[tied] Evening/Night (was Re: The "Mother" Problem)

From: Richard Wordingham
Message: 36266
Date: 2005-02-13

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer@...>
wrote:
>
> On Sun, 13 Feb 2005, Patrick Ryan wrote:
> >
> > <wolves'> is pronounced /wulv-z:/ with the /z/ sustained
longer than
> > than in <wolves>, or made into a separate syllable; <wolves>
is /wulvz/
> > - at least in my Midwestern English dialect.
> >
> > Perhaps in some dialects, <wolves> is pronounced identically to
> > <wolves'> but not in mine.
> >
>
> So how would you phonemicize <wolves> and <wolves'>? Is there a
phoneme
> /z:/ (long voiced dental sibilant)? Or is there a word-final
geminate
> /zz/?

With the 's'-less plurals that English has, it's entirely plausible
for Patrick's _idiolect_. It isn't real any weirder than word
initial [v:] in some Russian compounds. Also note that the plural
of English [vest] is [vess] in many idiolects (I hesitate to say
dialects).

I wasn't joking when I recently said, on another list, that the 3s
present subjunctive ending was [:] in my speech. (In clauses with
an imperative nuance, I concluded 30 years ago that I was actually
using an imperative). I think the reason is that I am mostly using a
modified present indicative, silencing the [s] but not changing the
timing.

Is there not a pattern of inflexions using unique phonemes?
Certainly they have privileged phonotactics (e.g. _sixths_ and
_twelfths_ in English). I saw a serious claim that one Amerindian
language briefly had nasalised [w] in one tense ending, and only
there. (Unfortunately, I don't remember the name - I was killing
time waiting for the library to open so I could return the journal.)

However, I do strongly suspect Patrick is describing his idiolect
and not his dialect. I remember a paper discussing what it
call "MacDonalds' words", after a term used by Panini, in English.
The phenomenon it was discussing was the automatic haplology of
homophonous suffixes, and it concluded that the phenomenon occurs in
English. Thus the 3s present of "to MacDonalds' it" is "MacDonalds'
it". I think this is a reduction of POSS + 3SING rather than PLURAL
+ POSS + 3SING.

The opposite haplology, of 3SING + POSS, occurs in my speech, with
the exception that _is's_, _has's_, _says's_ and _does's_ are not
reduced. (Nor is _was's_, so there are no issues on the grammatical
analysis there.)

Richard.