zompist bboard

Why is the <a> of most of the *ash words /æ/, but the <a> of wash is /a/?

Because it's preceded by /w/.

I thought it was because it's followed by /r/.

While some people have /r/ in *warsh, most (my observation) don't. I think, if <a> is /a/ because of the /w/, then I would guess that the /r/ is because of the /a/. But English dialectologists may have facts better than my impressions.

I assumed linguoboy was joking.

I wondered if he might have been joking, since his posts generally (or better) show a lot of knowledge. But only he knows, and others might be mislead.

I doubt that, especially considering that an awful lot of the people on this forum are native speakers of English themselves and even the non-native ones seem to be aware that certain pronunciations are more common in English than certain others.

I laughed at it, but he and I are both from St. Louis.

Axiem wrote:I laughed at it, but he and I are both from St. Louis.

...and hence easily amused.

linguoboy wrote:

Axiem wrote:I laughed at it, but he and I are both from St. Louis.

...and hence easily amused.

I'm not sure if I should agree with that or be offended by it...

"wash" historically had the same vowel as in "crash" and "smash". Then vowel rounding occurred causing the TRAP vowel to become rounded after "w" hence the present pronunciations of "wander", "wasp", "wash", "want", "wand", "watch" etc. The rounding didn't occur before velar consonants as in "wagon", "wax" and "whack" and didn't occur in "swam" the irregular past tense of "swim".

Fooge wrote:"wash" historically had the same vowel as in "crash" and "smash". Then vowel rounding occurred causing the TRAP vowel to become rounded after "w" hence the present pronunciations of "wander", "wasp", "wash", "want", "wand", "watch" etc. The rounding didn't occur before velar consonants as in "wagon", "wax" and "whack" and didn't occur in "swam" the irregular past tense of "swim".

"swim"'s past tense would make it an regular class 3 strong verb in English. ^{(that was kind of /s-worthy as the strong verb paradigm has lost its cohesion in English)}

no it hasn't -- there are strong verb ablaut patterns regular enough to be extended by analogy. there are even patterns that are *entirely* analogical in origin, e.g. 'dive', 'sneak', 'sit'

Nortaneous wrote:no it hasn't -- there are strong verb ablaut patterns regular enough to be extended by analogy. there are even patterns that are *entirely* analogical in origin, e.g. 'dive', 'sneak', 'sit'

Agree. I have a phonemic distinction between a long TRAP vowel (the BAD vowel) and a short TRAP vowel (the LAD vowel). Past tense forms formed by ablauting to a always have the LAD vowel even if it would never appear there in other words. Occasionally I accidentally irregularise verbs spontaneously in speech. Once I accidentally said dag as the simple past of dig. What was really interesting is that I said it with the LAD vowel, not like the noun dag which has the BAD vowel. In fact, I can't think of any other word with the LAD vowel before a coda /g/. That sequence is apparently reserved only for past ablaut und just happens not to occur in an real verbs I've ever heard anyone say. (Unless there's a common irregular verb with -ag that I'm overlooking.)

Anyway, my point is that spontaneously, unconsciously irregularising verbs (which I think most English speakers do at times) shows that these patterns do exist in a way that can still be productive and take off (like dove and snuck), and my dialect's vowel split shows quite well that it's somehow stored in my head quite specifically as "this vowel can be used to make things past".