalled-for, but I never claimed to be a
practical person.
> I'll add that I have no idea whether Richard actually thinks that; but if
> he does, I don't think it's valid to reach a conclusion about whether a
> concept has value based only on whether or not Richard thinks something
> about it.
I'm seriously saying that if you can prove that Robert Elwood Cunningham
systematically uses one vowel in "cot" and a different (if only slightly
different) in "caught", then he's CINC and not CIC. This shouldn't be
controversial.
Aaron J. Dinkin
> On Wed, 15 Oct 2003, Aaron J. Dinkin wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 15 Oct 2003 09:56:54 GMT, Woody Wordpecker <exw...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>>
>> > On Wed, 15 Oct 2003 01:21:12 -0400, R F
>> ><rfon...@mail.wesleyan.edu> said:
>> >
>> >> By Jove, you're right. Robert Elwood Cunningham is CINC.
>> >
>> > If you think such a slight difference can make someone CINC
>> > rather than CIC, then this demonstrates that the concept has
>> > no practical value.
>>
>> Not at all: it merely demonstrates that Richard's interpretation of the
>> concept has no practical value.
>
> That sounds a bit cruel and uncalled-for, but I never claimed to be a
> practical person.
I apologize for that remark.
>> I'll add that I have no idea whether Richard actually thinks that; but if
>> he does, I don't think it's valid to reach a conclusion about whether a
>> concept has value based only on whether or not Richard thinks something
>> about it.
>
> I'm seriously saying that if you can prove that Robert Elwood Cunningham
> systematically uses one vowel in "cot" and a different (if only slightly
> different) in "caught", then he's CINC and not CIC. This shouldn't be
> controversial.
That is uncontroversial. However, you made no claim about "systematic";
you were discussing just a single recording, and I was responding to Bob's
claim that the differences you perceived, or thought you perceived, were
due to extralinguistic factors.
R F
On Wed, 15 Oct 2003, Aaron J. Dinkin wrote:
> Oh, have I mentioned that Bill Labov claims that the "father" and
> "bother" vowel classes are distinguished in New York?
No offense, I know he's your advisor and all, but he's Dead Wrong. He's
from New Jersey, IIRC, which may explain his confusion.
And it's not like "bother" and "father" were distinguished in New York in
elder generations either. Everyone on my father's side of the family has
an authentic New York accent of some sort or other, and I'm dead certain
that none of them makes any bother/father distinction. I can't even
imagine what such a distinction might sound like, and I'm familiar with
the Boston version.
Jonathan Jordan
news:Pine.GSO.4.53.03...@alumni.wesleyan.edu...
Well, what Labov actually says (I've posted the link before, and I
can't be bothered to do so again) is that what he calls /o/ and /ah/
are distinguished, but that some words which are normally in the /o/
class are pronounced with the /ah/ vowel.
Claims that fit with this have been posted to AUE by two people from
the New York area, Michael Hamm (in this thread) and Daniel McGrath.
Daniel did, I think, say that "bother" rhymed with "father", so
"bother" may be one of the words that moves to the /ah/ class.
Jonathan
Woody Wordpecker
<rfon...@mail.wesleyan.edu> said:
[ . . . ]
> Everyone on my father's side of the family has
> an authentic New York accent of some sort or other, and I'm dead certain
> that none of them makes any bother/father distinction. I can't even
> imagine what such a distinction might sound like, and I'm familiar with
> the Boston version.
You don't have to imagine. You can listen to the difference
in the speech of an Englishman.
In Received Pronunciation, "bother" is [bA.D@], "father" is
[fA:D@]. That is, they're the same vowel except that the
one in "bother" is rounded, while the one in "father" is
not.
R F
Hmm. Well, Hamm seems to be from Manhattan, so I wonder whether this is
an East River difference. Labov's seminal work on New York City accents
focused on Manhattan, and a small area of it to boot (somewhere around
Cooper Square, of all places, IIRC).
My general impression of Manhattan accents of a latter day is that they
show some alarming tendencies of movement towards vowel-inventory
reduction. For example, I believe that some Manhattanites may have lost
the full MINMINMism -- Michael Hamm, are you MINMINM? So you'd expect, if
anything, for the father/bother distinction to have been lost in
Manhattan. As for Daniel, he's really quite far from the New York city
area (NTTAWWT). More interesting is the described accent of R.J.
Valentine, who IIRC has said he uses "caught" in "wash". However, I
suspect that he picked up such quirks at Fort Leonardwood. Maybe he and
Coop have similar accents.
Hey, if there are New York speakers who don't have bother/father vowel
merger, more power to them. It would be evidence of Interborough
Dialectal Diversity (IDD). I'd like to hear proof though. Hamm, you
have a microphone?
Thinking about this a bit more, I see that what gets me confused is how
the rhotic/non-rhotic divide comes into play. If, as I think is the case,
non-rhotic New Yorkers generally distinguish "cot" from "cart", you'd
think they should also distinguish "bother" from "father" vowel-wise.
Unless the distinction is more of a father/farther thing, which seems more
likely. I assume that Hamm is rhotic, based on his putative age.
Matti Lamprhey
I find that a very strange statement. They seem quite different vowels
to me. What does this "rounded" mean?
Matti
Woody Wordpecker
<matti-...@totally-official.com> said:
> "Woody Wordpecker" <exw...@earthlink.net> wrote...
[ . . . ]
> > In Received Pronunciation, "bother" is [bA.D@], "father" is
> > [fA:D@]. That is, they're the same vowel except that the
> > one in "bother" is rounded, while the one in "father" is
> > not.
> I find that a very strange statement. They seem quite
> different vowels to me. What does this "rounded" mean?
If you'll look closely at your mouth in a mirror while
you're pronouncing "bother", you should see that your lips
are rounded to some extent. If you then try to unround your
lips while pronouncing "bother", the first vowel in "bother"
should turn into the one in "father".
One person in AUE may tell you that he can pronounce [A.]
without rounding his lips, but this is absurd, since IPA
[A.] has no other definition than that it's the low back
vowel spoken with rounded lips. I have no way of knowing
what vowel he's pronouncing when he thinks he's pronouncing
[A.] without lip rounding. So far as I know, he's never
bothered to submit samples of his pronunciation.
I can't pronounce [A.] reliably, because it's not in my
idiolect, but I know it when I hear it pronounced by an RP
speaker.
Woody Wordpecker
<rfon...@mail.wesleyan.edu> said:
[ . . . ]
> I'm seriously saying that if you can prove that Robert Elwood Cunningham
> systematically uses one vowel in "cot" and a different (if only slightly
> different) in "caught", then he's CINC and not CIC. This shouldn't be
> controversial.
This seems like the same sort of reasoning that leads people
to classify a person as black no matter how small his
percentage of black ancestry is.
R F
On Wed, 15 Oct 2003, Woody Wordpecker wrote:
> On Wed, 15 Oct 2003 11:56:49 -0400, R F
> <rfon...@mail.wesleyan.edu> said:
>
> [ . . . ]
>
> > Everyone on my father's side of the family has
> > an authentic New York accent of some sort or other, and I'm dead certain
> > that none of them makes any bother/father distinction. I can't even
> > imagine what such a distinction might sound like, and I'm familiar with
> > the Boston version.
>
> You don't have to imagine. You can listen to the difference
> in the speech of an Englishman.
Oh, I'm familiar enough with the RP-and-friends style of bother/father
distinction, in part owing to the excellent collection of recordings
maintained, at various times over the years, by DOEU Cunningham of AUE.
Moreover, and this is what I should have explained further in my previous
remarks, I'm almost as familiar with Traditional Eastern Massachusetts
accents as I am with New York accents, since a substantial plurality of my
maternal relatives grew up in Eastern Massachusetts.
What is the "Woody" a nickname of, BTW? My father once had a boss named
Elwood, but he was known to all as "Woody".
R F
I don't think it's the same sort of reasoning. CINC means "cot is not
caught". The definition of CINC must have something to do with
systematically distinguishing between "cot" and "caught". These minimal
pairs are useful because there's no obvious reason why there should be any
systematic difference unless the speaker does, in fact, distinguish "cot"
from "caught" systematically, IYFM. I can sort of see how a nominally CIC
person, a Dawna Richoux if you will, might still be CIC even if she always
uses a further back and more rounded vowel for any sort of cot/caught
preceding /l/ (as in "call", "doll"). But if we can show that a Dawna
Richoux systematically uses one sort of cot/caught vowel in "call" and
another in "doll", then she'd better have a good explanation for why the
initial /k/ or /d/ is causing this difference, 'cause otherwise I'm'o
classify her as CINC.
Donna Richoux
> On Wed, 15 Oct 2003, Woody Wordpecker wrote:
>
> > On Wed, 15 Oct 2003 11:13:45 -0400, R F
> > <rfon...@mail.wesleyan.edu> said:
> >
> > [ . . . ]
> >
> > > I'm seriously saying that if you can prove that Robert Elwood Cunningham
> > > systematically uses one vowel in "cot" and a different (if only slightly
> > > different) in "caught", then he's CINC and not CIC. This shouldn't be
> > > controversial.
> >
> > This seems like the same sort of reasoning that leads people
> > to classify a person as black no matter how small his
> > percentage of black ancestry is.
>
> I don't think it's the same sort of reasoning. CINC means "cot is not
> caught". The definition of CINC must have something to do with
> systematically distinguishing between "cot" and "caught". These minimal
> pairs are useful because there's no obvious reason why there should be any
> systematic difference unless the speaker does, in fact, distinguish "cot"
> from "caught" systematically, IYFM. I can sort of see how a nominally CIC
> person, a Dawna Richoux if you will,
I willn't. It's a spelling that doesn't convey any significant
information to people like me, and that screws up the other people. I
already have to live with Dutch people putting a Dutch o in Donna.
>might still be CIC even if she always
> uses a further back and more rounded vowel for any sort of cot/caught
> preceding /l/ (as in "call", "doll"). But if we can show that a Dawna
> Richoux systematically uses one sort of cot/caught vowel in "call" and
> another in "doll", then she'd better have a good explanation for why the
> initial /k/ or /d/ is causing this difference, 'cause otherwise I'm'o
> classify her as CINC.
Boy, you sure do construct "if" statements and then run with them,
forgetting that they might not be true. "Call" and "doll" are perfect
rhymes for me, and no, I'm not going to the fuss and bother of making
another recording to prove it to you. You'd probably claim you heard
some difference, anyway.
--
Donna Richoux
Aaron J. Dinkin
> On Wed, 15 Oct 2003, Aaron J. Dinkin wrote:
>
>> Oh, have I mentioned that Bill Labov claims that the "father" and
>> "bother" vowel classes are distinguished in New York?
>
> No offense, I know he's your advisor and all, but he's Dead Wrong. He's
> from New Jersey, IIRC, which may explain his confusion.
I didn't believe him either. Though it's possible that I was
misunderstanding him and he was referring to a non-rhotic non-merger of
"cot" and "cart", which would seem to be the same distinction.
Aaron J. Dinkin
> In Received Pronunciation, "bother" is [bA.D@], "father" is
> [fA:D@]. That is, they're the same vowel except that the
> one in "bother" is rounded, while the one in "father" is
> not.
And the one in "bother" is noticeably shorter.
I have something close to [A.] in "bother" as well (and other words of
the "cot" and "caught" classes), but it's longer than the British [A.],
and noticeably less tightly rounded as well - although still rounded
enough to be more [A.] than [A], I think.
Aaron J. Dinkin
> But if we can show that a Dawna Richoux systematically uses one sort of
> cot/caught vowel in "call" and another in "doll", then she'd better
> have a good explanation for why the initial /k/ or /d/ is causing this
> difference, 'cause otherwise I'm'o classify her as CINC.
"I'm'o"?
"I'ma".
I know, I know, but that's how it's spelled.
Matti Lamprhey
To what extent is this influenced by the initial consonants in your
examples, though?
I find that I can switch between "bother-sans-b" and "father-sans-f"
without moving my lips in the slightest, a bit like a vent would do,
perhaps. Is this encompassed by your theory? It seems to me as if my
mouth is internally making quite different sounds for these vowels, both
issuing from the same lip shape.
Matti
R F
I thought of spelling it like that, but the thing is, you can pronounce it
more emphatically with /oU/ rather than the schwa. So it seems to me that
it would be more proper to use an <o> spelling.
Michael Hamm
wrote, in part:
> > Well, what Labov actually says (I've posted the link before, and I
> > can't be bothered to do so again) is that what he calls /o/ and /ah/
> > are distinguished, but that some words which are normally in the /o/
> > class are pronounced with the /ah/ vowel.
> >
> > Claims that fit with this have been posted to AUE by two people from
> > the New York area, Michael Hamm (in this thread)
I don't know Labov's notation. As I posted earlier in this thread, using
Aaron Dinkin's classes, I pronounce the short-o class as /a/ and the ah
class as /A/ (and fwiw the short-a class as /&/, the ar class as /Ar/, and
the tense-o and aw classes each as /O/ or /O@/ depending.
> Hmm. Well, Hamm seems to be from Manhattan, so I wonder whether this is
> an East River difference.
I'm from Brooklyn.
> My general impression of Manhattan accents of a latter day is that they
> show some alarming tendencies of movement towards vowel-inventory
> reduction. For example, I believe that some Manhattanites may have lost
> the full MINMINMism -- Michael Hamm, are you MINMINM?
It's not at http://www.alt-usage-english.org/abbreviations.html, so please
expand.
Michael Hamm Since mid-September of 2003,
BA scl Math, PBK, NYU I've been erasing too much UBE.
msh...@math.wustl.edu Of a reply, then, if you have been cheated,
http://math.wustl.edu/~msh210/ Likely your mail's by mistake been deleted.
R F
On Wed, 15 Oct 2003, Michael Hamm wrote:
> On Wed, 15 Oct 2003 12:57:27 -0400, R F <rfon...@mail.wesleyan.edu>
> wrote, in part:
> > > Well, what Labov actually says (I've posted the link before, and I
> > > can't be bothered to do so again) is that what he calls /o/ and /ah/
> > > are distinguished, but that some words which are normally in the /o/
> > > class are pronounced with the /ah/ vowel.
> > >
> > > Claims that fit with this have been posted to AUE by two people from
> > > the New York area, Michael Hamm (in this thread)
>
> I don't know Labov's notation. As I posted earlier in this thread, using
> Aaron Dinkin's classes, I pronounce the short-o class as /a/ and the ah
> class as /A/ (and fwiw the short-a class as /&/, the ar class as /Ar/, and
> the tense-o and aw classes each as /O/ or /O@/ depending.
That's either weird or scary, or both. I can understand how you'd use a
fronted vowel in "cot", because I do that, and as long as I don't compare
it to the Northern Cities Shift of Chicago and Michigan and Western
Connecticut and such, I can regard that as approximated by [a]. And as
I've noted before, my "cart" vowel (I assume you're rhotic, as am I) has a
further-back, more rounded allophone, but that's just the effect of the
/r/ the way I see it. But my "father" vowel is stone identical to my
"cot" vowel, unless my hearing's off. Is my recording of "bother, father"
still on the AUE website somewhere?
> > Hmm. Well, Hamm seems to be from Manhattan, so I wonder whether this is
> > an East River difference.
>
> I'm from Brooklyn.
Well, why didn't you say so, my brother? What neighborhood? Do you know
Dena Jo?
A word of advice: Watch out for this Jan "The Man" Sand fellow in this
newsgroup. He's a born and unrepentant Manhattanite who lived some years
in Brooklyn during his childhood, and he has it in for native Brooklynites.
> > My general impression of Manhattan accents of a latter day is that they
> > show some alarming tendencies of movement towards vowel-inventory
> > reduction. For example, I believe that some Manhattanites may have lost
> > the full MINMINMism -- Michael Hamm, are you MINMINM?
>
> It's not at http://www.alt-usage-english.org/abbreviations.html, so please
> expand.
Hmm. When *is* that list of abbreviations going to be updated? I'd do it
myself if I weren't so lazy. MINMINM = three-way distinct
merry/marry/Mary. Most Americans have at most a two-way distinction. On
th'East Coast, in the major urban centers, MINMINMism still survives, but
it's under attack.
Aaron J. Dinkin
Really? I can't imagine it with /oU/. If anything, I'd guess it might
have /u/, since "gonna" can have /u/. (The spelling <gonna> is another
argument in favor of <I'ma>, by the way: "gonna" can retain its <a> even
though under some circumstances it's pronounced with /u/.)
Aaron J. Dinkin
> On Wed, 15 Oct 2003 12:57:27 -0400, R F <rfon...@mail.wesleyan.edu>
> wrote, in part:
>
>> For example, I believe that some Manhattanites may have lost
>> the full MINMINMism -- Michael Hamm, are you MINMINM?
>
> It's not at http://www.alt-usage-english.org/abbreviations.html, so please
> expand.
It ought to be - it's "Mary is not marry is not merry". The opposite is
"MIMIM", of course. They're terms in the same class as "CIC" and "CINC".
Woody Wordpecker
<rfon...@mail.wesleyan.edu> said:
> On Wed, 15 Oct 2003, Woody Wordpecker wrote:
> > On Wed, 15 Oct 2003 11:13:45 -0400, R F
> > <rfon...@mail.wesleyan.edu> said:
> > [ . . . ]
> > > I'm seriously saying that if you can prove that Robert Elwood Cunningham
> > > systematically uses one vowel in "cot" and a different (if only slightly
> > > different) in "caught", then he's CINC and not CIC. This shouldn't be
> > > controversial.
> > This seems like the same sort of reasoning that leads people
> > to classify a person as black no matter how small his
> > percentage of black ancestry is.
> I don't think it's the same sort of reasoning.
It is the same.
> CINC means "cot is not caught".
Just as "black" means any percentage at all of black
ancestry?
It's not reasonable to say "cot is not caught" without
saying to what extent "cot" is not "caught". You would
evidently classify a speaker with a difference in the
pronunciations that would be detectable only by an expert
the same as one with a difference that would be obvious to
any listener.
> The definition of CINC must have something to do with
> systematically distinguishing between "cot" and "caught".
If it doesn't allow for some gradation of differences, it's
a useless definition.
> These minimal pairs are useful because there's no obvious
> reason why there should be any systematic difference unless
> the speaker does, in fact, distinguish "cot" from "caught"
> systematically, IYFM.
Your use of the word "distinguish" implies that the speaker
is aware of saying the two differently. That most certainly
doesn't apply to me. I am quite conscious of pronouncing
the two exactly the same. They're exactly the same word,
but with different spellings.
Anyway, you're running amok with implications that I
pronounce "cot" and "caught" differently, and you're basing
this on no more relevant evidence than one recording in
which I happened to pronounce "call" with a slight amount of
rounding, a recording that had a defect during the utterance
of "call".
If I did pronounce "cot" and "caught" differently in the way
I have heard them pronounced differently, "cot" would be
[kA:t] and "caught" would be [kO:t]. My "call" with slight
rounding would be [kA.t], but with less rounding than is
implied by [A.]. My atypical pronunciation of "call" had
nothing to do with the pronunciation of "cot" and "caught".
Woody Wordpecker
<matti-...@totally-official.com> said:
[ . . . ]
> I find that I can switch between "bother-sans-b" and "father-sans-f"
> without moving my lips in the slightest, a bit like a vent would do,
> perhaps.
This shows that you don't speak the English accent that has
been spoken by speakers of RP that I've heard.
> Is this encompassed by your theory?
MY theory?! I have mentioned no principle that isn't
covered in elementary phonetics texts.
> It seems to me as if my mouth is internally making quite
> different sounds for these vowels, both issuing from the
> same lip shape.
Yes, it's possible for you to be making any sounds
whatsoever for the vowels in "bother" and "father", sounds
that don't have to be at all similar to the ones shown in
British dictionaries.
There's a piece that starts out with "I teach Ferdinand the
calm cat ... " that includes all of the important English
vowels. I think it was probably devised by Markus Laker.
It may be the most concise text we've seen so far for
demonstrating one's pronunciations of the vowels while
speaking naturally.
If this were the best of all possible worlds, everyone who
discusses his or her pronunciation in AUE would record
"Ferdinand" and make it somehow available on the Web. They
could, for example, submit it to the webmaster for inclusion
in the Audio Archive. If he didn't have room for them, I
would be happy to install them at my Web site, up to a
certain fairly large number that would be yet to be
determined.
You can hear Markus Laker reading "I teach Ferdinand" at
http://tinyurl.com/r2ww , clicking on "RP speaker 1".
My rendition of "Ferdinand" has not as yet been installed in
the Audio Archive at the AUE Web site, but you can hear it
in a 377 kB WAV file at http://tinyurl.com/r2vq
or in a 26 kB MP3 file at http://tinyurl.com/r2w0 .
The WAV file has 16-bit samples; that's why it's so
unusually big compared to the MP3 file. I don't remember
what my reason was for not using 8-bit samples.
The full URLs are
http://www.alt-usage-english.org/audio_archive.shtml#Ferdinand
http://www.exw6sxq.com/sparky/aue_related/speech_examples/bc_ferdinand_the_calm_cat_fs22050_3p24kb.mp3
http://www.exw6sxq.com/sparky/aue_related/speech_examples/bc_ferdinand_the_calm_cat_fs22050_16_bit.wav
Woody Wordpecker
<rfon...@mail.wesleyan.edu> said:
[ . . . ]
> What is the "Woody" a nickname of, BTW?
Is this some kind of a trick question? Isn't it obvious
that it's from my middle name, Elwood?
> My father once had a boss named
> Elwood, but he was known to all as "Woody".
I've never been called "Woody". The only time I've ever
used it was to coin -- in about 1996 -- the alias "Woody
Wordpecker".
Woody Wordpecker
<rfon...@mail.wesleyan.edu> said:
[ . . . ]
> Is my recording of "bother, father" still on the AUE
> website somewhere?
http://alt-usage-english.org/rf_audio_files.html
. Click on "rf_bother_re-recorded_8_bit.wav".
R J Valentine
} On Wed, 15 Oct 2003 10:34:32 GMT, Woody Wordpecker
} <exw...@earthlink.net> said:
}
}> (I've substituted "formant analysis" for [*]RFs[*] "Praat",
}> because I'm reasonably certain that's what he meant. Praat
}> does a great many things other than formant analysis, and
}> Praat is not the only way to do formant analysis.)
}
} "RF's".
There are two of them? Oh, yeah. I forgot about the NYU one. (I took
the Pi Mu Epsilon contest at NYU in 1959 and 1960 (or maybe it was 1960
and 1961), right there off Washington Square.)
--
R. J. Valentine <mailto:ar...@wicked.smart.net>
R J Valentine
...
} I find that I can switch between "bother-sans-b" and "father-sans-f"
} without moving my lips in the slightest, a bit like a vent would do,
} perhaps. Is this encompassed by your theory? It seems to me as if my
} mouth is internally making quite different sounds for these vowels, both
} issuing from the same lip shape.
It's encompassed by my theory (and I may be the one Mr. Cunningham refers
to). I like to think of it as the Ventriloquists-Exist* Theory (VET).
[* & disguise any movement in their observable lips.]
It's not like my very existence is saying that Mr. Cunningham is a
complete crackpot. He's right to the extent that someone teaching British
English to an Albanian, once there's enough "aw" in the [A], could say,
"Okay, now round your lips like you're going to pronounce a [y] and try
the [A] sound to approximate the [A.] sound (which may be _described_
(=?BCE 'defined') by phoneticists (who ought to know better) as
'rounded'." But there are all sorts of ways to skin a cat. There exist
British ventriloquists. I don't doubt that Mr. Cunningham rounds his lips
to make the sound that he may or may not admit to being able to make. I
*can* round my lips to make the [A.] sound, just as I *can* round my lips
to make the [y] sound and the [u] sound. Once I know how to make the
sounds, though, I can stand on my head and spit wooden nickels and still
make the same sound, possibly at least as well as Mr. Cunningham can. Or
maybe someone is thinking that I'm saying I can make those sounds with my
mouth wide open in the 'stick out your tongue and say "ah"' position. I
can't. Maybe his way out of absurdity is to claim that I make *all* my
vowels rounded. In a sense, that's true, because I rarely have to go all
the way to the "ah" or the "oo" positions, and it would indeed be
difficult for even me to make a good "ah" in the full "oo" position and
vice versa. But there's a middle range where I can do a credible job of
all the vowels and most of the consonants.
--
R. J. Valentine <mailto:r...@smart.net>
R F
On Thu, 16 Oct 2003, R J Valentine wrote:
> There are two of them? Oh, yeah. I forgot about the NYU one. (I took
> the Pi Mu Epsilon contest at NYU in 1959 and 1960 (or maybe it was 1960
> and 1961), right there off Washington Square.)
Speaking of Jan Sand's Manhattan, guess which presidential candidate grew
up in a wealthy household on the Upper East Side? Yup, Vermont Governor
Howard Dean. Everyone pay close attention to his accent. There's
something wrong with his /&/s, I've noticed.
Learning that Dean was from the Upper East Side, I next had to find out
what sort of middle name he had. Was it, say, "Vliet"? Well, no, even
better: "Brush". Howard Brush Dean III.
BTW, speaking of "Brush", Dennis Kucinich has textbook Northern Cities
Vowel Shift, right down to the hairstyle.
MMDK!
Matti Lamprhey
> "Matti Lamprhey" <matti-...@totally-official.com> said:
> [ . . . ]
> > I find that I can switch between "bother-sans-b" and "father-sans-f"
> > without moving my lips in the slightest, a bit like a vent would do,
> > perhaps.
>
> This shows that you don't speak the English accent that has
> been spoken by speakers of RP that I've heard.
Nonsense. How does it appear to you to show that?
>
> > Is this encompassed by your theory?
>
> MY theory?! I have mentioned no principle that isn't
> covered in elementary phonetics texts.
The point at issue is whether it's sensible and reasonable to describe
the initial vowel sounds of "bother" and "father" as rendered in the RP
of 2003 as "the same vowel" give or take "rounding".
I say it isn't. Do your elementary phonetics texts say that it is, or
is it your own theory?
For reference purposes I'm accepting as RP Markus Laker's noisy and
muffled rendering on the AUE site; I just think I'm hearing it
differently than/from/to you.
Matti
Woody Wordpecker
<r...@smart.net> said:
[his usual crap about pronouncing [A.] without lip rounding,
and we still have no way of knowing what sound he makes that
he thinks is [A.]]
Woody Wordpecker
<matti-...@totally-official.com> said:
> "Woody Wordpecker" <exw...@earthlink.net> wrote...
> > "Matti Lamprhey" <matti-...@totally-official.com> said:
> > [ . . . ]
> > > I find that I can switch between "bother-sans-b" and "father-sans-f"
> > > without moving my lips in the slightest, a bit like a vent would do,
> > > perhaps.
> > This shows that you don't speak the English accent that has
> > been spoken by speakers of RP that I've heard.
> Nonsense. How does it appear to you to show that?
Okay, it doesn't. What I should have said was "This shows
that you don't speak the English accent that is reported by
British dictionaries." As for what I've heard, all I can
say is that when Markus says "bother" or "Bob", it sounds as
though he's rounding his lips, and I strongly suspect that
he is.
> > > Is this encompassed by your theory?
> > MY theory?! I have mentioned no principle that isn't
> > covered in elementary phonetics texts.
> The point at issue is whether it's sensible and reasonable to describe
> the initial vowel sounds of "bother" and "father" as rendered in the RP
> of 2003 as "the same vowel" give or take "rounding".
And this is an issue that you might better take up with the
publishers of British dictionaries. _The New Shorter Oxford
English Dictionary_ was published in 1993. Maybe it's time
for them to bring their pronunciations up to date.
> I say it isn't. Do your elementary phonetics texts say that it is, or
> is it your own theory?
It seems quite strange that you can ask that after reading
my earlier statement above. Maybe it's an attention-span
problem. Here again is what I said:
I have mentioned no principle that isn't covered in
elementary phonetics texts.
> For reference purposes I'm accepting as RP Markus Laker's noisy and
> muffled rendering on the AUE site;
If Markus Laker's rendition of "Bother, father ... " is
noisy and muffled at your house, you probably need some work
on your system. A lot of the recordings that Igor Merfert
collected for the Audio Archive are of poor quality, but
this one is quite clear and sufficiently noise free.
> I just think I'm hearing it differently than/from/to you.
That's possible. Actually, there are two separate issues
here. One is whether or not Markus rounds his lips when he
says "bother". The other is whether British dictionaries
are telling the truth when they say that "bother" is
pronounced with a vowel that is the same as the one in
"father" except with added lip rounding.
The first one doesn't involve a principle of phonetics, and
I don't feel strongly about my opinion regarding it. It
can't be fully resolved without asking Markus.
The second one is the only one that I feel is really
important: When British dictionaries say that "bother" and
"father" are pronounced with the same first vowel except
that one is rounded and the other is not, are they or are
they not telling the truth?
Matti Lamprhey
> [...]
> The second one is the only one that I feel is really
> important: When British dictionaries say that "bother" and
> "father" are pronounced with the same first vowel except
> that one is rounded and the other is not, are they or are
> they not telling the truth?
If they really do say that then I think they are confused.
I am perfectly capable of uttering RP which matches, for the sake of
reference, Markus Laker's example. When I do so, I can "feel" that the
two vowels in question are being produced by a different arrangement of
the throat (I don't know the technical terminology) which is independent
of my lip shape. Certainly, the "bother" vowel tends to be associated
with a rounder lip shape than the "father" vowel; but I am absolutely
convinced that this doesn't go to the heart of the difference between
the vowels, as my ventriloquial excursion indicated.
I would be grateful if other Brits who can produce RP would comment.
Are these really "the same vowel" in any meaningful way?
Matti
Ross Howard
<matti-...@totally-official.com> wrought:
No. Apart from the lip-rounding -- which, as you say, isn't essential
to obtaining a typical RP [A.] -- there's some kind of throat
constriction going on too, you're right.
Put it this way: [A.] is really no closer to [A:] than it is to, say,
[3:] or [V], and the degree of rounding isn't the key to producing
any of them.
Also, with all due respect to Markus, if he's the Totally Official AUE
yardstick for RP, which in turn is (unfortunately, but let's not go
there) the default for BrE pronunciation, then we're in trouble -- I
doubt even 1% of today's Brits speak that way. Maybe it's the poor
quality of the recording, but if that accent were any plummier it'd be
hanging from a tree in an orchard.)
***********
Ross Howard
Donna Richoux
> Also, with all due respect to Markus, if he's the Totally Official AUE
> yardstick for RP, which in turn is (unfortunately, but let's not go
> there) the default for BrE pronunciation, then we're in trouble -- I
> doubt even 1% of today's Brits speak that way. Maybe it's the poor
> quality of the recording, but if that accent were any plummier it'd be
> hanging from a tree in an orchard.)
Are we listening to the same sound file? This one, marked RP speaker?
http://www.alt-usage-english.org/audio_archive.shtml
If so, then we sure aren't using the same definition of "plummy." I
would *think* you'd mean the old-fashioned RP, the one that makes
younger people sound pompous if they use it. Markus doesn't talk with in
an old-fashioned RP accent at all. I hear them enough on BBC to know.
Listen to his "coffee," "more," and "tasting." I met Markus some years
back, a delightful person, but I couldn't help thinking that RP didn't
mean what it used to.
I'll see if I can find a sound file of what I'd call plummy... Okay, the
first speaker here is reasonably so (not ridiculously or exaggeratedly
so -- I've heard worse):
http://www.ukans.edu/~idea/index2.html
--
Best -- Donna Richoux
Woody Wordpecker
<din...@babel.ling.upenn.edu> said:
> On Wed, 15 Oct 2003 16:35:02 GMT, Woody Wordpecker <exw...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> > In Received Pronunciation, "bother" is [bA.D@], "father" is
> > [fA:D@]. That is, they're the same vowel except that the
> > one in "bother" is rounded, while the one in "father" is
> > not.
> And the one in "bother" is noticeably shorter.
Depends upon what you mean by "noticeably". I've plotted
the time functions for Markus's "bother" and "father". The
first syllable of "father" is a little longer, but not
enough to write home about, in my opinion.
You can see the time functions and hear the related files in
the directory
http://www.exw6sxq.com/sparky/aue_related/speech_examples/
The time functions are in the file
markus_bother_father_time_functions.gif, at
http://tinyurl.com/r4we
The sound files for the individual words are
markus_bother.wav, http://tinyurl.com/r4wp , and
markus_father.wav, http://tinyurl.com/r4wu .
For convenient reference, I've also put in that directory
Markus's full rendition of the "bother father caught ... "
piece. It's markus_bother_father_caught.wav,
http://tinyurl.com/r4x1 .
> I have something close to [A.] in "bother" as well (and other words of
> the "cot" and "caught" classes), but it's longer than the British [A.],
> and noticeably less tightly rounded as well - although still rounded
> enough to be more [A.] than [A], I think.
I like to remind myself that the phonetics books tell us the
rounding of the vowels on the "back" side of the
quadrilateral decreases from top to bottom. This should
mean that [A.] is less rounded that [O], and much less
rounded than [u].
R F
On Thu, 16 Oct 2003, Ross Howard wrote:
> Also, with all due respect to Markus, if he's the Totally Official AUE
> yardstick for RP, which in turn is (unfortunately, but let's not go
> there) the default for BrE pronunciation, then we're in trouble -- I
> doubt even 1% of today's Brits speak that way. Maybe it's the poor
> quality of the recording, but if that accent were any plummier it'd be
> hanging from a tree in an orchard.)
Oy, then I wonder what Katy Edgcombe sounds like, since didn't Markus say
that she had a "cut glass RP" accent?
I suspect that when Markus turns into "Freddy" he starts speaking
down-home Estuary English.
I've never heard a1a speak either, but I've seen enough 1930s-era British
films to have a decent idea of what his accent is probably like. Raised
/&/s of course.
Michael Hamm
wrote, in part:
> > > Hmm. Well, Hamm seems to be from Manhattan, so I wonder whether this is
> > > an East River difference.
> >
> > I'm from Brooklyn.
>
> Well, why didn't you say so, my brother? What neighborhood?
Sheepshead Bay.
> > > My general impression of Manhattan accents of a latter day is that
> > > they show some alarming tendencies of movement towards
> > > vowel-inventory reduction. For example, I believe that some
> > > Manhattanites may have lost the full MINMINMism -- Michael Hamm, are
> > > you MINMINM?
<snip>
> MINMINM = three-way distinct merry/marry/Mary. Most Americans have at
> most a two-way distinction. On th'East Coast, in the major urban
> centers, MINMINMism still survives, but it's under attack.
I am not minminm; I distinguish 'merry' from the others.
From University City, Mo.,
Woody Wordpecker
<ggu...@yahoo.com> said:
[ . . . ]
> No. Apart from the lip-rounding -- which, as you say, isn't essential
> to obtaining a typical RP [A.] --
What possible basis can you have for calling the sound [A.]
if it doesn't have lip rounding?
What is your definition of IPA "turned script a", the
equivalent of ASCII IPA [A.]?
Why are you comfortable with not having the same definition
the International Phonetics Association has for it?
I have no great problem accepting that British dictionaries
are wrong, and that RP speakers don't use [A.] in "bother".
I do have a problem with calling whatever vowel they do use
[A.] if it doesn't have lip rounding.
> there's some kind of throat constriction
Nasalization? Pharyngealization?
Ross Howard
wrought:
>Ross Howard <ggu...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>> Also, with all due respect to Markus, if he's the Totally Official AUE
>> yardstick for RP, which in turn is (unfortunately, but let's not go
>> there) the default for BrE pronunciation, then we're in trouble -- I
>> doubt even 1% of today's Brits speak that way. Maybe it's the poor
>> quality of the recording, but if that accent were any plummier it'd be
>> hanging from a tree in an orchard.)
>
>Are we listening to the same sound file? This one, marked RP speaker?
>
> http://www.alt-usage-english.org/audio_archive.shtml
>
>If so, then we sure aren't using the same definition of "plummy."
I was using the first RP speaker on the page: "RP speaker 1" reading
"Arthur the Rat". You mean that's not Markus? Whoever it is, it's
plummier than plummy -- that make up his "mairnd", "quite dead" as
"kwait daird" and "neaouw look hyair" is, well . . . plummy.
If however, that's not Markus, and Markus is the "RP speaker 1" who
reads "I teach Ferdinand", then I fully retract my plummy claim (and
apologise, if Markus happens to be reading this) -- that's not plummy;
it's Educated Estuary AKA New Labour.
For me, the most representative sample of contemporary RP is the "RP
speaker 1" who reads the Rainbow texts, who seems to be the same
person as "RP speaker 2" reading "Arthur the Rat".
(Note to Webmaster: Might it not be an idea to assign a number to each
voice and stick with it -- or even reveal who's reading what by naming
them really confusing).
>I met Markus some years
>back, a delightful person, but I couldn't help thinking that RP didn't
>mean what it used to.
Yes, I had a brief exchange of e-mails with him years back (which I
think you and Brian were in on too) and drew the same conclusion --
about the delightfulness, not the perpetuity of the definition of RP,
obviously.
>
>I'll see if I can find a sound file of what I'd call plummy... Okay, the
>first speaker here is reasonably so (not ridiculously or exaggeratedly
>so -- I've heard worse):
>
> http://www.ukans.edu/~idea/index2.html
Give me more clues, if you can. When I click on the Rainbow passage I
just get the text, no sound files.
***********
Ross Howard
Woody Wordpecker
[ . . . ]
> I'll see if I can find a sound file of what I'd call plummy... Okay, the
> first speaker here is reasonably so (not ridiculously or exaggeratedly
> so -- I've heard worse):
> http://www.ukans.edu/~idea/index2.html
Please be more specific. That URL just takes me to the home
page of IDEA.
If by "first speaker here" you mean the first speaker on the
page headed "Dialects of England", it seems clear the voice
there doesn't fit the definition of "plummy" in _The New
Shorter Oxford_:
b (Of the voice) rich and thick-sounding, esp. as
supposedly characteristic of the British upper
classes; mellow and deep but somewhat drawling;
The voice of that speaker is not deep or thick-sounding, and
the speech is not at all drawling. I'm not sure what they
mean by "mellow", but I wouldn't call it that. It's a
pleasant, unaffected accent to listen to.
I also question Ross Howard's description of Markus Laker's
speech as plummy: It's not drawling, it's not deep, it's
not thick-sounding, and I wouldn't call it mellow.
Ross Howard
<exw...@earthlink.net> wrought:
>On Thu, 16 Oct 2003 13:31:19 +0200, Ross Howard
><ggu...@yahoo.com> said:
>
>[ . . . ]
>
>> No. Apart from the lip-rounding -- which, as you say, isn't essential
>> to obtaining a typical RP [A.] --
>
>What possible basis can you have for calling the sound [A.]
>if it doesn't have lip rounding?
COD9, the works of Michael Swan.... need I go on
>
>What is your definition of IPA "turned script a", the
>equivalent of ASCII IPA [A.]?
Cot, bother,Ross (my vested interest in it), Bob (yours), etc.
>Why are you comfortable with not having the same definition
>the International Phonetics Association has for it?
>
>I have no great problem accepting that British dictionaries
>are wrong, and that RP speakers don't use [A.] in "bother".
>I do have a problem with calling whatever vowel they do use
>[A.] if it doesn't have lip rounding.
Oh, it usually does, but as Matti said, it's not the key to producing
it.
>
>> there's some kind of throat constriction
>
>Nasalization? Pharyngealization?
I don't know the technical term, but think the reflex proto-retching
that happens when the dentist accidentally (?) knocks his mirror
against your soft palate.
***********
Ross Howard
Ross Howard
<exw...@earthlink.net> wrought:
>I also question Ross Howard's description of Markus Laker's
>speech as plummy: It's not drawling, it's not deep, it's
>not thick-sounding, and I wouldn't call it mellow.
Who is Markus? RP speaker what number reading what text?
This is seeaaouuw confusing!
***********
Ross Howard
Ross Howard
<exw...@earthlink.net> wrought:
>On Thu, 16 Oct 2003 13:56:21 +0200, tr...@euronet.nl (Donna
>Richoux) said:
>
>[ . . . ]
>
>> I'll see if I can find a sound file of what I'd call plummy... Okay, the
>> first speaker here is reasonably so (not ridiculously or exaggeratedly
>> so -- I've heard worse):
>
>> http://www.ukans.edu/~idea/index2.html
>
>Please be more specific. That URL just takes me to the home
>page of IDEA.
>
>If by "first speaker here" you mean the first speaker on the
>page headed "Dialects of England", it seems clear the voice
>there doesn't fit the definition of "plummy" in _The New
>Shorter Oxford_:
>
> b (Of the voice) rich and thick-sounding, esp. as
> supposedly characteristic of the British upper
> classes; mellow and deep but somewhat drawling;
>
>The voice of that speaker is not deep or thick-sounding, and
>the speech is not at all drawling. I'm not sure what they
>mean by "mellow", but I wouldn't call it that. It's a
>pleasant, unaffected accent to listen to.
Yes. That's pretty standard contemporary (i.e. plumfree) RP for me.
Similar to the AUE site's RP2 reading "Arthur", who is also RP1
reading Rainbow, I think. Is *that* Markus? If so, who's the RP1
reading "Arthur", because he's the only one I'm claiming is plummy.
***********
Ross Howard
Woody Wordpecker
<ggu...@yahoo.com> said:
> On Thu, 16 Oct 2003 12:27:14 GMT, Woody Wordpecker
> <exw...@earthlink.net> wrought:
> >On Thu, 16 Oct 2003 13:31:19 +0200, Ross Howard
> ><ggu...@yahoo.com> said:
> >[ . . . ]
> >> No. Apart from the lip-rounding -- which, as you say, isn't essential
> >> to obtaining a typical RP [A.] --
> >What possible basis can you have for calling the sound [A.]
> >if it doesn't have lip rounding?
> COD9, the works of Michael Swan.... need I go on
Please don't go on, but do start over. How are those
remarks supposed to be responsive to my question? If
Michael Swan says that the IPA symbol "turned-script-a"
doesn't represent the low, back, rounded vowel, I will be
careful to avoid buying any of his works. On which page of
which book does he say that? (I doubt that he does say it.)
I don't have _COD9_, but I suspect that, like _COD8_, it
merely uses the symbol "turned-script-a", thus implying that
it has the definition the IPA gives it, which is "low, back,
rounded vowel".
What symbol does _COD9_ use for the pronunciation of the "o"
in "hot"? If it's "turned-script-a", as it is in _COD8_ and
_NSOED_, then it's a rounded vowel.
> >What is your definition of IPA "turned script a", the
> >equivalent of ASCII IPA [A.]?
> Cot, bother,Ross (my vested interest in it), Bob (yours), etc.
Again, that is not an answer to my question. How do you
think it qualifies as a *definition*?
> >Why are you comfortable with not having the same definition
> >the International Phonetics Association has for it?
And you didn't even try to answer that one.
Woody Wordpecker
Ross Howard <ggu...@yahoo.com> earlier wrote:
> Also, with all due respect to Markus, if he's the Totally Official AUE
> yardstick for RP, which in turn is (unfortunately, but let's not go
> there) the default for BrE pronunciation, then we're in trouble -- I
> doubt even 1% of today's Brits speak that way. Maybe it's the poor
> quality of the recording, but if that accent were any plummier it'd be
> hanging from a tree in an orchard.)
So, after wrongly criticizing the quality of "the recording"
and calling "that accent" plummy, he now wants to know who
Markus is. What's with this guy?
Ross Howard
<exw...@earthlink.net> wrought:
>On Thu, 16 Oct 2003 14:58:07 +0200, Ross Howard
><ggu...@yahoo.com> said:
>
>> On Thu, 16 Oct 2003 12:50:42 GMT, Woody Wordpecker
>> <exw...@earthlink.net> wrought:
>
>> >I also question Ross Howard's description of Markus Laker's
>> >speech as plummy: It's not drawling, it's not deep, it's
>> >not thick-sounding, and I wouldn't call it mellow.
>
>> Who is Markus? RP speaker what number reading what text?
>> This is seeaaouuw confusing!
>
>Ross Howard <ggu...@yahoo.com> earlier wrote:
>
>> Also, with all due respect to Markus, if he's the Totally Official AUE
>> yardstick for RP, which in turn is (unfortunately, but let's not go
>> there) the default for BrE pronunciation, then we're in trouble -- I
>> doubt even 1% of today's Brits speak that way. Maybe it's the poor
>> quality of the recording, but if that accent were any plummier it'd be
>> hanging from a tree in an orchard.)
>
>So, after wrongly criticizing the quality of "the recording"
Most of the recordings are poor. Some of them, including the one I was
talking about, are piss poor. They're noisy as hell and dynamically
nearly as narrow as a mobile phone.
If you want decent sound -- good enough to make very subtle
distinctions about the sounds in diffferent pronunciations -- try
using a Shure or AKG mike instead of Mickey Mouse monitor-top plastic
thingies from computer shops, record it onto a Nagra or straight into
a sound-card that costs more than $35 (an Audigy upwards), and don't
compress the result to a lossy format such as MP3. Then listen through
decent headphones (I'd recommend Sennheisers, AKGs or decent Sonys --
I use all three, depending on what it's for) instead of the crappy
speakers that are little better than an amplified telephone that most
of us have on our desks.
Don't say "wrongly" when you don't know what the hell you're talking
about, Woody, Bob or whoever you are this week.
I see the effects of the cruise have worn off, anyway -- you're back
to your old crabby (although not plummy) self.
>and calling "that accent" plummy, he now wants to know who
>Markus is. What's with this guy?
Where is he identified on the AUE Web site as Markus? Why are three
different speakers identified as "RP speaker 1"? Someone at some point
talked about the first voice on the AUE page being Markus. The first
voice on that page is RP speaker 1 reading "Arthur the Rat". I said
that voice was plummy. It now turns out that Markus is apparently "RP
speaker 1" reading Ferdinand.
That page is a dog's breakfast. It wouldn't be one of your oeuvres,
would it?
***********
Ross Howard
Donna Richoux
> On Thu, 16 Oct 2003 13:56:21 +0200, tr...@euronet.nl (Donna Richoux)
> wrought:
>
> >Ross Howard <ggu...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >> Also, with all due respect to Markus, if he's the Totally Official AUE
> >> yardstick for RP, which in turn is (unfortunately, but let's not go
> >> there) the default for BrE pronunciation, then we're in trouble -- I
> >> doubt even 1% of today's Brits speak that way. Maybe it's the poor
> >> quality of the recording, but if that accent were any plummier it'd be
> >> hanging from a tree in an orchard.)
> >
> >Are we listening to the same sound file? This one, marked RP speaker?
> >
> > http://www.alt-usage-english.org/audio_archive.shtml
> >
> >If so, then we sure aren't using the same definition of "plummy."
>
> I was using the first RP speaker on the page: "RP speaker 1" reading
> "Arthur the Rat".
Oh, gosh, yes, that one is very thick. Now I know what you meant.
>You mean that's not Markus?
No.
>Whoever it is, it's
> plummier than plummy -- that make up his "mairnd", "quite dead" as
> "kwait daird" and "neaouw look hyair" is, well . . . plummy.
>
> If however, that's not Markus, and Markus is the "RP speaker 1" who
> reads "I teach Ferdinand", then I fully retract my plummy claim (and
> apologise, if Markus happens to be reading this) -- that's not plummy;
> it's Educated Estuary AKA New Labour.
That's Markus.
>
> For me, the most representative sample of contemporary RP is the "RP
> speaker 1" who reads the Rainbow texts, who seems to be the same
> person as "RP speaker 2" reading "Arthur the Rat".
>
> (Note to Webmaster: Might it not be an idea to assign a number to each
> voice and stick with it -- or even reveal who's reading what by naming
> them really confusing).
>
Sounds like the labels do need improvement. Mike has asked that
suggestions be emailed to him since he doesn't read every post.
> >
> >I'll see if I can find a sound file of what I'd call plummy... Okay, the
> >first speaker here is reasonably so (not ridiculously or exaggeratedly
> >so -- I've heard worse):
> >
> > http://www.ukans.edu/~idea/index2.html
>
> Give me more clues, if you can. When I click on the Rainbow passage I
> just get the text, no sound files.
I'm sorry, I don't understand how that URL got there. This should be the
right page:
http://www.ukans.edu/~idea/england.html
Dialects of England
First column:
England1.mp3
Some guy reads about rainbows and then talks about his education and his
family.
Woody Wordpecker
> >[ . . . ]
The RP1 reading "Arthur" starts out with stating his name.
It sounds like he may be saying "Dudley Knight". Markus's
"Arthur" is tagged RP2.
I had never noticed that the RP tags weren't used
consistently throughout the archive. I think that should be
fixed. It appears that Igor intended them to be consistent:
In the "Credits" area, at
http://www.alt-usage-english.org/audio_archive.shtml#credits
, he defines "RP speaker 1" to be Markus Laker. So I guess
the RP tags under "Arthur" are simply erroneous.
Ross Howard
<exw...@earthlink.net> wrought:
See? The sound quality is so poor you couldn't even hear him saying
"translated by Dudley Knight". I only caught it when I used headphones
that were far more expensive than any visitor to the site should be
expected to own.
>Markus's "Arthur" is tagged RP2.
At last we're getting somewhere! Yep, that's "Educated Estuary" for
me, rather than RP (neither archaic nor contemporary). Plummy
accusation erroneously made of Markus now reassigned to the anonymous
speaker identified as RP1 reading "Arthur" -- which plumminess is
confirmed elsewhere by Donna.
>I had never noticed that the RP tags weren't used
>consistently throughout the archive. I think that should be
>fixed. It appears that Igor intended them to be consistent:
>In the "Credits" area, at
>http://www.alt-usage-english.org/audio_archive.shtml#credits
>, he defines "RP speaker 1" to be Markus Laker. So I guess
>the RP tags under "Arthur" are simply erroneous.
Now we're on the same page at last, I'll forget your "who is this
guy?" posting if you forget my "crabby" one. Deal?
Maybe we should continue this under the "When is RP RP?" thread I
started, because I think the whole thing, although now a bit less
mixed-up than before, is still quite misleading.
***********
Ross Howard
Woody Wordpecker
<ggu...@yahoo.com> said:
> On Thu, 16 Oct 2003 13:24:26 GMT, Woody Wordpecker
> <exw...@earthlink.net> wrought:
> >On Thu, 16 Oct 2003 14:58:07 +0200, Ross Howard
> ><ggu...@yahoo.com> said:
> >> On Thu, 16 Oct 2003 12:50:42 GMT, Woody Wordpecker
> >> <exw...@earthlink.net> wrought:
> >> >I also question Ross Howard's description of Markus Laker's
> >> >speech as plummy: It's not drawling, it's not deep, it's
> >> >not thick-sounding, and I wouldn't call it mellow.
> >> Who is Markus? RP speaker what number reading what text?
> >> This is seeaaouuw confusing!
> >Ross Howard <ggu...@yahoo.com> earlier wrote:
> >> Also, with all due respect to Markus, if he's the Totally Official AUE
> >> yardstick for RP, which in turn is (unfortunately, but let's not go
> >> there) the default for BrE pronunciation, then we're in trouble -- I
> >> doubt even 1% of today's Brits speak that way. Maybe it's the poor
> >> quality of the recording, but if that accent were any plummier it'd be
> >> hanging from a tree in an orchard.)
> >So, after wrongly criticizing the quality of "the recording"
> Most of the recordings are poor. Some of them, including the one I was
> talking about, are piss poor. They're noisy as hell and dynamically
> nearly as narrow as a mobile phone.
First, you don't need a large dynamic range for voice
recording. But maybe you're using "dynamically" with some
non-technical meaning.
Second, you're just blowing smoke when you try to switch the
discussion from Markus's recordings to the Archive
recordings in general. The recordings that Markus made are
of quite satisfactory quality. It is true that too many of
the other recordings are of poor quality.
> If you want decent sound -- good enough to make very subtle
> distinctions about the sounds in diffferent pronunciations -- try
> using a Shure or AKG mike instead of Mickey Mouse monitor-top plastic
> thingies from computer shops, record it onto a Nagra or straight into
> a sound-card that costs more than $35 (an Audigy upwards), and don't
> compress the result to a lossy format such as MP3.
You were doing great, addressing the question of recording,
then you decided to switch to listening, which has nothing
to do with how the sounds are recorded:
>Then listen through
> decent headphones (I'd recommend Sennheisers, AKGs or decent Sonys --
> I use all three, depending on what it's for) instead of the crappy
> speakers that are little better than an amplified telephone that most
> of us have on our desks.
> Don't say "wrongly" when you don't know what the hell you're talking
> about, Woody, Bob or whoever you are this week.
If you knew what the hell you're talking about, you wouldn't
be saying I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. And
you wouldn't be recommending headphone listening as a way to
achieve better recordings.
> I see the effects of the cruise have worn off, anyway -- you're back
> to your old crabby (although not plummy) self.
Your repulsive attitude always brings out my crabby side.
> >and calling "that accent" plummy, he now wants to know who
> >Markus is. What's with this guy?
> Where is he identified on the AUE Web site as Markus? Why are three
> different speakers identified as "RP speaker 1"? Someone at some point
> talked about the first voice on the AUE page being Markus. The first
> voice on that page is RP speaker 1 reading "Arthur the Rat". I said
> that voice was plummy. It now turns out that Markus is apparently "RP
> speaker 1" reading Ferdinand.
As I've said in another posting, there is an error in one
use of the "RP 1" designation. It should always be Markus,
because that's the way it's defined in the "Credits"
section.
> That page is a dog's breakfast.
That's an unfair description. It's a well-organized page
that presents the information in a user-friendly manner. So
it has one mistake in it. Except for the poor quality of
some recordings, what else is wrong with it?
> It wouldn't be one of your oeuvres, would it?
No, it wouldn't, but if it were my work, I'd be pleased to
say so. The bulk of the work was done by Igor Merfert, who
maintained it until he withdrew it to protest the US bombing
of Yugoslavia. I left his notes as I found them, making
modifications only in the form of additions where necessary.
I modified the navigation of the page to suit myself, and
Mike has made further and worthwhile modifications to the
navigation of the page to suit himself.
Aaron J. Dinkin
Indeed. And this squares with my impression that the RP [A.] is higher
than my own - but, again, not so high as to be more [O] than [A.].
-Aaron J. Dinkin
Dr. Whom
Ross Howard
<exw...@earthlink.net> wrought:
[snip]
I've proposed a road map for peace in another posting not long ago, so
responding to this one now would be to going backwards instead of
forwards.
***********
Ross Howard
Aaron J. Dinkin
> On Thu, 16 Oct 2003 13:31:19 +0200, Ross Howard
><ggu...@yahoo.com> said:
>
>> No. Apart from the lip-rounding -- which, as you say, isn't essential
>> to obtaining a typical RP [A.] --
>
> What possible basis can you have for calling the sound [A.]
> if it doesn't have lip rounding?
I suspect that this a case in which it would have been more correct for
Ross to write /A./ than [A.]
(Is this a troll? I don't think so.)
Aaron J. Dinkin
> On Thu, 16 Oct 2003 12:27:14 GMT, Woody Wordpecker
><exw...@earthlink.net> wrought:
>
>>What is your definition of IPA "turned script a", the
>>equivalent of ASCII IPA [A.]?
>
> Cot, bother,Ross (my vested interest in it), Bob (yours), etc.
Yes - this is a definition of /A./, not of [A.].
Alan Jones
"Matti Lamprhey" <matti-...@totally-official.com> wrote in message
news:bmk5qh$o1anq$1...@ID-103223.news.uni-berlin.de...
> "Woody Wordpecker" <exw...@earthlink.net> wrote...
> > "Matti Lamprhey" <matti-...@totally-official.com> said:
> >
> > [ . . . ]
> >
> > > > In Received Pronunciation, "bother" is [bA.D@], "father" is
> > > > [fA:D@]. That is, they're the same vowel except that the
> > > > one in "bother" is rounded, while the one in "father" is
> > > > not.
> >
> > > different vowels to me. What does this "rounded" mean?
> >
> > If you'll look closely at your mouth in a mirror while
> > you're pronouncing "bother", you should see that your lips
> > are rounded to some extent. If you then try to unround your
> > lips while pronouncing "bother", the first vowel in "bother"
> > should turn into the one in "father".
> >
> > One person in AUE may tell you that he can pronounce [A.]
> > without rounding his lips, but this is absurd, since IPA
> > [A.] has no other definition than that it's the low back
> > vowel spoken with rounded lips. I have no way of knowing
> > what vowel he's pronouncing when he thinks he's pronouncing
> > [A.] without lip rounding. So far as I know, he's never
> > bothered to submit samples of his pronunciation.
> >
> > I can't pronounce [A.] reliably, because it's not in my
> > idiolect, but I know it when I hear it pronounced by an RP
> > speaker.
>
> To what extent is this influenced by the initial consonants in your
> examples, though?
>
> I find that I can switch between "bother-sans-b" and "father-sans-f"
> without moving my lips in the slightest, a bit like a vent would do,
> mouth is internally making quite different sounds for these vowels, both
> issuing from the same lip shape.
Having looked in a mirror, I agree with Matti: whatever internal movement of
the tongue produces the two distinct RP vowels, the lips don't seem to be
involved. To eliminate the effect of the consonants, I also tried
cot/cart/caught and could see no lip change (no "r" in cart, of course).
However, if I exaggerate and do a sort of artificial actorish demonstration
of the words, there is a rounding for "cot" and "caught" not visible in
normal speech.
Alan Jones
R F
I'll tell you what I've heard in a bunch of BrE accents. They probably
include what's left of RP. The "father" vowel is more fronted than the
"cot" vowel. That's a difference that goes beyond rounding.
This tendency of "cart" to get fronted is seen more in some BrE accents
than others, and it's very much a feature of the vowel shift that defines
Cockney's long-lost cousin, AusE.
"Cart" gets fronted in the Upper Midwest too, BTAWNS.
R F
On Thu, 16 Oct 2003, Michael Hamm wrote:
> On Wed, 15 Oct 2003 17:14:55 -0400, R F <rfon...@mail.wesleyan.edu>
> wrote, in part:
> > > > Hmm. Well, Hamm seems to be from Manhattan, so I wonder whether this is
> > > > an East River difference.
> > >
> > > I'm from Brooklyn.
> >
> > Well, why didn't you say so, my brother? What neighborhood?
>
> Sheepshead Bay.
Aha. I can respect that.
> > > > My general impression of Manhattan accents of a latter day is that
> > > > they show some alarming tendencies of movement towards
> > > > vowel-inventory reduction. For example, I believe that some
> > > > Manhattanites may have lost the full MINMINMism -- Michael Hamm, are
> > > > you MINMINM?
> <snip>
> > MINMINM = three-way distinct merry/marry/Mary. Most Americans have at
> > most a two-way distinction. On th'East Coast, in the major urban
> > centers, MINMINMism still survives, but it's under attack.
>
> I am not minminm; I distinguish 'merry' from the others.
WHAT???????? You merge "marry" and "Mary"?!?!?!?!?!?!?
Come to think of it, if this is true of more New York city speakers than
I've assumed, it may explain some of the MINMINM-related weird things
I've noticed over the years. I knew a person from Bay Ridge, the other
side of southern Kings County (and childhood home of Manhattan Jan Sand)
who was named 'Sara' and she used what sounded to me like the 'Mary'
vowel. And I believe that some Manhattanites of my generation did the
same sort of thing; but now I wonder whether MIMBMID
(here, "Mary is marry, but merry is different") co-existed with full
MINMINMism in traditional New York accents all along. I'm from Flatbush,
FWTW.
IIRC, Manhattan Jan Sand is MINMINM.
Aaron J. Dinkin
> Come to think of it, if this is true of more New York city speakers than
> I've assumed, it may explain some of the MINMINM-related weird things
> I've noticed over the years. I knew a person from Bay Ridge, the other
> side of southern Kings County (and childhood home of Manhattan Jan Sand)
> who was named 'Sara' and she used what sounded to me like the 'Mary'
> vowel.
As I've mentioned before, I'm MINMINM and have always pronounced "Sara"
with the "Mary" vowel. I've heard it with the "marry" vowel and it sounds
odd to me, if not wrong. Note that the spelling of "Sara" suggests the
"Mary" vowel, unlike the spelling of "Farrah [Fawcett]", which I
pronounce with the "marry" vowel.
R F
On Thu, 16 Oct 2003, Aaron J. Dinkin wrote:
> On Thu, 16 Oct 2003 12:10:45 -0400, R F <rfon...@mail.wesleyan.edu> wrote:
>
> > Come to think of it, if this is true of more New York city speakers than
> > I've assumed, it may explain some of the MINMINM-related weird things
> > I've noticed over the years. I knew a person from Bay Ridge, the other
> > side of southern Kings County (and childhood home of Manhattan Jan Sand)
> > who was named 'Sara' and she used what sounded to me like the 'Mary'
> > vowel.
>
> As I've mentioned before, I'm MINMINM and have always pronounced "Sara"
> with the "Mary" vowel. I've heard it with the "marry" vowel and it sounds
> odd to me, if not wrong.
Oh right, that's *another* complication. I believe that some New
York-area speakers may use "Mary" in "Sara(h)" even if they're MINMINM.
> Note that the spelling of "Sara" suggests the
> "Mary" vowel, unlike the spelling of "Farrah [Fawcett]", which I
> pronounce with the "marry" vowel.
But... but ... you and I both pronounce "Aaron" with the "marry" vowel
(IIRCWRTY). Surely you don't consider the "aa" in "Aaron" to call for
special treatment!
I'll grant you that a double r is more likely to (is always going
to?) suggest "marry". But lots of single r words have "marry" in my
dialect, such as:
arid, arable, Arab, Arabic, baron, Carol, Cary/Carey (that's one that
seems to have intra-New-York-city variation [Mario Cuomo's predecessor
was a Hugh Carey]), Clarence (ISBN), Clara, clarify, Dara, Gary, Harold,
Lara, mariner, marinate, Paris, parable, Sara, Sarah, Tara
That's not to say that there aren't lots of single-r words that take
"Mary". One thing I notice about some of the former is that there are
often <rr> words that are similar in sound. "Harold" and "Harry" (and
note that "Harry" was historically a nickname for "Henry", so it has an
independent origin); "Tara" and "tarry"; "Car(e)y" and "carry"; "Dara"
(sister of a high school classmate) and "Darren" (_Bewitched_); "baron"
and "Barry". Maybe that's all just koinkidenk.
Woody Wordpecker
How is it a definition of anything?
Teacher: What is the definition of "turned-script-a"?
Student: Cot.
Where is the definition? Will the student be given a gold
star for correctly answering the question? Certainly not.
Lexicographer working on a new edition of _COD_, faced with
writing a definition of "turned-script-a": Would he prepare
an entry saying
turned-script-a (noun) cot
? Would he keep his job for very long if he submitted
definitions like that?
Does Ross Howard know what a definition is?
What were you thinking, Aaron, when you said that "Cot,
bother,Ross (my vested interest in it), Bob (yours), etc."
is a definition? You must know better.
Woody Wordpecker
> > > [ . . . ]
All you're saying is that you don't use [A.] in the
pronunciation of any of the words you've mentioned. You use
some other vowel(s). So your pronunciation doesn't agree
with that shown in Oxford University Press dictionaries and
in the _Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary_ (
http://tinyurl.com/r7hm ).
I have no complaint about people using any vowels they want
to use. They can pronounce "bother" and "father" [bi:D@]
and [fu:D@] ("beether" and "foother") for all I care. What
I object to is the use of "turned-script-a" to transcribe a
vowel that isn't rounded.
A corollary to that is that if it does prove to be true that
Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press
dictionaries reflect a speech that is not spoken by a
substantial number of the people of England, I would look
with disfavor upon that.
Let me say again, though, that lip rounding can be quite
subtle. If we look at only the external portions of the
lips, we can feel certain that our lips are not rounded when
pronouncing a vowel. But when we look at the innermost
regions of the lips, we may see the constriction of the
sides, producing a central oval that amounts to rounding. I
may deal with that topic, complete with pictures, in a
separate posting.
Woody Wordpecker
<rfon...@mail.wesleyan.edu> said:
>
> On Thu, 16 Oct 2003, Woody Wordpecker wrote:
>
> > On Thu, 16 Oct 2003 13:31:19 +0200, Ross Howard
> > <ggu...@yahoo.com> said:
> >
> > [ . . . ]
> >
> > > No. Apart from the lip-rounding -- which, as you say, isn't essential
> > > to obtaining a typical RP [A.] --
> >
> > What possible basis can you have for calling the sound [A.]
> > if it doesn't have lip rounding?
> >
> > What is your definition of IPA "turned script a", the
> > equivalent of ASCII IPA [A.]?
> >
> > Why are you comfortable with not having the same definition
> > the International Phonetics Association has for it?
> >
> > I have no great problem accepting that British dictionaries
> > are wrong, and that RP speakers don't use [A.] in "bother".
> > I do have a problem with calling whatever vowel they do use
> > [A.] if it doesn't have lip rounding.
> >
> > > there's some kind of throat constriction
> >
> > Nasalization? Pharyngealization?
>
> I'll tell you what I've heard in a bunch of BrE accents. They probably
> include what's left of RP. The "father" vowel is more fronted than the
> "cot" vowel. That's a difference that goes beyond rounding.
It doesn't go beyond rounding. It goes away from a
consideration of rounding. It says that the difference in
pronunciation of "bott" and "baht" is not a matter of
rounding, but a matter of centralization of one of the
vowels and not of the other.
People who know that they make that distinction and that
they do not round the vowel in "hot" should not use [A.] for
transcribing the pronunciation of "hot".