Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[Travis B.]

Crab rangoon can be either for me; it is a count noun when speaking of individual units of crab rangoon ("Could you give me a couple crab rangoons?"), and as you see right here when I speak of crab rangoon in a collective fashion it is a mass nouns.

[akam chinjir]

If someone asks you to pass the crab rangoon, are they asking you to pass one crab rangoon, or are they not specifying how much/many they want?

[Pabappa]

If someone asks you to pass the crab rangoon, are they asking you to pass one crab rangoon, or are they not specifying how much/many they want?

the "the" changes the context here, imo. I would interpret that as a mass noun .... i.e. pass the whole plate and I'll grab a few ... But I would still use the plural if I was speaking.

In the rare circumstance when only 1 piece is left, no disambiguation is needed.

[akam chinjir]

Yeah, it's not actually a great test with foodstuff nouns, because of how easily we swap between mass and count uses.

Which sounds more natural, "That was too much crab rangoon," or "That was too many..."?

[Linguoboy]

For me I think it's unambiguously mass, unlike gyoza and shiu mai, which can be mass (e.g. "That too much shiu mai for four people") or count invariable for plural (e.g. "Each order is four gyoza"). Any form of singularisation (e.g. "two crab rangoon", "two pieces of crab rangoon", "two of the crab rangoon") sounds a bit awkward.

[Zaarin]

Why are the American English liquids so strongly pharyngealized (I suppose some people have velarized [ɫ], but mine at least is distinctly pharyngealized, as is my /r/ [ɹ̠ˁ])? It seems like an odd development in a language so lacking in dorsal sounds (/h/ and a non-phonemic glottal stop notwithstanding).

[Vijay]

I've never perceived them as pharyngealized or heard of them being so outside this forum, but pharyngealization does pop up in random places sometimes. At least one of the languages of Pantar Island in Indonesia has a phonemic voiceless pharyngeal fricative.

[Zaarin]

I've never perceived them as pharyngealized or heard of them being so outside this forum, but pharyngealization does pop up in random places sometimes. At least one of the languages of Pantar Island in Indonesia has a phonemic voiceless pharyngeal fricative.

Most people I know have /r/ [ɻ] (including both my parents), but mine (as well as other "bunched R" speakers I've known) definitely has a pharyngealized element. I've heard both velarized /l/ [ɫ = lᵞ], such as my Mom's, and pharyngealized /l/ [ɫ = lˁ]--and, of course, vocalized/non-coronal /l/ [ʟ] such as Travis describes. I've observed velarized /l/ is more likely to be associated with vocalization than pharyngealized like mine: I never L-vocalize.

[Travis B.]

My /l/ is weakly pharyngealized at most and rather tends more towards being plain velar, vocalized or not; I perceive it as more back than normal, but more in that /oʊl ʊl uːl/ are fully backed whereas /oʊ uː/ and especially /ʊ/ are not fully backed (/ʊ/ in particular seems to be quite centralized). This seems to be the case for most people here. Likewise my /r/ is generally not pharyngealized in most cases but rather either plain uvular or coarticulated postalveolar-uvular, depending on environment, with or without labialization, depending on position and environment, even though I may pharyngealize it when emphasizing it in a coda on occasion.

[Zaarin]

/oʊ uː/ and especially /ʊ/ are not fully backed (/ʊ/ in particular seems to be quite centralized). This seems to be the case for most people here.

My /oʊ ʊ/ are likewise very centralized, but my /uː ɒ/ are back.

Likewise my /r/ is generally not pharyngealized in most cases but rather either plain uvular or coarticulated postalveolar-uvular, depending on environment, with or without labialization, depending on position and environment, even though I may pharyngealize it when emphasizing it in a coda on occasion.

Mine is retracted postalveolar but with distinctive pharyngealization and no uvular element, with the usual labialization in prevocalic position. I'd say my rhotic is less pharyngealized than my lateral, however, which in a particularly narrow transcription I'd probably transcribe as [l̪ˁ].

[Travis B.]

/oʊ uː/ and especially /ʊ/ are not fully backed (/ʊ/ in particular seems to be quite centralized). This seems to be the case for most people here.

My /oʊ ʊ/ are likewise very centralized, but my /uː ɒ/ are back.

In the dialect here /oʊ/ is typically less centralized than /uː/, which undergoes allophonic centralization adjacent to coronals, but my daughter has a diphthongal /oʊ/ (contrasting with my monophthongal /oʊ/) with a central unrounded starting point (i.e. as [əʊ]). I wonder where she picked it up, because in the dialect here /oʊ/ is normally [o] or [oʊ].

[Frislander]

My /oʊ ʊ/ are likewise very centralized, but my /uː ɒ/ are back.

Huh, interesting, that's pretty much the opposite of what's typical in the UK, where if any of the rounded vowels is going to be fronted, it'll be the GOOSE vowel, though the FOOT vowel is central round Manchester.

[Travis B.]

My /oʊ ʊ/ are likewise very centralized, but my /uː ɒ/ are back.

Huh, interesting, that's pretty much the opposite of what's typical in the UK, where if any of the rounded vowels is going to be fronted, it'll be the GOOSE vowel, though the FOOT vowel is central round Manchester.

Isn't /oʊ/ traditionally [əʊ] in RP?

[mèþru]

My /oʊ/ is starts less centralized than /uː/ and ends more back, but its ending is inaudible. I never noticed until now that I pronounce the close to mid vowels differently than in Hebrew. I always assumed that that was part of my horrible accent in my native tongue.

[anteallach]

Why are the American English liquids so strongly pharyngealized (I suppose some people have velarized [ɫ], but mine at least is distinctly pharyngealized, as is my /r/ [ɹ̠ˁ])? It seems like an odd development in a language so lacking in dorsal sounds (/h/ and a non-phonemic glottal stop notwithstanding).

My guess would be that it reinforces the contrasts with /w/ and/or /j/.

[Zaarin]

/oʊ uː/ and especially /ʊ/ are not fully backed (/ʊ/ in particular seems to be quite centralized). This seems to be the case for most people here.

My /oʊ ʊ/ are likewise very centralized, but my /uː ɒ/ are back.

In the dialect here /oʊ/ is typically less centralized than /uː/, which undergoes allophonic centralization adjacent to coronals, but my daughter has a diphthongal /oʊ/ (contrasting with my monophthongal /oʊ/) with a central unrounded starting point (i.e. as [əʊ]). I wonder where she picked it up, because in the dialect here /oʊ/ or normally [o] or [oʊ].

I have the same /oʊ/ [əʊ] as your daughter. I have no idea where I picked mine up, either.

Why are the American English liquids so strongly pharyngealized (I suppose some people have velarized [ɫ], but mine at least is distinctly pharyngealized, as is my /r/ [ɹ̠ˁ])? It seems like an odd development in a language so lacking in dorsal sounds (/h/ and a non-phonemic glottal stop notwithstanding).

My guess would be that it reinforces the contrasts with /w/ and/or /j/.

That makes sense, actually, and I actually did something similar in a conlang once for the same reason (though in that case I went l > ɫ, ɹ > ʀ).

[Frislander]

My /oʊ ʊ/ are likewise very centralized, but my /uː ɒ/ are back.

Huh, interesting, that's pretty much the opposite of what's typical in the UK, where if any of the rounded vowels is going to be fronted, it'll be the GOOSE vowel, though the FOOT vowel is central round Manchester.

Isn't /oʊ/ traditionally [əʊ] in RP?

Actually yeah that's true, and nowadays it's not uncommon for it to end up all the way over at [əʏ] or something like that, you're right, but also I live in that part of the country where [oː] is the norm.

[Salmoneus]

Huh, interesting, that's pretty much the opposite of what's typical in the UK, where if any of the rounded vowels is going to be fronted, it'll be the GOOSE vowel, though the FOOT vowel is central round Manchester.

Isn't /oʊ/ traditionally [əʊ] in RP?

Actually yeah that's true, and nowadays it's not uncommon for it to end up all the way over at [əʏ] or something like that, you're right, but also I live in that part of the country where [oː] is the norm.

As I understand it:

- it was at least /@U/ in RP. In really posh RP (what I think of as 'WWII RAF' English, though the Queen isn't far from it either) it was fronted even further, to something like /eU/.

- but it many other dialects, it wasn't, and those dialects have largely taken over (or RP backed it when turning into SSBE). For me, it's somewhere between - if I front it further, I sound 'posher', if I back it further I sound... I don't know, like an old-school Cockney or something? Certainly something working class.

- however, as with /u/ and to a lesser extent /U/, it's now being fronted again in some dialects. So my impression of the class cline between the two forms is that it's actually reversed over time...

[Salmoneus]

I was amused to realise recently how English's stress placement rules subtly acted to defeat marketing initiatives.

For instance, shop till people are supposed to ask you (at least, in some shops), whether you wouldn't like any cash back. Wow, say the marketers, people love the chance to get some of their cash back! But hang on a second, says the sbconscious inner pedant of the till person. You're not actually getting any bloody cash back, per se. So invariably, they end up asking whether you would like any cashback.

I've noticed this quite a lot, now that I've started noticing it: marketing executive thinks up meaningless and misleading slogan > actual people 'defuse' the slogan by turning it into a new noun.

[anteallach]

Isn't /oʊ/ traditionally [əʊ] in RP?

Actually yeah that's true, and nowadays it's not uncommon for it to end up all the way over at [əʏ] or something like that, you're right, but also I live in that part of the country where [oː] is the norm.

As I understand it:

- it was at least /@U/ in RP. In really posh RP (what I think of as 'WWII RAF' English, though the Queen isn't far from it either) it was fronted even further, to something like /eU/.

- but it many other dialects, it wasn't, and those dialects have largely taken over (or RP backed it when turning into SSBE). For me, it's somewhere between - if I front it further, I sound 'posher', if I back it further I sound... I don't know, like an old-school Cockney or something? Certainly something working class.

- however, as with /u/ and to a lesser extent /U/, it's now being fronted again in some dialects. So my impression of the class cline between the two forms is that it's actually reversed over time...

I think the U-RP form you're talking about tends to front the whole diphthong, ending somewhere more like [ʉ] than [ʊ]. The same is true of some of the more modern forms, though I think they don't front the first part so much.

There are also parts of the North where the whole thing is fronted without diphthongisation. This is particularly associated with Hull (where GOAT can sound quite like RP NURSE) but it can be found elsewhere as well; mine is monophthongal or only slightly diphthongal and definitely isn't properly back.