How your idiolect differs from the standard language

The best topics from Languages & Linguistics, kept on a permanent basis.
User avatar
Jipí
Smeric
Smeric
Posts: 1128
Joined: Sat Apr 12, 2003 1:48 pm
Location: Litareng, Keynami
Contact:

Post by Jipí »


Magb
Lebom
Lebom
Posts: 194
Joined: Wed Aug 23, 2006 9:42 am
Location: Oslo, Norway

Post by Magb »

Travis B. wrote:The footnotes are because I added such after the fact, and yes, I forgot footnote 4.
Try rewriting parts of the post rather than adding footnotes. Not to say footnotes are always bad, but the way you used them in that post made parsing the post much harder than it ought to have been. Anyway, enough derailing from me.

User avatar
äreo
Avisaru
Avisaru
Posts: 326
Joined: Sun Jul 01, 2007 10:40 pm
Location: Texas

Post by äreo »

YngNghymru wrote:Does anyone else make a distinction between 'have', 'have with' and 'have on'? The distinction between 'have something' and 'have something on you' is a common one in BrE and probably in AmE as well, but to me, 'have' is generic possession, 'have with' is somewhere in the same building or on a trip - say you were in a hotel and it was in your room - and 'have on' is have, in your possession, about your person, right now.
I do this too, but sometimes someone will misunderstand and I have to clarify - "I have it with me, but not on me"

Grey
Sanci
Sanci
Posts: 17
Joined: Mon Jun 25, 2007 10:41 pm
Location: Europe

Post by Grey »


You know, if it makes you feel any better at all, apart from a very slight accent on some words, I can honestly say if we talked, I could easily mistake you for a native speaker of American English.
[quote="bricka"]
You aren't even using "as the LORD intended" as the LORD intended.[/quote]

User avatar
vampireshark
Avisaru
Avisaru
Posts: 738
Joined: Thu Dec 04, 2008 7:02 pm
Location: Luxembourg
Contact:

Post by vampireshark »

Guitarplayer: Your English is considerably better than that of my boss when I worked in Germany, and I daresay that your accent is very clear. I'd probably mistake you for a native English speaker if I didn't know any better.

Actually, come to think of it, you sound sorta like Cathbad...
What do you see in the night?

In search of victims subjects to appear on banknotes. Inquire within.

User avatar
finlay
Sumerul
Sumerul
Posts: 3600
Joined: Mon Dec 22, 2003 12:35 pm
Location: Tokyo

Post by finlay »

Travis B. wrote:
Boskobènet wrote:Also, Travis - for God's sake just make a recording. We don't care whether it's suitable for detailed analysis. We just want to hear you speak.
Well, here is an example of my semi-careful speech I already have up; note that it is not really what I speak in everyday life, but rather how I tend to speak into a microphone.
Aha!

You don't sound like you have uvular R. Let me just say that right here right now. Of course I can't look into your mouth and tell you this for sure, but there are various reasons why linguists don't tend to transcribe themselves even though they have the advantage of actually knowing what their tongue is doing. To me it sounds like it's pharyngeal, perhaps, or labial. Either way, it at least doesn't sound like the uvular R from French or German. Plus it sounds retroflex postvocalically.

With your L, it is definitely in the back of the mouth and not the front, you're right there. Not sure about it being fully a velar lateral, but you've acknowledged this.

Anyway, you don't need to believe me. But you've sent a pretty clear recording and I did get the highest mark in the class during an aural exam a few weeks ago. :wink:


Guitarplayer: you have an obvious German accent, but you're probably never going to have comprehension problems with it. Nobody will mention it in that case; it's usually considered pretty bad form to bring it up directly. One thing that marks it out is that as you say, it's neither clearly American nor British. There are quite a few Germans who I've met at uni who have American accents, and I've only known that they're German when they've told me. (Or there was one who had a perfect American accent but hypercorrected /v/ to /w/ a lot, which was odd)

I suppose, though, if you had a purely British accent I'm more likely to notice it being odd. One friend who's left now had an accent which was basically British, but because there was something slightly off about it, it sounded South African...

It's also possible that I'm expecting a German accent and that if I didn't know that you were German I wouldn't notice. I dunno.

Travis B.
Sumerul
Sumerul
Posts: 3570
Joined: Mon Jun 20, 2005 12:47 pm
Location: Milwaukee, US

Post by Travis B. »

finlay wrote:
Travis B. wrote:
Boskobènet wrote:Also, Travis - for God's sake just make a recording. We don't care whether it's suitable for detailed analysis. We just want to hear you speak.
Well, here is an example of my semi-careful speech I already have up; note that it is not really what I speak in everyday life, but rather how I tend to speak into a microphone.
Aha!

You don't sound like you have uvular R. Let me just say that right here right now. Of course I can't look into your mouth and tell you this for sure, but there are various reasons why linguists don't tend to transcribe themselves even though they have the advantage of actually knowing what their tongue is doing. To me it sounds like it's pharyngeal, perhaps, or labial. Either way, it at least doesn't sound like the uvular R from French or German. Plus it sounds retroflex postvocalically.

With your L, it is definitely in the back of the mouth and not the front, you're right there. Not sure about it being fully a velar lateral, but you've acknowledged this.

Anyway, you don't need to believe me. But you've sent a pretty clear recording and I did get the highest mark in the class during an aural exam a few weeks ago. :wink:
To be exact, how I've analyzed my /r/ in detail is as follows:

1. It is always pharyngealized to some degree
2. It is typically an approximant, but may at times have a bit of frication when strongly emphasized.
3. Before vowels and not after coronals it is postvelar; that is, it is slightly behind where I typically realize my /k/, /g/, or /l/, but it is not really truly uvular. This is actually something I only realized recently, but from listening more carefully to my own recordings and checking how I articulate /r/s in different environments, this is pretty clearly so. (What you hear as labialization is actually postvelarness, as I do not really labialize my /r/s, unlike very many English dialects.)
4. Between vowels it can be somewhere from postvelar and uvular.
5. In codas it tends towards being actually uvular; in particular, my coda /r/s tend to be far backer POA-wise than my onset /r/s.
6. After coronals it has both postalveolar and postvelar articulation.

When I transcribe such as [ʁ], I am actually oversimplifying it a bit for transcription's sake - it is really one of [ɰ̠ˤ], [ɹ̠͡ɰ̠ˤ], or [ʁˤ] depending on its exact environment and like. The main thing is that my onset /l/ is very commonly [ɰ], and it is much easier to in transcriptions realize that "[ʁ]" is supposed to be a different historical phoneme from it than, say, [ɰ̠ˤ].

Yng
Avisaru
Avisaru
Posts: 880
Joined: Fri Jul 03, 2009 3:17 pm
Location: Llundain

Post by Yng »

What's 'gebbles'?

Travis B.
Sumerul
Sumerul
Posts: 3570
Joined: Mon Jun 20, 2005 12:47 pm
Location: Milwaukee, US

Post by Travis B. »

YngNghymru wrote:What's 'gebbles'?
How Goebbels, as in Joseph Goebbels, is traditionally pronounced in my dialect, as opposed to the commonplace annoying General American pronunciation of [ˈɡɝbɫz]* (or how I would emulate such in my own dialect, [ˈɡʁ̩ːbɯːs] - yuck). (This was originally written in a thread on Unilang where the pronunciation of Goebbels was being discussed.)

* Note: I had actually put the wrong rhotic for GA here in my original post, and only realized it later.
Last edited by Travis B. on Mon Jun 14, 2010 4:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Grey
Sanci
Sanci
Posts: 17
Joined: Mon Jun 25, 2007 10:41 pm
Location: Europe

Post by Grey »

Travis, you sound rather like my old guild master.
[quote="bricka"]
You aren't even using "as the LORD intended" as the LORD intended.[/quote]

Yng
Avisaru
Avisaru
Posts: 880
Joined: Fri Jul 03, 2009 3:17 pm
Location: Llundain

Post by Yng »

Travis B. wrote:
YngNghymru wrote:What's 'gebbles'?
How Goebbels, as in Joseph Goebbels, is traditionally pronounced in my dialect, as opposed to the commonplace annoying General American pronunciation of [ˈɡʁ̩bɫz]. (This was originally written in a thread on Unilang where the pronunciation of Goebbels was being discussed.)
I thought you were just butchering 'gerbils' :P

Is my memory failing me, or did you not say 'hah, the GA version sounds like something you'd say in German'?
كان يا ما كان / يا صمت العشية / قمري هاجر في الصبح بعيدا / في العيون العسلية

tà yi póbo tsùtsùr ciivà dè!

short texts in Cuhbi

Risha Cuhbi grammar

Travis B.
Sumerul
Sumerul
Posts: 3570
Joined: Mon Jun 20, 2005 12:47 pm
Location: Milwaukee, US

Post by Travis B. »

YngNghymru wrote:
Travis B. wrote:
YngNghymru wrote:What's 'gebbles'?
How Goebbels, as in Joseph Goebbels, is traditionally pronounced in my dialect, as opposed to the commonplace annoying General American pronunciation of [ˈɡʁ̩bɫz]. (This was originally written in a thread on Unilang where the pronunciation of Goebbels was being discussed.)
I thought you were just butchering 'gerbils' :P

Is my memory failing me, or did you not say 'hah, the GA version sounds like something you'd say in German'?
I said "You guys wanted to hear how I pronounce Goebbels, which is how I normally pronounce it or [stumble], trying to go and emulate General American pronunciation, Goebbels [laugh], yeah, Goebbels, that doesn't sound right to me, that sounds nothing like, say, German Goebbels."

(And note that in my original post I mixed up my transcription of the typical pronunciation of Goebbels in GA, which I have since fixed.)

User avatar
finlay
Sumerul
Sumerul
Posts: 3600
Joined: Mon Dec 22, 2003 12:35 pm
Location: Tokyo

Post by finlay »

Travis B. wrote:
finlay wrote:
Travis B. wrote:
Boskobènet wrote:Also, Travis - for God's sake just make a recording. We don't care whether it's suitable for detailed analysis. We just want to hear you speak.
Well, here is an example of my semi-careful speech I already have up; note that it is not really what I speak in everyday life, but rather how I tend to speak into a microphone.
Aha!

You don't sound like you have uvular R. Let me just say that right here right now. Of course I can't look into your mouth and tell you this for sure, but there are various reasons why linguists don't tend to transcribe themselves even though they have the advantage of actually knowing what their tongue is doing. To me it sounds like it's pharyngeal, perhaps, or labial. Either way, it at least doesn't sound like the uvular R from French or German. Plus it sounds retroflex postvocalically.

With your L, it is definitely in the back of the mouth and not the front, you're right there. Not sure about it being fully a velar lateral, but you've acknowledged this.

Anyway, you don't need to believe me. But you've sent a pretty clear recording and I did get the highest mark in the class during an aural exam a few weeks ago. :wink:
To be exact, how I've analyzed my /r/ in detail is as follows:

1. It is always pharyngealized to some degree
2. It is typically an approximant, but may at times have a bit of frication when strongly emphasized.
3. Before vowels and not after coronals it is postvelar; that is, it is slightly behind where I typically realize my /k/, /g/, or /l/, but it is not really truly uvular. This is actually something I only realized recently, but from listening more carefully to my own recordings and checking how I articulate /r/s in different environments, this is pretty clearly so. (What you hear as labialization is actually postvelarness, as I do not really labialize my /r/s, unlike very many English dialects.)
4. Between vowels it can be somewhere from postvelar and uvular.
5. In codas it tends towards being actually uvular; in particular, my coda /r/s tend to be far backer POA-wise than my onset /r/s.
6. After coronals it has both postalveolar and postvelar articulation.

When I transcribe such as [ʁ], I am actually oversimplifying it a bit for transcription's sake - it is really one of [ɰ̠ˤ], [ɹ̠͡ɰ̠ˤ], or [ʁˤ] depending on its exact environment and like. The main thing is that my onset /l/ is very commonly [ɰ], and it is much easier to in transcriptions realize that "[ʁ]" is supposed to be a different historical phoneme from it than, say, [ɰ̠ˤ].
I wouldn't go quite so far as to say you have no phonemes, though, nor would I do that for anyone. Just that a lot of distinctions aren't segmental. And yeah, you should simplify things in transcriptions if they're not strictly relevant.

What about 'bunched R'? Could it be that? I don't really know what it is, though, it's just that I can make something acoustically similar and that fits all the criteria, while not being ʁ, at least for the way you do postvocalics, from memory at least..

User avatar
Boşkoventi
Lebom
Lebom
Posts: 157
Joined: Mon Aug 14, 2006 4:22 pm
Location: Somewhere north of Dixieland

Post by Boşkoventi »

finlay wrote:What about 'bunched R'? Could it be that? I don't really know what it is, though, it's just that I can make something acoustically similar and that fits all the criteria, while not being ʁ, at least for the way you do postvocalics, from memory at least..
From his description and from listening to the recording, it sounds like a perfectly normal bunched-r to me (i.e. the same as my /r/).
Travis B. wrote:Well, here is an example of my semi-careful speech I already have up; note that it is not really what I speak in everyday life, but rather how I tend to speak into a microphone.
Honestly, even allowing that that's your "microphone voice", you sound completely normal to me. There are slight hints of a northern accent of some kind, but nothing out of the ordinary. If I didn't already know, I don't think I could even guess where you were from, except to say that you're definitely not southern. I can't imagine your colloquial speech being that different, aside from a lot of elision, which you're always talking about, but that's normal. Everyone 'slurs' and mumbles when they're speaking casually.
Radius Solis wrote:The scientific method! It works, bitches.
Είναι όλα Ελληνικά για μένα.

User avatar
finlay
Sumerul
Sumerul
Posts: 3600
Joined: Mon Dec 22, 2003 12:35 pm
Location: Tokyo

Post by finlay »

Yeah, you don't have the NCVS too badly, and I'm only noticing the L and R thing because I know to listen to it (and because I might as well be a phonetician by trade :P).

Travis B.
Sumerul
Sumerul
Posts: 3570
Joined: Mon Jun 20, 2005 12:47 pm
Location: Milwaukee, US

Post by Travis B. »

finlay wrote:I wouldn't go quite so far as to say you have no phonemes, though, nor would I do that for anyone. Just that a lot of distinctions aren't segmental. And yeah, you should simplify things in transcriptions if they're not strictly relevant.
When I talk about not believing in phonemes, I am speaking from a purely theoretical point of view - that the way that sound change actually happens and the way phonologies actually work disagrees with the idea that there are underlying forms that correspond at all to the traditional idea of phonemes.
finlay wrote:What about 'bunched R'? Could it be that? I don't really know what it is, though, it's just that I can make something acoustically similar and that fits all the criteria, while not being ʁ, at least for the way you do postvocalics, from memory at least..
That's the thing - it is in many ways what people would call a "bunched R" except that it only has coronal articulation after other coronals. However, I tend to avoid terms like bunched R because they often end to be vaguely defined in practice.

Travis B.
Sumerul
Sumerul
Posts: 3570
Joined: Mon Jun 20, 2005 12:47 pm
Location: Milwaukee, US

Post by Travis B. »

Boskobènet wrote:
finlay wrote:What about 'bunched R'? Could it be that? I don't really know what it is, though, it's just that I can make something acoustically similar and that fits all the criteria, while not being ʁ, at least for the way you do postvocalics, from memory at least..
From his description and from listening to the recording, it sounds like a perfectly normal bunched-r to me (i.e. the same as my /r/).
Acoustically it really does not sound that different from most other /r/s in NAE dialects except for ones that are purely postalveolar, which it sounds a bit different from. The main matter, though, is just that it has completely lost its coronal articulation except after other coronals, whereas most accounts of the realization of /r/ in NAE dialects assume some sort of coronal articulation for /r/ in general.
Boskobènet wrote:
Travis B. wrote:Well, here is an example of my semi-careful speech I already have up; note that it is not really what I speak in everyday life, but rather how I tend to speak into a microphone.
Honestly, even allowing that that's your "microphone voice", you sound completely normal to me. There are slight hints of a northern accent of some kind, but nothing out of the ordinary. If I didn't already know, I don't think I could even guess where you were from, except to say that you're definitely not southern. I can't imagine your colloquial speech being that different, aside from a lot of elision, which you're always talking about, but that's normal. Everyone 'slurs' and mumbles when they're speaking casually.
What I was speaking there is essentially my formal speech in practice; it is how I tend to speak at work with people I am not familiar with, for instance, whereas with people I am more familiar with I tend to not try to emulate GA quite as closely myself. My colloquial speech tends to have far more assimilations and elisions and slightly different vowels (such as a more central historical /ɛ/, a more open historical /eɪ̯/, a backer historical /oʊ̯/, a backer and less diphthongal historical /aʊ̯/, and a closer and more diphthongal historical /æ/), and that is what I typically represent in my transcriptions rather than how I was saying things in that clip. Even then, though, I do not think my colloquial speech is quite as atypical for a northern NAE dialects as some think it is, because a lot of the same sorts of phonological processes that show up in my colloquial speech also show up in such in other northern NAE varieties - it is just that people find my transcriptions weird, as they are primarily only familiar with the transcription of GA proper, and they are not aware of many of the phonological processes that actually occur in many NAE varieties in everyday speech.

User avatar
Torco
Smeric
Smeric
Posts: 2372
Joined: Thu Aug 30, 2007 10:45 pm
Location: Santiago de Chile

Post by Torco »

While if I try really hard I can notice a few german influences in your speech, I could easily be fooled into thinking that you're from the states: also you sound much more stater than british to me.

O'course, my english ear is horrible, so... yeah :=)

User avatar
AnTeallach
Lebom
Lebom
Posts: 125
Joined: Tue Jan 17, 2006 12:51 pm
Location: Yorkshire

Post by AnTeallach »

Boskobènet wrote:
Travis B. wrote:Well, here is an example of my semi-careful speech I already have up; note that it is not really what I speak in everyday life, but rather how I tend to speak into a microphone.
Honestly, even allowing that that's your "microphone voice", you sound completely normal to me. There are slight hints of a northern accent of some kind, but nothing out of the ordinary. If I didn't already know, I don't think I could even guess where you were from, except to say that you're definitely not southern. I can't imagine your colloquial speech being that different, aside from a lot of elision, which you're always talking about, but that's normal. Everyone 'slurs' and mumbles when they're speaking casually.
I thought it sounded surprisingly "normal" too. I did notice the NCVS of LOT (making not sound almost like how I say gnat, although I think his vowel is longer) but it's not unusual for American accents to have that feature.

But I do remember him posting another recording which was more distinctive - indeed it took some time to get used to the sound before I could make out what he was saying. That was when I got the impression that his /l/ really was [ɰ].

User avatar
finlay
Sumerul
Sumerul
Posts: 3600
Joined: Mon Dec 22, 2003 12:35 pm
Location: Tokyo

Post by finlay »

Travis B. wrote:
Boskobènet wrote:
finlay wrote:What about 'bunched R'? Could it be that? I don't really know what it is, though, it's just that I can make something acoustically similar and that fits all the criteria, while not being ʁ, at least for the way you do postvocalics, from memory at least..
From his description and from listening to the recording, it sounds like a perfectly normal bunched-r to me (i.e. the same as my /r/).
Acoustically it really does not sound that different from most other /r/s in NAE dialects except for ones that are purely postalveolar, which it sounds a bit different from. The main matter, though, is just that it has completely lost its coronal articulation except after other coronals, whereas most accounts of the realization of /r/ in NAE dialects assume some sort of coronal articulation for /r/ in general.
Boskobènet wrote:
Travis B. wrote:Well, here is an example of my semi-careful speech I already have up; note that it is not really what I speak in everyday life, but rather how I tend to speak into a microphone.
Honestly, even allowing that that's your "microphone voice", you sound completely normal to me. There are slight hints of a northern accent of some kind, but nothing out of the ordinary. If I didn't already know, I don't think I could even guess where you were from, except to say that you're definitely not southern. I can't imagine your colloquial speech being that different, aside from a lot of elision, which you're always talking about, but that's normal. Everyone 'slurs' and mumbles when they're speaking casually.
What I was speaking there is essentially my formal speech in practice; it is how I tend to speak at work with people I am not familiar with, for instance, whereas with people I am more familiar with I tend to not try to emulate GA quite as closely myself. My colloquial speech tends to have far more assimilations and elisions and slightly different vowels (such as a more central historical /ɛ/, a more open historical /eɪ̯/, a backer historical /oʊ̯/, a backer and less diphthongal historical /aʊ̯/, and a closer and more diphthongal historical /æ/), and that is what I typically represent in my transcriptions rather than how I was saying things in that clip. Even then, though, I do not think my colloquial speech is quite as atypical for a northern NAE dialects as some think it is, because a lot of the same sorts of phonological processes that show up in my colloquial speech also show up in such in other northern NAE varieties - it is just that people find my transcriptions weird, as they are primarily only familiar with the transcription of GA proper, and they are not aware of many of the phonological processes that actually occur in many NAE varieties in everyday speech.
Nah, people find it weird because you often transcribe your mumbling and slurring, which is not usual to do even though everyone does it.

As for your R, how on earth do you know how other people articulate it?

Travis B.
Sumerul
Sumerul
Posts: 3570
Joined: Mon Jun 20, 2005 12:47 pm
Location: Milwaukee, US

Post by Travis B. »

AnTeallach wrote:
Boskobènet wrote:
Travis B. wrote:Well, here is an example of my semi-careful speech I already have up; note that it is not really what I speak in everyday life, but rather how I tend to speak into a microphone.
Honestly, even allowing that that's your "microphone voice", you sound completely normal to me. There are slight hints of a northern accent of some kind, but nothing out of the ordinary. If I didn't already know, I don't think I could even guess where you were from, except to say that you're definitely not southern. I can't imagine your colloquial speech being that different, aside from a lot of elision, which you're always talking about, but that's normal. Everyone 'slurs' and mumbles when they're speaking casually.
I thought it sounded surprisingly "normal" too. I did notice the NCVS of LOT (making not sound almost like how I say gnat, although I think his vowel is longer) but it's not unusual for American accents to have that feature.

But I do remember him posting another recording which was more distinctive - indeed it took some time to get used to the sound before I could make out what he was saying. That was when I got the impression that his /l/ really was [ɰ].
That is because some of the other recordings I have made have been in my more colloquial speech as opposed to higher register speech, between which there are definite phonological differences.

Travis B.
Sumerul
Sumerul
Posts: 3570
Joined: Mon Jun 20, 2005 12:47 pm
Location: Milwaukee, US

Post by Travis B. »

finlay wrote:Nah, people find it weird because you often transcribe your mumbling and slurring, which is not usual to do even though everyone does it.
The matter is the results of such "mumbling" and "slurring" has definite phonological consequences from a theoretical standpoint, as it involves in many cases cheshirization, as it is called, and as the realized forms often disagree considerably with many established assumptions about NAE phonology.
finlay wrote:As for your R, how on earth do you know how other people articulate it?
That is actually a good question - there are a lot assumptions made about how /r/ is articulated in NAE dialects, but I somehow get the impression that no one or at least not many have actually gone out and done the fieldwork to figure out what people tend to actually have - or if they have, it has not been any time recently. (I myself can often hear when it sounds different from my own /r/ and I can attempt to emulate such, with it seeming that in many cases there is less dorsal or pharyngeal articulation, but I, yes, really do not have direct access to how they are articulating such.)

User avatar
Boşkoventi
Lebom
Lebom
Posts: 157
Joined: Mon Aug 14, 2006 4:22 pm
Location: Somewhere north of Dixieland

Post by Boşkoventi »

Torco wrote:
While if I try really hard I can notice a few german influences in your speech, I could easily be fooled into thinking that you're from the states: also you sound much more stater than british to me.

O'course, my english ear is horrible, so... yeah :=)
I'm not sure there's really any accent, but something makes him sound a little foreign to me. I think it's probably that he speaks English very clearly; in my experience Germans tend to do that, and it can make them sound somewhat British.

I have a little trouble understanding him in German, but I think it's mostly because he talks so damn fast. :P
Travis B. wrote:That's the thing - it is in many ways what people would call a "bunched R" except that it only has coronal articulation after other coronals.
Actually, I think I have that too. Your /r/ is probably perfectly normal. And this, by the way, is where phonemes come in. You have what you perceive to be one sound (/r/) realized in different ways depending on its environment - those are allophones.
Travis B. wrote:However, I tend to avoid terms like bunched R because they often end to be vaguely defined in practice.
You have to realize, tho, that at some point you need vagueness, because otherwise you get bogged down in picky little details that don't really matter. Want to write a paper on the realization of /r/ in American English? Go ahead and fuss all you want. But otherwise just call it a "bunched-r".
Travis B. wrote:That is actually a good question - there are a lot assumptions made about how /r/ is articulated in NAE dialects, but I somehow get the impression that no one or at least not many have actually gone out and done the fieldwork to figure out what people tend to actually have - or if they have, it has not been any time recently.
I don't know where to find it now, but I once read something about the various realizations of /r/ in American English. It even had a set of images (x-ray, I think) of people's mouths, showing all the ways you can produce more or less the same sound.
Travis B. wrote:The matter is the results of such "mumbling" and "slurring" has definite phonological consequences from a theoretical standpoint ...
But that's the question - does it, really? If I say ["w@s@_X "m{.@` wIT j}_c], does that really tell us anything about the phonology of my dialect / idiolect as a whole? At best that sort of speech is just one part, and not necessarily the 'normal' or everyday form.
Travis B. wrote:That is because some of the other recordings I have made have been in my more colloquial speech as opposed to higher register speech, between which there are definite phonological differences.
More soundz, plz. MOAR!
Radius Solis wrote:The scientific method! It works, bitches.
Είναι όλα Ελληνικά για μένα.

User avatar
finlay
Sumerul
Sumerul
Posts: 3600
Joined: Mon Dec 22, 2003 12:35 pm
Location: Tokyo

Post by finlay »

Travis B. wrote:
finlay wrote:Nah, people find it weird because you often transcribe your mumbling and slurring, which is not usual to do even though everyone does it.
The matter is the results of such "mumbling" and "slurring" has definite phonological consequences from a theoretical standpoint, as it involves in many cases cheshirization, as it is called, and as the realized forms often disagree considerably with many established assumptions about NAE phonology.
Maybe to some extent, but I say plenty of things every day that can't be accounted for by phonology because they're more slips-of-the-tongue and stuff like that, or lexical/syntactic mistakes which aren't so much relevant here. Or I'm not really making the effort to say it without mumbling. And also, the way you write this I can't help but feel you're deliberately trying to be subversive.

Travis B.
Sumerul
Sumerul
Posts: 3570
Joined: Mon Jun 20, 2005 12:47 pm
Location: Milwaukee, US

Post by Travis B. »

finlay wrote:
Travis B. wrote:
finlay wrote:Nah, people find it weird because you often transcribe your mumbling and slurring, which is not usual to do even though everyone does it.
The matter is the results of such "mumbling" and "slurring" has definite phonological consequences from a theoretical standpoint, as it involves in many cases cheshirization, as it is called, and as the realized forms often disagree considerably with many established assumptions about NAE phonology.
Maybe to some extent, but I say plenty of things every day that can't be accounted for by phonology because they're more slips-of-the-tongue and stuff like that, or lexical/syntactic mistakes which aren't so much relevant here. Or I'm not really making the effort to say it without mumbling. And also, the way you write this I can't help but feel you're deliberately trying to be subversive.
But that's the thing - things like elision of unstressed intervocalic /t/, /d/, /n/, /nt/, and /nd/, elision of unstressed /t/, /d/, and /n/ after /r/ and before a vowel, and assimilation together of clusters like /st/, /dn/, /dl/, /dj/, /ld/, and so on are not merely "slips of the tongue" at all but rather systematic phonological changes that occur widely and yet in a rather specific fashion which often have rather interesting results. Were they slips of the tongue such changes would not occur with a distribution that indicates that they are specific phonological changes but rather would appear to be more sporadic and varied in nature. (Conversely, there are changes such as the elision of /v/ in over, the elision of both /b/s and even sometimes the /l/ in probably, and the elision of /l/ and the vowel in problem which occur in a highly lexicalized fashion, where they occur extremely frequently in those lexical items, and in some register s almost invariably in those lexical items, yet they simply do not occur elsewhere in any kind of systematic fashion whatsoever, indicating that they are particular lexical item-specific sound changes and not slips of the tongue either.)

Post Reply