Linguistic Miscellany Thread

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I hear the two as being distinct, ignoring vowel length, when I don't drop the flap, because [ʁɾ] is quite audibly distinct from [ʁ] for me - and when I do drop the flap the two are still distinct thanks to vowel length (the first syllable of tortoise takes a short vowel even with flap elision while the the first syllable of taurus takes a long vowel for me).

I'm pretty sure my /d/ is still some sort of tap, though intervocalic /d t/ neutralisation is quite prevalent ("kitty" and "kiddie" are homophones), also usually happening medially after /r/ ("sorted" and "sordid" are also homophones); my /r/ also isn't [ʁ] — I think it's more like a slightly apical [ɹ]-like thing. Rather than speculating, have an audio sample:

[snip]

You don't seem to have much of a noticeable vowel length distinction in these pairs, resulting in actual /t d/ neutralization.

Do you think the sound is more tapped or flapped? It strikes me as a slightly apical alveolar tap, but I wonder if the orthography isn't colouring my perception.

[Travis B.]

I'm pretty sure my /d/ is still some sort of tap, though intervocalic /d t/ neutralisation is quite prevalent ("kitty" and "kiddie" are homophones), also usually happening medially after /r/ ("sorted" and "sordid" are also homophones); my /r/ also isn't [ʁ] — I think it's more like a slightly apical [ɹ]-like thing. Rather than speculating, have an audio sample:

[snip]

You don't seem to have much of a noticeable vowel length distinction in these pairs, resulting in actual /t d/ neutralization.

Do you think the sound is more tapped or flapped? It strikes me as a slightly apical alveolar tap, but I wonder if the orthography isn't colouring my perception.

I honestly can't tell the two apart myself.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Ah, fair enough.

As far as long vowels go, I think in stressed syllables, you would get a longer vowel before a voiced consonant, especially a fricative ("rest" would have a shorter vowel than the second syllable of derezzed; ice sounds shorter than eyes, and psychologically the salient feature of wreathe compared to wreath is the vowel length rather than the voiced dental fricative, but this is probably conditioned by the orthography); my guess is that this is still productive, so the /d t/ merger doesn't preserve a shorter vowel before historic /t/.

[Travis B.]

Ah, fair enough.

As far as long vowels go, I think in stressed syllables, you would get a longer vowel before a voiced consonant, especially a fricative ("rest" would have a shorter vowel than the second syllable of derezzed; ice sounds shorter than eyes, and psychologically the salient feature of wreathe compared to wreath is the vowel length rather than the voiced dental fricative, but this is probably conditioned by the orthography); my guess is that this is still productive, so the /d t/ merger doesn't preserve a shorter vowel before historic /t/.

For me rest is shorter than derezzed, ice is shorter than eyes, and wreath is shorter than wreathe, and in all of these cases the following consonants are realized as voiceless.

The key thing in my dialect is that vowel length is very salient and is conditioned by historical fortis versus lenis obstruents following vowels before the next vowel or other obstruent, even if the obstruent is lost (note if there is no obstruent vowels are automatically long).

The thing that argues for it still being synchronic, though, is that vowels in final syllables with no obstruents in the codas may be short or long depending on the fortisness versus lenisness of an initial obstruent in the following word, i.e. the vowel length of final vowels, with a few exceptions, is indeterminate.

(Another thing that argues for this still being synchronic is that in no case are these elisions obligatory; failing to elide a consonant is always still correct, implying the consonants are still present in the underlying forms. Likewise, newly-coined words cannot have arbitrary vowel length but rather behave like vowel length were still allophonic.)

(There is some funniness with elisions, though, where if an elision forces a preceding vowel to merge with a following vowel, the length of the resulting vowel is the first vowel's length plus one, i.e. a short vowel becomes a long vowel and a long vowel becomes an overlong vowel, regardless of what the original length of the following vowel was.)

[Travis B.]

One pair I like in particular is latter versus ladder, which are not homophones here, but rather are distinguished by vowel length alone without requiring elision for that to be so.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Ah, fair enough.

As far as long vowels go, I think in stressed syllables, you would get a longer vowel before a voiced consonant, especially a fricative ("rest" would have a shorter vowel than the second syllable of derezzed; ice sounds shorter than eyes, and psychologically the salient feature of wreathe compared to wreath is the vowel length rather than the voiced dental fricative, but this is probably conditioned by the orthography); my guess is that this is still productive, so the /d t/ merger doesn't preserve a shorter vowel before historic /t/.

For me rest is shorter than derezzed, ice is shorter than eyes, and wreath is shorter than wreathe, and in all of these cases the following consonants are realized as voiceless.

The key thing in my dialect is that vowel length is very salient and is conditioned by historical fortis versus lenis obstruents following vowels before the next vowel or other obstruent...

Oh, wow. I don't think I've ever encountered this before. I can't remember if you've said where this originates.

...even if the obstruent is lost (note if there is no obstruent vowels are automatically long).

The thing that argues for it still being synchronic, though, is that vowels in final syllables with no obstruents in the codas may be short or long depending on the fortisness versus lenisness of an initial obstruent in the following word, i.e. the vowel length of final vowels, with a few exceptions, is indeterminate.

(Another thing that argues for this still being synchronic is that in no case are these elisions obligatory; failing to elide a consonant is always still correct, implying the consonants are still present in the underlying forms. Likewise, newly-coined words cannot have arbitrary vowel length but rather behave like vowel length were still allophonic.)

(There is some funniness with elisions, though, where if an elision forces a preceding vowel to merge with a following vowel, the length of the resulting vowel is the first vowel's length plus one, i.e. a short vowel becomes a long vowel and a long vowel becomes an overlong vowel, regardless of what the original length of the following vowel was.)

Have any noteworthy examples?

[Travis B.]

Have any noteworthy examples?

Examples of plain minimal pairs without elision include my aforementioned example of latter versus ladder along with ones like matter versus madder and liter versus leader.

Cases involving historical fortisness versus lenisness come into play when there are elisions. Common examples of words with such are maybe [meːːj], able to [ˈeːːɯ̯tə(ː)], other [ʌːːʁ], twenty [tʰwʌ̃ːj], Saturday [ˈsɛːʁɾe(ː)], kind of [ˈkʰãːe̯ə(ː)], sort of [ˈsɔʁə(ː)], little [ˈʟ̞ɘːɯ̯], any [ɜ̃ːːj], every [ˈɜːʁi(ː)], and so on. The key thing with these words is that very few of them have lost their elision-less counterparts; the only ones that sound "wrong" to me without elisions are twenty and Saturday.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Have any noteworthy examples?

Examples of plain minimal pairs without elision include my aforementioned example of latter versus ladder along with ones like matter versus madder and liter versus leader.

Cases involving historical fortisness versus lenisness come into play when there are elisions. Common examples of words with such are maybe [meːːj], able to [ˈeːːɯ̯tə(ː)], other [ʌːːʁ], twenty [tʰwʌ̃ːj], Saturday [ˈsɛːʁɾe(ː)], kind of [ˈkʰãːe̯ə(ː)], sort of [ˈsɔʁə(ː)], little [ˈʟ̞ɘːɯ̯], any [ɜ̃ːːj], every [ˈɜːʁi(ː)], and so on. The key thing with these words is that very few of them have lost their elision-less counterparts; the only ones that sound "wrong" to me without elisions are twenty and Saturday.

I'm not sure our spoken dialects are mutually-intelligible (just based on those examples), which, for me, are:

"maybe" [meibi(:)~meibɪ] (no elided form)
"Saturday" [sædəɹdei~sædəɹdi~sædəɹdɪ]
"able to" [eibəɫ tʊ~eibəɫ tə]
"other" [ʌðəɹ] (again, no elided form)
"twenty" [tʰ(ʷ)wɛnti(ː)~tʰ(ʷ)wɛntɪ~tʰ(ʷ)wʌnti(ː)~tʰ(ʷ)wʌntɪ] (when speaking formally or carefully, preserves /t/ probably because of being such a careful reading), but in speech [tʰ(ʷ)wɛnni(ː)~tʰ(ʷ)wɛnnɪ~tʰ(ʷ)wʌnni(ː)~tʰ(ʷ)wʌnnɪ]; for me pronunciation with [ʌ] is more common, with [ɛ] being a bit of a hypercorrection.
"kind of" [kaindəv], colloquial shortening "kinda" [kaində]
"sort of" [sɔɹdəv], colloquial shortening "sorta" [sɔɹdə]
"little" [lɪdəɫ]
"any" [ɛni(ː)~ɛnɪ~ɪni(ː)~ɪnɪ]
"every" [ɛvɹi(ː)] (I apparently don't like terminal [ɪ] after [ɹ])

Given this comparison, the two varieties might actually be approaching mutual unintelligibility in speech, but the fossilised orthography leaves them mutually-comprehensible in writing.

If they were both constructed daughter languages, I bet they would look a bit like this:

meei v. meibi
Seardee v. Sädderdi
eaute v. eibel tu/eibelte
uure v. üther
twuin v. twünni
kaenne v. kaindev/kainde
sore v. sordev/sorde
leaw v. liddel
eain v. eni
uri v. evri

(Both systems based vaguely on Middle and Early Modern English.)

Speakers can't understand each-other now usually, but they frequently do communicate using Classical English, both frequently complaining about its unbearably convoluted orthography.

[Travis B.]

Have any noteworthy examples?

Examples of plain minimal pairs without elision include my aforementioned example of latter versus ladder along with ones like matter versus madder and liter versus leader.

Cases involving historical fortisness versus lenisness come into play when there are elisions. Common examples of words with such are maybe [meːːj], able to [ˈeːːɯ̯tə(ː)], other [ʌːːʁ], twenty [tʰwʌ̃ːj], Saturday [ˈsɛːʁɾe(ː)], kind of [ˈkʰãːe̯ə(ː)], sort of [ˈsɔʁə(ː)], little [ˈʟ̞ɘːɯ̯], any [ɜ̃ːːj], every [ˈɜːʁi(ː)], and so on. The key thing with these words is that very few of them have lost their elision-less counterparts; the only ones that sound "wrong" to me without elisions are twenty and Saturday.

I'm not sure our spoken dialects are mutually-intelligible (just based on those examples)

I find I don't have any real mutual intelligibility problems with other Americans. For starters, I strongly suspect that intervocalic elision is far more prevalent in NAE than people are aware of, and even if people do not have it, they have heard it enough to not have any problems. Some cases are even found in informal writing, such as "li'l" for little. There are other things that are common in NAE in practice which are under-recognized, such as l-vocalization. My use of uvular approximants also does not cause a problem with other Americans from my experience. Anyways, if I find I have trouble with other people, I just codeswitch into something somewhat closer to GA by dropping the elisions in most words.

The real problem I find is in the opposite direction - I have the damnedest time understanding people if they don't get vowel length right. I am okay with varieties with combined phonemic vowel length and allophonic vowel length, such as many English varieties outside North America (my parents claim to not understand British TV shows that well without subtitles, but I have no problem with SSBE or even TV "Northern English" varieties without subtitles), but when people simply lack allophonic vowel length altogether I have a tendency to get confused, especially if they fail to reliably aspirate plosives in the right places.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

I'm not sure our spoken dialects are mutually-intelligible (just based on those examples)

I find I don't have any real mutual intelligibility problems with other Americans. For starters, I strongly suspect that intervocalic elision is far more prevalent in NAE than people are aware of, and even if people do not have it, they have heard it enough to not have any problems. Some cases are even found in informal writing, such as "li'l" for little.

I tend to pronounce that one as [lɪʔəɫ], now that I think on it, but it isn't something I would normally say.

There are other things that are common in NAE in practice which are under-recognized, such as l-vocalization. My use of uvular approximants also does not cause a problem with other Americans from my experience. Anyways, if I find I have trouble with other people, I just codeswitch into something somewhat closer to GA by dropping the elisions in most words.

I was reading that as an uvular fricative! That would explain quite a lot of the unintelligibility I was picturing. I was thinking I'd never heard an English dialect with a fricative r, though according to Wikipedia, they do exist. I was also aware of l-vocalisation and usually don't have much trouble with it (maybe the IPA symbols are skewing it towards looking more foreign than it is, too).

The real problem I find is in the opposite direction - I have the damnedest time understanding people if they don't get vowel length right. I am okay with varieties with combined phonemic vowel length and allophonic vowel length, such as many English varieties outside North America (my parents claim to not understand British TV shows that well without subtitles, but I have no problem with SSBE or even TV "Northern English" varieties without subtitles), but when people simply lack allophonic vowel length altogether I have a tendency to get confused, especially if they fail to reliably aspirate plosives in the right places.

So if ice and eyes were pronounced with the same vowel length?

[Travis B.]

[snip]

If you don't mind my asking, where are you from? Your post above implies you are either North American or Australian, but do not perceive a flap/tap as distinct from [d], but at the same time you have what I'd call happy-laxing (except it also includes laxing final historical /i:/), which is highly atypical of modern-day NAE, and you have [dɪ] as a potential realization of unstressed day, something I am not familiar hearing here.

[Travis B.]

There are other things that are common in NAE in practice which are under-recognized, such as l-vocalization. My use of uvular approximants also does not cause a problem with other Americans from my experience. Anyways, if I find I have trouble with other people, I just codeswitch into something somewhat closer to GA by dropping the elisions in most words.

I was reading that as an uvular fricative! That would explain quite a lot of the unintelligibility I was picturing. I was thinking I'd never heard an English dialect with a fricative r, though according to Wikipedia, they do exist. I was also aware of l-vocalisation and usually don't have much trouble with it (maybe the IPA symbols are skewing it towards looking more foreign than it is, too).

My /r/ is kinda weird - it is a uvular approximant, except if it follows a coronal where then it is a coarticulated retroflex-uvular approximant, and if it is word-initial it is also labialized - except if it is syllabic, where then it is always just a uvular approximant without labialization, even when initial. And yes, l-vocalization makes transcriptions look far weirder than they really are.

The real problem I find is in the opposite direction - I have the damnedest time understanding people if they don't get vowel length right. I am okay with varieties with combined phonemic vowel length and allophonic vowel length, such as many English varieties outside North America (my parents claim to not understand British TV shows that well without subtitles, but I have no problem with SSBE or even TV "Northern English" varieties without subtitles), but when people simply lack allophonic vowel length altogether I have a tendency to get confused, especially if they fail to reliably aspirate plosives in the right places.

So if ice and eyes were pronounced with the same vowel length?

Exactly.

[Nortaneous]

you have [dɪ] as a potential realization of unstressed day, something I am not familiar hearing here.

This is conservative - /-dej/ in the days of the week is a spelling pronunciation. It's still around in the US - my dad consistently has /-dɨ/. (I have either.)

Some of these elisions sound reasonable to me; others don't. For elided forms, I'd expect:
- maybe [mejβ̞ï] (not sure how common lenition of /b/ is though; lenition of /g/ to [ɰ] I think is decently common)
- able to [ejβ̞əldə]
- other [ʌðɚ]
- twenty [twɜ̃ːːj] (not sure what the vowel is here; in careful speech the stressed vowel is /e/, not /ʌ/)
- Saturday [sæːːɹɽï]
- kind of [kãːː]
- sort of [soɹɽə]
- little [ɫɪdɫ̩]
- any [ɛ̃ːːj]]
- every [ɛvɹɪ]

also hundred can be reduced all the way to [hʌ̃ːːɹ̃{d|ˀt}], but [hʌɾ̃ɚ{d|ˀt}] would be more usual - does anyone actually say /hʌndrɨd/? - and probably is typically [prɑː(β)ɫï] (a case where a consonant that isn't a flap can easily be dropped outright, and I'm not sure if the vowel here is long or overlong)

[Travis B.]

you have [dɪ] as a potential realization of unstressed day, something I am not familiar hearing here.

This is conservative - /-dej/ in the days of the week is a spelling pronunciation. It's still around in the US - my dad consistently has /-dɨ/. (I have either.)

This I am aware of; one thing to note is that this area was heavily settled by non-L1 English speakers (you still hear people saying [ja(ː)] for yes here), which could possibly have made it more prone to such things.

[Travis B.]

also hundred can be reduced all the way to [hʌ̃ːːɹ̃{d|ˀt}], but [hʌɾ̃ɚ{d|ˀt}] would be more usual - does anyone actually say /hʌndrɨd/? - and probably is typically [prɑː(β)ɫï] (a case where a consonant that isn't a flap can easily be dropped outright, and I'm not sure if the vowel here is long or overlong)

The careful pronunciation of hundred here is [ˈhʌ̃ːndʒɻ͡ʁɘːt] (I do tend to use this pronunciation for some reason), but [ˈhʌ̃ːnɻ͡ʁɘːt] is common (my mom frequently uses this pronunciation), but in the middle of pronouncing out numbers the normal pronunciation here is [ˈhʌːɾ̃ʁ̩(ː)].

Probably here can be any of [ˈpʰʁɑːbɰi(ː) ˈpʰʁɑːɤ̯i(ː) ˈpʰʁɑːːj] outside of very careful speech.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

[snip]

If you don't mind my asking, where are you from? Your post above implies you are either North American or Australian, but do not perceive a flap/tap as distinct from [d], but at the same time you have what I'd call happy-laxing (except it also includes laxing final historical /i:/), which is highly atypical of modern-day NAE, and you have [dɪ] as a potential realization of unstressed day, something I am not familiar hearing here.

I'm actually from central North Carolina, but have a regionally atypical variety. I was not very sociable as a child, and my natural mother is from Michigan (I think somewhere near Flint?), so my maternal language is regionally mismatched, and standard television language also had some influence (hence fairly conservative pronunciation). Unusual vocabulary choices, spelling (-ise, -our especially), and syntax (including revived use of object pronoun "whom") were absorbed from written language. I am (and always have been) extremely susceptible to picking up new forms from books, especially if I hear them often in things I especially like. The /t d/ neutralisation is possibly also maternal.

The happy-laxing is, to the best of my knowledge, regionally unusual, and is inconsistent. The vowel there is usually not very long, and slips around all over the space between [i] and [ɪ]. It may be analogical with or influenced by the -day as -[di~dɪ], which is itself probably from exposure to older speakers (notably, my paternal grandmother, now almost 91, has an unusual non-rhotic Southern dialect that I believe is probably now very rare), but it coexists in free variation with [dei]; from her also "again" pronounced as [ə'gein], in free variation with maternal [ə'gɛn] and regionally prevalent [ə'gɪn]. I waffle between all thee "agains", often switching depending on what the person with whom I'm speaking uses. My paternal grandmother is not the older speaker with the reduced -day ending in the area, but it's an unusual pronunciation for anybody of my (age 32) generation or younger.

Addendum: based on later posts, "hundred" [hʌnd(ʒ)ɹɨd] (the [ʒ] part is very weakly articulated, and may not even be there); "probably" [pɹɒ(bə)bli(ː)~pɹɒ(bə)blɪ], not further contracted.

[quinterbeck]

My /r/ is kinda weird - it is a uvular approximant, except if it follows a coronal where then it is a coarticulated retroflex-uvular approximant, and if it is word-initial it is also labialized - except if it is syllabic, where then it is always just a uvular approximant without labialization, even when initial. And yes, l-vocalization makes transcriptions look far weirder than they really are.

I'm really curious to hear how this manifests as I can't really imagine it - would you be up for posting a recording of your speech with a transcription?

[Travis B.]

My /r/ is kinda weird - it is a uvular approximant, except if it follows a coronal where then it is a coarticulated retroflex-uvular approximant, and if it is word-initial it is also labialized - except if it is syllabic, where then it is always just a uvular approximant without labialization, even when initial. And yes, l-vocalization makes transcriptions look far weirder than they really are.

I'm really curious to hear how this manifests as I can't really imagine it - would you be up for posting a recording of your speech with a transcription?

I tried taking a recording yesterday, but the microphone on my machine was acting wonky, so I couldn't.

The thing is that audibly it isn't much different from your standard NAE alveolar or retroflex approximant with initial labialization, aside from that when I attempt to pronounce a plain alveolar or retroflex approximant I can't help but make it slightly lateral...

[Travis B.]

Has anyone else been under the impression that what is written in Rōmaji as ⟨ei⟩, e.g. in sensei, corresponded to /ei/ rather than to /eː/? When I studied Japanese back in school (which I have forgotten much of, and I was never good at it) I would pronounce sensei as [sɜ̃ntsej] (a complete butchering to be sure, note that I used a lower and more centralized vowel before /ɴ/). The curious part is that I distinguished an /e/ (as [e]) and an /ei/ (as [ej]), which obviously is a spelling pronunciation based on not being properly taught Japanese phonology, but which is also curious because English dialects do not normally distinguish [e] and [ej] unless they correspond to GA /ɛ/ and /eɪ/ (but my /ɛ/ is [ɜ] not [e]).

[KathTheDragon]

Has anyone else been under the impression that what is written in Rōmaji as ⟨ei⟩, e.g. in sensei, corresponded to /ei/ rather than to /eː/?

I have no idea what vowel "/eː/" is supposed to be.