Re: Odp: Phonetics

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 856
Date: 2000-01-11

 
----- Original Message -----
From: Jeffrey S. Jones
To: cybalist@eGroups.com
Sent: Tuesday, January 11, 2000 5:04 AM
Subject: [cybalist] Re: Phonetics

Jeff writes: I had forgotten about the velar lateral -- living in Miami, I don't hear southern speech very often anymore. I believe it also applies to "help"; it might that what is stigmatized is replacing [L] with null. Do you know which group the informants belonged to?
I don't, unfortunately. I haven't got the original sources at hand. But your conjecture that Southern dark /l/ first develops into [L] before becoming fully vocalised is very plausible phonetically. It could also be tested. Bailey (1969), cited by Wells, says that some southern accents make a distinction between underlying /l/ and /@l/ after back vowels, with a tongue-tip articulation for the former and velar [L] for the latter, e.g. stole [stoul] versus bestowal [..stouL]. I suppose the latter realisation should be regarded as constituting a separate syllable, though syllable-counting in the South is a desperate task. If you're right, one would expect to find L-dropping in bestowal, withdrawal or dual, but not in stole, drawl or cool.
 
Jeff: Given word-final vocalised L's [in Philadelphia], intervocal vocalised L's would be expected, provided that they were also stem-final. Do you remember the specific examples?
 
No, it was some time ago. My vague recollection is that they were indeed words like call#ing rather than follow (with stem-internal /l/), but I may be wrong. In Labov's Principles of Linguistic Change there is a bibliographical reference to an article by Sharon Ash (1982), "The vocalization of intervocalic /l/ in Philadelphia", the SECOL Review 6, pp. 162-175. I know the author personally (she visits Poland at regular intervals) and I've listened to her data (collected for the purpose of investigating vowel shifts in the northern cities), but I've never seen that article.
 
Piotr