English questions

[Travis B.]

That is increasingly breaking down in British English, where I more and more frequently hear people dropping their final glottal stops.

How do you think people who do this maintain a distinction between e.g. sought and saw? (Or don't they?) My feeling is that it might involve a vowel length distinction (with sought retaining some clipping from the vanished /t/) and that there might also be some creaky voice left from the glottal stop.

I think they're not very likely to use sought - sort v. saw is likely to be a better test case. I'm not sure I've noticed the dropping after long vowels. It may be the novel phonology that triggers my attention.

Is this because they're not actually dropping after long vowels, or is this because the long vowel case better cheshirizes the presence/lack of /t/, e.g. through a more apparent vowel length difference due to cheshirized clipping, such that you don't really notice the elision of the glottal stop?

[Travis B.]

For me cashmere is /kæʒˈmir/, realized as [kʰɛːɕˈmɪ(ː)ʁˤ] or, in careful speech, [kʰɛːʑˈmɪ(ː)ʁˤ]. The question I have is how did this word end up with /ʒ/? Wiktionary lists this word as having either /ʒ/ or /ʃ/ in NAE or just /ʃ/ in EngE.

[Darren]

For me cashmere is /kæʒˈmir/, realized as [kʰɛːɕˈmɪ(ː)ʁˤ] or, in careful speech, [kʰɛːʑˈmɪ(ː)ʁˤ]. The question I have is how did this word end up with /ʒ/? Wiktionary lists this word as having either /ʒ/ or /ʃ/ in NAE or just /ʃ/ in EngE.

Maybe the Bei[ʒ]ing route? Like a hyperforeignism? To me "cazhmere" is like a pretend-posh way of saying it, like "Targé" for Target.

[Travis B.]

For me cashmere is /kæʒˈmir/, realized as [kʰɛːɕˈmɪ(ː)ʁˤ] or, in careful speech, [kʰɛːʑˈmɪ(ː)ʁˤ]. The question I have is how did this word end up with /ʒ/? Wiktionary lists this word as having either /ʒ/ or /ʃ/ in NAE or just /ʃ/ in EngE.

Maybe the Bei[ʒ]ing route? Like a hyperforeignism? To me "cazhmere" is like a pretend-posh way of saying it, like "Targé" for Target.

My mother says "Targé" /tɑrˈʒeɪ/ [tʰɑːʁˤˈʒe̞(ː)] for the store Target specifically, and I always interpreted is a silly pretend-posh kind of deal, but the word in the dialect here is /ˈtʌrɡət/ [ˈtʰʌːʁˤɡɘʔ(t)].

[Darren]

For me cashmere is /kæʒˈmir/, realized as [kʰɛːɕˈmɪ(ː)ʁˤ] or, in careful speech, [kʰɛːʑˈmɪ(ː)ʁˤ]. The question I have is how did this word end up with /ʒ/? Wiktionary lists this word as having either /ʒ/ or /ʃ/ in NAE or just /ʃ/ in EngE.

Maybe the Bei[ʒ]ing route? Like a hyperforeignism? To me "cazhmere" is like a pretend-posh way of saying it, like "Targé" for Target.

My mother says "Targé" /tɑrˈʒeɪ/ [tʰɑːʁˤˈʒe̞(ː)] for the store Target specifically, and I always interpreted is a silly pretend-posh kind of deal, but the word in the dialect here is /ˈtʌrɡət/ [ˈtʰʌːʁˤɡɘʔ(t)].

Yeah, I meant the store specifically. What I'm getting at is that /ʒ/ is the most foreign-marked English phoneme so it tends to get defaulted to in any foreign pronunciation (e.g. people in my Spanish class would always be saying like /ʒɔːʒeɪ̯/ for "Jorge") and there's also like Bei/ʒ/ing when /tʃ/ would be pretty much accurate to the Chinese; there's probably lots of other examples. Maybe "cashmere" is interpreted as a "foreign" word and /ʃ/ just didn't sound foreign enough.

[Travis B.]

Maybe the Bei[ʒ]ing route? Like a hyperforeignism? To me "cazhmere" is like a pretend-posh way of saying it, like "Targé" for Target.

My mother says "Targé" /tɑrˈʒeɪ/ [tʰɑːʁˤˈʒe̞(ː)] for the store Target specifically, and I always interpreted is a silly pretend-posh kind of deal, but the word in the dialect here is /ˈtʌrɡət/ [ˈtʰʌːʁˤɡɘʔ(t)].

Yeah, I meant the store specifically. What I'm getting at is that /ʒ/ is the most foreign-marked English phoneme so it tends to get defaulted to in any foreign pronunciation (e.g. people in my Spanish class would always be saying like /ʒɔːʒeɪ̯/ for "Jorge") and there's also like Bei/ʒ/ing when /tʃ/ would be pretty much accurate to the Chinese; there's probably lots of other examples. Maybe "cashmere" is interpreted as a "foreign" word and /ʃ/ just didn't sound foreign enough.

I'm used to /ˈhɔrheɪ/ [ˈhɔʁˤhe̞(ː)] for Jorge but hear /ˈbeɪʒəŋ/ [ˈb̥e̞ːʒɘ̃(ː)ŋ] a lot for Beijing (but I personally make a point of saying /ˈbeɪdʒəŋ/ [ˈb̥e̞ːtʃɘ̃(ː)ŋ] for the sake of being contrarian).

[Travis B.]

Does anyone else's variety of English have a phonemic contrast between final -/tn/ and -/tən/? The dialect here has a contrast between gotten /ˈɡɑtn/ [ˈɡ̥aʔn̩(ː)] and getting /ˈɡɛtən/ [ˈɡ̥ɜɾɘ̃(ː)(n)]~[ɡ̥ɜːn], where I only pronounce gotten with something other than a glottal stop (and then it is with an alveolar stop) in very careful speech while I generally do not pronounce getting with a glottal stop even when I pronounce it with /n/ (which is very frequent).

[zompist]

Does anyone else's variety of English have a phonemic contrast between final -/tn/ and -/tən/? The dialect here has a contrast between gotten /ˈɡɑtn/ [ˈɡ̥aʔn̩(ː)] and getting /ˈɡɛtən/ [ˈɡ̥ɜɾɘ̃(ː)(n)]~[ɡ̥ɜːn]

I have a pretty wide range of realizations of these words, with some overlap. For 'gotten', usually [gaʔn̩] but also [gatn̩]. For 'getting', [ɡ̥ɛdɪŋ] or [ɡ̥ɛɾɪn] or [gɛʔn̩].

Your phonemicization wouldn't work for me. I have a ə/ɪ contrast which I haven't nailed down, but I don't see evidence for a shwa here.

[Travis B.]

Your phonemicization wouldn't work for me. I have a ə/ɪ contrast which I haven't nailed down, but I don't see evidence for a shwa here.

I have the weak vowel merger, but have a range of different realizations of my merged weak vowel based on complex conditioning factors including both the adjacent consonants and the position within a given word and a given morpheme.

Edit: And yes, I used to think I contrasted an unstressed /ə/ and an unstressed /ɪ/, but I found that I could not form any contrasts based on these, with their realizations being either predictable or in free variation depending on position and environment.

[zompist]

Edit: And yes, I used to think I contrasted an unstressed /ə/ and an unstressed /ɪ/, but I found that I could not form any contrasts based on these, with their realizations being either predictable or in free variation depending on position and environment.

I can't say this isn't the case. But I have some near-minimal pairs.

enhance, intend, pollen [n̩] (possibly /ən/)
inherit, engage, inform, individual, pollinate [ɪn]

mischievous, boulevard, eventual [əv]
conservative, festival, individual [ɪv]

calamity [kə-]
kilometer [kɪ-]

spectacle, stomach [ək]
testicle, romantic [ɪk]

I looked up a few of these, not all, in Wiktionary, and it agreed with me. In a few of these the ɪ could go to ə, maybe sounding sloppy but not bad; the reverse tends to sound wrong.

[Glass Half Baked]

The classic example is "roses" versus "Rosas's." I think most people contrast those two.

[Travis B.]

Edit: And yes, I used to think I contrasted an unstressed /ə/ and an unstressed /ɪ/, but I found that I could not form any contrasts based on these, with their realizations being either predictable or in free variation depending on position and environment.

I can't say this isn't the case. But I have some near-minimal pairs.

enhance, intend, pollen [n̩] (possibly /ən/)
inherit, engage, inform, individual, pollinate [ɪn]

These all have a schwi for me.

mischievous, boulevard, eventual [əv]
conservative, festival, individual [ɪv]

These all have a schwa for me except for conservative, which has an overt /ɪ/, probably due to secondary stress.

calamity [kə-]
kilometer [kɪ-]

These both have schwas for me.

spectacle, stomach [ək]
testicle, romantic [ɪk]

These all have a schwi for me except for romantic, which has an overt /ɪ/, probably due to secondary stress.

I looked up a few of these, not all, in Wiktionary, and it agreed with me. In a few of these the ɪ could go to ə, maybe sounding sloppy but not bad; the reverse tends to sound wrong.

The classic example is "roses" versus "Rosas's." I think most people contrast those two.

The key thing in those cases, though, is the morphemic structure of the word. Morpheme-final weak vowels in my dialect are schwas, but non-morpheme-final weak vowels before /z/'s are schwis except word-initially, where then schwas and schwis are in free variation.

[Darren]

I have /ə/ in all of them but en-/in- words, "conservative" and "romantic". I think all of these are in auseng better analysed as secondarily-stressed KIT.

[Travis B.]

I have /ə/ in all of them but en-/in- words, "conservative" and "romantic". I think all of these are in auseng better analysed as secondarily-stressed KIT.

When you say you have /ə/ in these,though, do these all have [ə] (ignoring nasalization and allophonic vowel length), or do these have some level of allophony as I have? (Where I said I had 'schwas' or 'schwis' in these words, they are all the same phoneme, but with different surface realizations.)

[Darren]

I have /ə/ in all of them but en-/in- words, "conservative" and "romantic". I think all of these are in auseng better analysed as secondarily-stressed KIT.

When you say you have /ə/ in these,though, do these all have [ə] (ignoring nasalization and allophonic vowel length), or do these have some level of allophony as I have? (Where I said I had 'schwas' or 'schwis' in these words, they are all the same phoneme, but with different surface realizations.)

They're all [ə] or something close to it. No nasalisation or lengthening as far as I can tell either.

[Travis B.]

I have /ə/ in all of them but en-/in- words, "conservative" and "romantic". I think all of these are in auseng better analysed as secondarily-stressed KIT.

When you say you have /ə/ in these,though, do these all have [ə] (ignoring nasalization and allophonic vowel length), or do these have some level of allophony as I have? (Where I said I had 'schwas' or 'schwis' in these words, they are all the same phoneme, but with different surface realizations.)

They're all [ə] or something close to it. No nasalisation or lengthening as far as I can tell either.

That is different from NAE, where in most modern NAE dialects there is the weak vowel merger but it has distinct 'schwa' and 'schwi' realizations, along with syllabic nasals, rhotics, and syllabic laterals or, in varieties with l-vocalization, syllabic vocalized /l/s.

Take for instance Maryland, which IMD I would synchronically analyze as /ˈmerələnd/, realized as [ˈmɛ̝ːʁˤəːɰɘ̃ːnt] or [ˈmɛ̝ːʁˤɯ̞ːɰɘ̃ːnt].

[Darren]

When you say you have /ə/ in these,though, do these all have [ə] (ignoring nasalization and allophonic vowel length), or do these have some level of allophony as I have? (Where I said I had 'schwas' or 'schwis' in these words, they are all the same phoneme, but with different surface realizations.)

They're all [ə] or something close to it. No nasalisation or lengthening as far as I can tell either.

That is different from NAE, where in most modern NAE dialects there is the weak vowel merger but it has distinct 'schwa' and 'schwi' realizations, along with syllabic nasals, rhotics, and syllabic laterals or, in varieties with l-vocalization, syllabic vocalized /l/s.

Take for instance Maryland, which IMD I would synchronically analyze as /ˈmerələnd/, realized as [ˈmɛ̝ːʁˤəːɰɘ̃ːnt] or [ˈmɛ̝ːʁˤɯ̞ːɰɘ̃ːnt].

Ah yes I forgot about "pollen", there's also syllabic sonorants of course

[Travis B.]

They're all [ə] or something close to it. No nasalisation or lengthening as far as I can tell either.

That is different from NAE, where in most modern NAE dialects there is the weak vowel merger but it has distinct 'schwa' and 'schwi' realizations, along with syllabic nasals, rhotics, and syllabic laterals or, in varieties with l-vocalization, syllabic vocalized /l/s.

Take for instance Maryland, which IMD I would synchronically analyze as /ˈmerələnd/, realized as [ˈmɛ̝ːʁˤəːɰɘ̃ːnt] or [ˈmɛ̝ːʁˤɯ̞ːɰɘ̃ːnt].

Ah yes I forgot about "pollen", there's also syllabic sonorants of course

Note, though, I would not analyze syllabic final nasals in my own dialect as involving /ə/, as shown by my distinction between gotten and getting (with /n/ that is). However, I would potentially analyze other English varieties with syllabic final nasals as having /ə/ unless given reason to do otherwise.

(I personally normally realize final /ən/ as [ˈɘ̃(ː)(n)] unless consonant(s) are elided before it.)

[Richard W]

Is this because they're not actually dropping after long vowels, or is this because the long vowel case better cheshirizes the presence/lack of /t/, e.g. through a more apparent vowel length difference due to cheshirized clipping, such that you don't really notice the elision of the glottal stop?

It could also be that they are simply dropped at the lexical level. I don't knowingly have recordings I could consult.

[Travis B.]

Is this because they're not actually dropping after long vowels, or is this because the long vowel case better cheshirizes the presence/lack of /t/, e.g. through a more apparent vowel length difference due to cheshirized clipping, such that you don't really notice the elision of the glottal stop?

It could also be that they are simply dropped at the lexical level. I don't knowingly have recordings I could consult.

A good example of elision becoming lexicalized is that final /st/ is commonly realized as [s] in the English here... but while for me final /sts/ resulting from the present indicative 3rd singular of a word historically ending in /st/ is realized as -[sʲː] or, in careful speech, -[sʲtʲsʲ], my daughter has -/səz/ -[sɘːs] for the same (such that she pronounces tests as /ˈtɛsəz/ [ˈtʰɜsɘːs]).