Recorded at the 2011 VASTA Conference in Chicago IL at Roosevelt University, Phil and Eric take the show to their audience. It’s a “show about the show” where we talk about the magic behind the curtain, topic choices, and we take questions from our studio audience. Though we don’t spend much time on the sounds of speech, we do have a great time taking “calls” from our friends. In the second half we spend quite a lot of time on the subject of GenAm, Standard speech and Neutral speech, whatever they may be...

Topics include: The impetus for the show; the set up for the show; recording, editing, planning; audio sync issues; lo-fi recording strategies; So-Called-General-American (SCGA); Standard accents; separating phonetics, phonology, prescription; “sounds are not good, they are good for...;” our response to a ‘neutral’ accent.

Glossonnnnnnommmmmia is comin’ through the nose this week: we’re talking about Nasals, both consonants and vowels – nasalized vowels, that is. Hosts Phil Thompson and Eric Armstrong discuss not only English’s 3 nasal consonants, but all the nasals the human mouth can utter. [note: Phil’s recording starts to sound echoey in the second half. That’s my fault for not editing it well. Sorry! Hope it isn’t too annoying!]

Show Notes

Velo-Pharyngeal Port

- lifting and lowering the soft palate

- ban vs. band as a way of feeling the action of the lifting of the soft palate

- perhaps more noticeable on sing vs. sink

Sonorant vs. Obstruent (both)

- Sonorant is without turbulence or obstruction, generally a vowel or nasals, or L, approximants, like r, or glides/semivowels like w/j

- Obstruent has an obstructed airflow; nasals are technically stops with a dropped velum soft palate

- Nasal Consonants

    - in English

        - m

        - n

            - n̪ dentalized n before θ as in "tenth"

                - or in accents where the placement of alveolars is

                      on the back of the teeth...

        - ŋ velar nasal – only final or intervocalic, never initial

        - ɲ palatal nasal "nya nya nya" teasing, some accented versions

              of /nj/ as in "onion"

        - ɱ – labiovelar: assimilation, usually n/m before v as in "invest,

              invert, invent, inventory" or f "symphony, camphor,

              influence, unfit"; may cause epenthetic dental p e.g. 

              symphony [sɪɱp̚fənɨ]

 

 Syllabic Consonants

  - a consonant which forms a syllable on its own or forms the nucleus of the syllable (taking the place of a vowel, usually schwa) e.g. ambition, bacon, ship 'em or happen (with assimilation, as [hæpm̩] ) – immediately after an obstruent, as in leaden or chasm

 

 Nasal Plosion

  - The release of a plosive by lowering the soft palate so that air escapes through the nose 

  - Hidden, sadden, sudden, leaden

  - e.g. on Ladefoged's site for A Course in Phonetics http://tinyurl.com/3r8yd6b

 

    - International

        - ɳ – vd. retroflex nasal in Indic languages e.g. Hindi,

              but also Norwegian, Swedish and Vietnamese (generally an

              assimilation of /r+n/

        - ɲ – vd. palatal nasal, in Spanish (eñe), lots of other

              languages incl. French, Italian, Greek, 

        - ŋ – vd. velar nasal,  in some languages at the beginning

              of syllables, like Vietnamese, Thai, Shona, note

              Samoyedic group of Uralic language family, Nganasan

              language (only 1000 speakers in 1989, ethnologue says

              500) it is in its name!

            - initial velar nasal in 146 languages

            - no initial velar in 88 languages

            - no velar nasal in 235 languages

        - ɴ – vd. uvular nasal, e.g. Japanese final /n/ as in Nihon

        -

- Nasalized Vowels

    - example languages:  French, Portuguese, Breton, Polish

    - In French they developed from Assimilation (the vowels took

          on nasality from the following nasal consonant which was then

          dropped. ) Some accents of French still have final /n/, as in

          Marseilles, where "accent" might be pronounced [aksaɲ]

Example: Odette does her poem about her accent: http://tinyurl.com/3r6w9uq

- Languages without Nasals

    - fewer the 2.3% of languages lack nasals

    - e.g. Puget sound native languages lack them

    - "The only other places in the world where this occurs is in a

          dialect of the Rotokas language of Papua New Guinea, where

          nasal stops are used only when imitating foreign accents (a

          second dialect does have nasal stops), and in some of the

          Lakes Plain languages of West Papua."

- Denasal consonants

    - pathological (usually a cold) where m=b, n=d, ŋ=k

In their third and final episode on lot, cloth and thought, co-hosts Eric Armstrong and Phil Thompson not only think about, but actually talk about the thought lexical set. What it is, how to identify it, and its relationship to cloth, lot, and, tangentially, palm.

Show Notes

At the end of the show, Phil and Eric talk through the following sentence in their own accents (such as they are), with Phil’s cloth – thought, merger and Eric’s Canadian cloth–lot–palm merger.

LOT CLOTH THOUGHT

The officer, and the constable talked to my daughter a lot. They said it was not at all optimal to go on a long cross country obstacle course from Ottawa to Montreal . Obviously, Chicago to Boston was also off, being far too costly in a borrowed automobile.

Hosts Eric Armstrong and Phil Thompson focus on lot-cloth mergers in this unusually short episode. [Recorded in March but not published until May, this (hopefully) marks the end of a long hiaitus!] Often we have either lot-cloth separate from thought, or we have cloth-thought separate from lot. Phil outlines some history of back vowels, and the spelling (usually with A’s and O’s).

Short /o/—in spelling, lot words like “clock, chop, hot” the vowel is short and checked by the short voiceless stop. Meanwhile, cloth words like “cough, cross, coffee” and “gone,” the vowel is also short and the following consonant is a voiceless fricative.

From The Atlas of North American English

/o/ “short-o”, [aka ɒ] derived primarily from M.E. open o or ɔ in cot, rot, odd, Tom, hotter, etc. In most British dialects, this is the short back rounded vowel realized on a non-peripheral track (see below). In most North American dialects, it was unrounded and lowered to [ɑ] by the nineteenth century (Barton 1832). It was then merged with the small sub-class of words with /a/ after initial /w/ (watch, wander, warrant) and generally with the /ah/ class (balm = bomb, see below). In Eastern New England, Pittsburgh and some Canadian communities, /o/ remained as a rounded vowel, and merged with /oh/ [aka ɔ]. /o/ does not remain in its original back rounded position as a separate phoneme in any North American dialect.

In those dialects that retained the opposition between /o/ and /oh/, a large

number of /o/ words shifted to the /oh/ class, before back nasals, as in strong,

song, long, wrong, etc.; before voiceless fricatives (in loss, cloth, off, etc.), and irregularly before /g/, as in log, hog, dog, fog, etc. This process occurred by lexical diffusion, leaving many less common words in the /o/ class, such as King Kong, Goth, doff, etc.

Peculiarities of lot - cloth mergers in New York City and Boston.

In Boston, lot - cloth vowels are supposedly merged, while in NYC, cloth-thought are merged. However, Phil isn’t necessarily convinced!

Great Scott! Hosts Phil & Eric think awfully hard on the sounds of the lexical sets lot, cloth, thought. A set up for the trifecta (tetrafecta?) of our next few shows, in this episode we talk through the sounds typically associated with these lexical sets, particularly in “standard” accents like Received Pronunciation, so-called General American, Canadian, and the tendency for cloth to merge with either lot or thought.

Typical Sounds encountered in these lexical sets range from

a type a

ɑ script a

ɒ turned script a

ɔ open o

Diacritics discussed:

o̞ lowered

o̝ raised

o̘ Advanced Tongue Root (forward)

o̙ Retracted Tongue Root (back)

o̟ Advanced

o̠ retracted

o̽ mid-centralized

ö centralized

o̹ rounded

o̜ unrounded

In thish show, Phil and Eric talk their way around the shounds of "sh" and "zh", [ʃ] and [ʒ], post-alveolar fricatives. This pair of consonants provide ample room for discussion of how the sounds are made, compared to similar sounds in the mouth.

Show Notes:

- compared to /s/ and /z/, the airflow of /ʃ/ and /ʒ/ goes through a wider aperture

- /ʃ/is very broad spectrum, which makes it an effective "shusher"

- these sounds include a lip-rounding component

- /ʒ/ Phil uses less lip-rounding (lip corner advancement) than /ʃ/, while Eric is unaware of such a difference.

- [Phil mentioned the Heisenberg Uncertainly Principle, which states that "the more precisely one property is measured, the less precisely the other can be measured." I'm not sure that this is what he meant—Eric]

- wikipedia has a list of languages that feature /ʃ/and /ʒ/.

- yogh ȝ is not the symbol you are looking for—note the curved top on the yogh (pronounced [jɒɡ, joʊɡ, joʊk, joʊx] )

- the symbols were invented by Pittman (the shorthand guy)

- š and ž : with a caron or haček

- Ж Cyrillic "zhe"

- ろ in Japanese looks like /ʒ/, but it is not the same

- yod coalescence turns /sju/ into /ʃu/

- Phil gives us a lecture on the history of /sh/ and /zh/ in English

- synchronic (a process/pressure on articulation at one time) and diachronic (over time) change e.g. Pressure—diachronic change that has already happened vs. Presh yer face against the glass—synchronic yod coalescence happening in real time

- Phil refers to Shakespeare's Pronunciation by Helge Kökeritz

- note that in our discussion of /ʒ/, Phil suggests that no one would say beige with an affricate ending, that is [beɪdʒ]. Wells does say that that pronunciation is possible.

- /s/ in sport or strasse in German is ʃ

- omniglot.com, a great place to learn about the spelling conventions of a language

- Alveolo-palatal fricatives ɕ (voiceless) ʑ (voiced)

- Retroflex fricatives ʂ (voiceless) and ʐ (voiced)

In this Episode, hosts Phil and Eric dig down deep into the sound of the palm lexical set. After a LOOOONG Hiatus, we're back, and exploring the sound of the ɑː vowel.

Phil and Eric are in fine form in this third (but, not final, alas...) part of their trilogy on the three lexical sets known as trap, bath & palm.

We set out to do three things: correct an error regarding bath "prime," discuss features of trap, most notably the feature called "Asc Tensing" (sounds like something Richard Simmons would have you do for a firmer butt), and to dig deeper into the palm set. Alas, we don't get to the third objective, though we did try.

Show Notes:

Phil explains how he mixed up bath (c) with bath "prime", the group of words that are least likely to be said with /æ/ in the UK today.

bath (c) calf, half, calve, halve, rather, Slav,

shan't, can't,

Iraq, corral, morale, Iran, Sudan, banana.

 

bath "prime:"

chaff, graph, alas, hasp, Basque, masque,

plastic, drastic, elastic, gymnastic, (Cornish) pasty, en-

thusiastic, bastard, paschal, pastoral, masculine, mas-

querade, exasperate, blasphemy, masturbate, Glasgow, 
lather, stance, askance, circumstantial, intransigent, substantial, transit, transport, transfer, transform, transitory, transient, transept, and other words in trans-;

contralto, alto, plaque, Cleopatra.

æ tensing

Phil and Eric talk about Asc Tensing, whereby the vowel gets more close, and so it begins to move into the territory of dress. (Eric confuses things by talking about Asc Tensing and Breaking at the same time.) Here's the chart the guys refer to:

 

Northern Breaking

Northern Breaking is whereby the trap sound breaks into a centering diphthong. In the course of things, Eric reveals his ignorance (yet again) in imagining that it is an onglide (rather than an offglide), as Phil so wisely demonstrates with a slowed-down pronunciation.

 

 

æ raising before nasals

This map from the Atlas of North American English (Labov et al), shows the distribution of this feature. The red dots show places where trap before nasals is much more tense that other trap words.

Eric and Phil also briefly touched on in Hiberno (Irish English) and reference Raymond Hickey's IERC Irish English Resource Centre. They also discussed something that Jack Windsor Lewis mentioned on his site, Changes in British English pronunciation during the twentieth century,

here.

More next time!

We're back at it, back in the bath lexical set, exploring the realm of trap, bath and palm. Hosts Phil Thompson and Eric Armstrong continue on from Episode 15 with more on these lexical sets.

Show Notes:

• a quick review of what a Lexical Set is

• how to recognize words in the bath lexical set

From J.C.Wells' Accents of English:

7. BATH

Typical Spellings: (a)aff, ath (voiceless), ass, aft, asp, ast, ask, augh; (b) ance, ant, anch, CVCand, ample; (c) alf, alv, an’t + many unpredictable, e.g. trans- SEE “ASK LIST”

 (a) staff, giraffe,

path, lath,

brass, class, glass, grass, pass,

raft, craft, graft, daft, shaft, aft, haft, draft,

clasp, grasp, rasp, gasp,

blast, cast, fast, mast, aghast, last, past, contrast, vast, avast,

ask, bask, mask, flask, cask, task,

after, rafter, Shaftesbury,

master, plaster, disaster, castor, pastor, nasty, disastrous,

basket, casket, rascal,

fasten, raspberry, ghastly, castle,

laugh, laughter, draught;

 

(b) dance, advance, chance, France, lance, glance, enhance,

prance, trance, entrance v.,

grant, slant, aunt, chant, plant, advantage, vantage,

chantry, supplant, enchant,

branch, blanch, ranch, stanch, stanchion,

demand, command, remand, slander, chandler,

commando, Alexander, Sandra, Flanders,

example, sample,

chancel, chancellor, Frances, Francis, lancet, answer

 

(c) calf, half, calve, halve, rather, Slav,

shan't, can't,

Iraq, corral, morale, Iran, Sudan, banana.

 

chaff, graph, alas, hasp, Basque, masque,

plastic, drastic, elastic, gymnastic, (Cornish) pasty, en-

thusiastic, bastard, paschal, pastoral, masculine, mas-

querade, exasperate, blasphemy, masturbate, Glasgow, 
lather, stance, askance, circumstantial, intransigent, substantial, transit, transport, transfer, transform, transitory, transient, transept, and other words in trans-;

contralto, alto, plaque, Cleopatra.

• Recommendations on what to do if you don't know

• How to identify bath words in a modern, up-to-date pronouncing dictionary, or the online version of the OED.

• howjsay online pronunciation resource

• The Ask List: included in Skinner's Speak with Distinction

• discussion on the merits (or lack thereof) of teaching and using the Ask List

We're starting Season Two off with a bang! After a season away (i.e. summer), we're diving into the vowels found in the three lexical sets known as trap, bath & palm. The vowels associated with these sets, frequently /æ/, /a/ and /ɑ/, are explored fairly briefly... ok briefly FOR US... and we set ourselves up to dig deeper in Episode 16.

Show Notes:

Lexical Sets are:       categories of words that tend to share the same vowel quality.

                                    …and we can go into greater detail than that, of course.

 

Phonetic Landscape:

Before we get into these particular sets and how they’re realized in various accents, let’s look at the sounds themselves

 

ɑ        Open back unrounded vowel

the most cupped (open)  back position for the tongue. Some would say the most open jaw position. Some would also say that there is, necessarily a retraction of the tongue root.

a        Open front unrounded vowel

            the most cupped (open) front tongue position.

           

æ       Near-open front unrounded vowel
            halfway between ɛ and a

 

 short and checked*  [this is a phonological observation..]

*æ can be unchecked in Jalapa Mazatec and Vietnamese    http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/vowels/chapter12/mazatec.html

 

 

PHONETIC NOTATION:

 

ɑ        script (cursive) a            (single story lowercase)

a        print or type a             (double story lowercase)

æ       ash/asc             (a - e digraph)

 

 

HISTORY of SPELLING: 

 

Wikipedia has some very interesting stuff on the letter's history and development. 

What’s interesting is that this symbol originated to describe the glottal stop and came to represent, over time, the open vowel that followed.