Talk:Phonological history of English short A

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[edit] æ tensing in General American

Ajd: Angr's edit was correct. You should give some time (a week at least?) for an editor to provide references before you go hacking away at something like that. ANAE is not the last word LiuLanDi 07:09, 19 October 2006 (UTC).

ANAE doesn't use the term "General American". But I would be interested to know what published source does describe General American (using that term!) as having the distribution of tense and lax /æ/ described in your edit. —Angr 07:19, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

I apologize for just blanking it; that was uncalled for. However, I stand by my claim that it's probably incorrect, based on (a) the fact that "General American" itself is very poorly defined and (b) although ANAE isn't the only game in town, it goes into great detail on the variety of /æ/-tensing systems that have been found and attested in the literature (since the distribution of /æ/-tensing is one of the main theoretical issues of present-day dialectology) and nothing like this has been even mentioned, let alone as being prevalent enough to be "General American". AJD 13:16, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

LiuLanDi, what is your intention in adding these links? If you want to back up your claim that "American Broadcast English" has the distribution of æ-tensing that you say it does by providing audio of Walter Cronkite and Johnny Carson speaking, that's still original research. It sounds like a great way to gather data to write your own paper to be published in a peer-reviewed venue, but that's not what Wikipedia is for. —Angr 09:53, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Angr, you're too damn fast! Keep your pants on! I made the changes first and then started explaining them in the comments, but before I could press "Save page", you've already commented on it! So far I wrote:

OK guys, I changed "General American" (a term I like, but it is indeed not well defined). Angr: the sources I used are not journal articles, they're videos. However, Wikipedia's citation standards do allow those kinds of sources. I spent a lot of time reviewing the standards before I added the citations. Adj: interestingly, the Cronkite video shows that he is not so consistent with his pronunciation. For example, he says "passengers" [ˈpæsəndʒɚz] with no tensing; then "passing" and "Titanic" with a little tensing. Later, he clearly says "postmaster" [ˈpousmeəstɚ], "man", and "average" with tensing. He says "amateurs" both ways, first with no tensing and then with. Carson follows what I described exactly. In his piece, the only tensing-causing consonants that are missing that would be tense are m (with you can clearly hear in Cronkite's "ham"), θ, ʒ, which is rare anyway, and ð (which you can hear if you look on YouTube for the end of Cronkite's final newscast[[1]] where he says "Dan Rather".

As far as "original research" goes, I really beg to differ. You and anyone else can clearly hear the tensing in the sources I provided. There's nothing in the Wikipedia guidelines that say that only peer-reviewed journals can be used as citations. What you're suggesting is kind of like saying that if someone reports that the sky looks grey today, that that's not acceptable unless an acceptable number of Ph.D's have agreed and verified it as acceptable fact. Wikipedia is not simply a repository of conclusions made in journals. That would be way too limiting. Please 1) note the fact that I changed GenAm to A.B.E., and 2) listen to at least the "Amateur Radio Today" (6 mins), and the Carson (short, and you'll laugh your ass off!). Looking forward to your remarks. I'll also write a few more things later.LiuLanDi 10:45, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

For academic subjects like linguistics, there aren't really any reliable sources but peer-reviewed journals, books, and dissertations. If it's relevant to an article that the sky was gray on some particular day, I would expect it to be sourced at least from a weather report. And yes, encyclopedias as tertiary sources are in fact repositories of established knowledge that's already been published elsewhere. Changing GenAm to ABE doesn't really make any difference when American Broadcast English is just a redirect to General American and when that article implies there's no difference between the two terms. —Angr 11:06, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Please direct me to where Wikipedia guidelines say the likes of "for academic subjects like linguistics, there aren't really any reliable sources but peer-reviewed journals, books, and dissertations". So far I'm having trouble finding anything like that. The sources I cited have been published elsewhere. The pronunciations are clear, and are as I described them. Did you listen to them? Changing GenAm to ABE does matter because that way it's not such a sweeping statement. Part of your and Ajd's complaint was that what I was describing was not (according to ANAE and the like) as widespread as I was implying. Now, what it implies is that it is used by broadcasters (and therefore is considered a kind of "standard").LiuLanDi 11:50, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

That statement is mine, not Wikipedia's. Wikipedia's verifiability policy, however, does say "Articles should contain only material that has been published by reliable sources" (emphasis added). The links you provided are not publications of the claim that you have made; they are raw data from which an analysis could be made. If you want the statement you've written to stay, you have to show that someone has already published the claim about the distribution of tense and lax æ made in that paragraph. Giving us recordings where we can hear it for ourselves is not good enough. —Angr 12:07, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

OK. I'm going to remove it. I can't say you're wrong at this point. I am however interested in what you think of this "original idea". You've been very careful to avoid mentioning any personal opinion on it, naturally. But I am interested in your idea, as a linguist, of it's disputability. If you have 15 minutes to look at those videos, please do. The verifiability policy also says "Editors should provide a reliable source for material that is challenged or likely to be challenged". I want to know if you challenge it. Maybe I will in fact write my own paper about this.  : ) Thank you for your comments and guidance. LiuLanDi 13:16, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I'll look at the videos when I get a chance. At the moment I'm at work and have no speakers on my computer anyway. I certainly don't challenge the assertion that Walter Cronkite and Johnny Carson have æ-tensing in some words. But in the absence of published sources on the matter, I do challenge the assertion that observed facts from the speech these two elderly men can be generalized to all of "American Broadcast English", and that "American Broadcast English" is a well enough defined construct for anyone to be able to say what does and does not belong to it. I think writing your own paper would be a great idea, but (1) you need to gather much more data than 15 minutes of video from two speakers, (2) you should avoid implying that a monolithic accent called "American Broadcast English" or even "General American" exists, (3) you should do acoustic analysis of the vowels to compare the formants of various tokens of /æ/ in various environments and not rely only on your ear to tell you "this one's tense, this one's lax". —Angr 13:36, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Nasal system

ANAE says in one place (I'm looking at the crappy online demo version) that æ is tensed before front nasals. "In New York City and the Mid-Atlantic States, short-a is split into tense (raised, fronted, ingliding) and lax (low front) categories by a complex set of phonetic, grammatical and lexical conditions. The core group of tense vowels is found before front nasals (ham, man, stand) and voiceless fricatives (half, last, bath) in closed syllables. Function words like am, can) remain lax." I want to edit that paragraph about the mid-Atlantic tensing to reflect this. Does anyone know of a source that documents tensing before /ŋ/? I can't imagine someone saying "hang" like [heəŋ], except maybe in the North where they usually tense.LiuLanDi 15:15, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I believe [heŋ] for hang is characteristic of California English. There might be sources for it in that article. Certainly I remember User:Nohat, a Californian, reporting of his own speech that bank and bake have the same vowel, the only difference between them being the [ŋ]. —Angr 15:24, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I've heard that from people from Utah as well. But that has an upward glide (if any at all), not a centering glide. Anyway, I've certainly never heard that in the Midwest or the East Coast.LiuLanDi 15:56, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Also, I don't think they tense before the other nasals in the West, e.g. ([mæn]), so that wouldn't be much of a "nasal system".LiuLanDi 16:08, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

I am a native of Louisiana. I also have [heŋ] for hang. And [siŋ] for sing, [pɪn] for pen, [mɛn] for man. However, am and can dont rhyme for me (pace the above), can is like man (but functional can is unstressed usually so it's not a good comparison).

My vowel in man is probably between the vowels in met and mat. I've never measured the formants though. With [ŋ] there's also the voiced velar phenomenon, where I have [eg] for egg and [leg] for leg (but I dont have this vowel for peg, beg, keg). It would be nice if someone pointed out a reference that summarizes this. peace – ishwar  (speak) 04:39, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

The fact that "can" is a function word means that the vowel is usually reduced to a schwa. The auxiliary verb "have" does the same, as does "as". This fact may have been overlooked by ANAE in their assessment of æ-tensing, causing the whole idea of "phonemic æ-tensing" to be wrong.LiuLanDi 14:29, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Not at all. Both "can" and "have" have strong, nonreduced pronunciations as well, as in "Yes, I can!" and "Yes, I have!" In accents with phonemic æ-tensing, those strong pronunciations of "can" and "have" are distinct from the pronunciations of the noun "can" and the verb "halve". I wouldn't expect to find the contrast in Louisiana, though. It's generally described as being confined to the NYC/Philadelphia area. —Angr 14:58, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

For me it's not contrastive, just a neutralization of [e~ɛ~æ] before [ŋ] that is realized as [e]. It's more like the Non-phonemic æ-tensing section in the article. So, can (aux) and can (n) are the same, as are have and halve. I have a contrast of [e] and [ɛ] before [n] when I speak self-consciously, however: bane [ben] vs Ben [bɛn] (although usually Ben is [bɪn] natively). bane has the same vowel as bang, bank, bake. Anyway, this is alluded to with the following: "many speakers from the South have the nasal æ-tensing system described above, particularly in Charleston, Atlanta, and Florida, and speakers from New Orleans have been reported to have a system very similar to the phonemic split of New York". It would be nice if someone identified these reports. I wasnt suggesting that ANAE is wrong, just that their different functions may make them different (as in the ANAE quote above). – ishwar  (speak) 15:52, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Angr, I agree. But I don't think ANAE brings that to light. At least not in their crappy online demo version!

ishwar, I was the one who was suggesting that ANAE is wrong, or not wrong per se, but somewhat sloppy in taking some things into account.LiuLanDi 17:19, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

ANAE: "As noted above, the nasal short-a system is the simplest of the short-a patterns. The /æ/ class is raised and fronted before any nasal consonant...; otherwise the nucleus remains in low front position. Figure 13.8 shows a typical example.... Words with /æ/ before velar nasals (banking) are among the lowest of the raised class, but still distinct from the unraised vowels. Many short-a systems show small variations from the pattern of Figure 13.8. Words with velar nasal codas (bank, bang) may be lax...."

I read this as meaning that tensing before /æ/ is the normal situation for the nasal short-a system, though exceptions exist. On the basis of that I'm reverting LiuLanDi's edit. AJD 23:16, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

What does figure 13.8 show? Are you looking at the online version? Could you give a link? Or a page number if you're looking at the print version?LiuLanDi 23:56, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Sorry about that. It's page 175, and it shows the short-a system of a woman from Columbus, Ohio. AJD 00:34, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't have the print version, but I'm looking at the online version. Can you tell me which woman from Columbus so I can listen to her sample? I grew up in Cincinnati and while some people tense the "a" in bank a little, I don't think it's that widespread there. Different neighborhoods have slightly different accents.

The point of your quote from ANAE above is that the "nasal system" is the simplest system. The reason I made the change in the article is that is says there that it is "geographically the most widespread". That is what I am questioning. Where did you get that? I'm assuming you got it from ANAE, but as with the whole article, there are no numbered or otherwise specific references, so I can't verify.

I think this article needs those kinds of references (notes) because it is not clear what information comes from which source(s).LiuLanDi 05:05, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

The woman from Columbus is Danica L., age 35. Cincinnati doesn't have quite a nasal system: it's got heavy influence from the New York pattern (according to Labov's paper "Transmission and Diffusion"), so it's unsurprising if /æ/ isn't much tensed before the velar nasal there.

The point of my quote from ANAE is merely to show that the source says that the nasal system includes tensing before all nasals, not just non-velar ones. Whether the nasal system is geographically the most "widespread" is hard to say precisely without a clear definition of "widespread": the continuous system is probably found over a greater area of territory, but the nasal system is predominant in a larger number of unrelated regions. I take no position on whether the nasal system is the simplest system. (Actually, I do take a position—I think it is the simplest, or at least the least marked—but it's not relevant to the discussion at hand.) AJD 05:45, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

Then can you revise the sentence in [[2]] that reads: "Geographically the most widespread is the 'nasal system'...."

Also, could you please insert inline numbered citations? Or if you think that's going to be too big a project for this article, could you insert inline citations in the style (Author, year), and page number for bigger works like ANAE? I think it would greatly improve the article. LiuLanDi 06:02, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I see you're already doing that! Thanks! LiuLanDi 06:05, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I clarified the intro sentence for the nasal system to reflect your explanation above. LiuLanDi 04:06, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Oops! I meant to change it to "one of the most widespread", which there's no doubt that it is. Any objection to that? AJD 04:09, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Personally I have a hard time with saying it's so widespread. But my personal opinions aren't so important here. As Angr pointed out, even though one can clearly hear a more complex system (the one I outlined before and then later removed) in accents like Carson's and many (or most) of the predominant late 20th century newscasters', and that those announcers undoubtedly had a profound effect on the way people speak (especially on the perception of speaking "correctly"), there has been no published research in that direction, so that isn't supposed to be in Wikipedia.

After the introductory sentence there is a sentence describing the geographical distribution of the nasal system anyway, and that sentence is far more detailed than "one of the most...", so I think that's quite sufficient.

Objectively, "widespread" may not be the best word because it has two senses, one being 'occupying a wide space', and the other 'scattered over a wide space'. From what you have shown me and what I have been able to read in ANAE's online version, the nasal system exists in many places that are not connected to each other.

OK, what do you think? LiuLanDi 04:40, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] I beg to differ

According to the article:

Mass (truncation of Massachusetts) has /æ/, not /eə/ like mass

Function words and irregular verb tenses have lax /æ/, even in an environment which would usually cause tensing:

and (a function word) has /æ/, not /eə/ like sand

ran (an irregular verb tense) has /æ/, not /eə/ like man

In my experience, "Mass" for "Massachusetts" and (especially) "ran" often do have /eə/ in New York (as in my own speech). (/æ/ does seem to be regular in "and" and in "Massachusetts.")

38.117.238.82 03:13, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

The source for that claim is Benua (1995), listed in the references. —Angr 06:04, 29 November 2006 (UTC)