Re[4]: [tied] The disappearance of *-s -- The saga continues

At 18:59:10 on Sunday, 11 April 2004,
enlil@... wrote:

> Brian:

>> The fact that you pronounce them differently doesn't
>> imply that your French [s] is dental.

> When I pronounce English with an alveolar it does

No, it doesn't: you could instead be distinguishing apical
and laminal alveolars.

> From: <http://www.cog.jhu.edu/pdf/gafos_dissertation-chapter_04.pdf>
> Brian quotes:

>> It is known that 50% of California English speakers
>> produce [s] as an apical sound and 50% as a laminal one.

> So? I'm not Californian. I use an _alveolar_ like most
> North Americans.

For all I know you're correct about what you use. The
available evidence does not support your typically grandiose
claim about what 'most North Americans' do. (It does
support the hypothesis that most North Americans don't
notice the difference, however.)

>> The same distribution applies to [S]. Dart (1991) has
>> also shown that the place of articulation of [s] in both
>> English and French varies considerably from speaker to
>> speaker, being articulated with a constriction that varies
>> from as far forward as the dental zone to as far back as
>> the post-alveolar zone.

> And I'm not really arguing that point much because I
> realize that there is variation and nothing is written in
> stone.

> However, it remains that English typically has an alveolar
> sibilant, French an apicodental.

Had you suggested that French [s] is more likely than
English [s] to fall toward the dental end of the spectrum, I
might even have believed you; this, however, is so much hot
air.

Brian